FitnessTexter Frequently Asked Questions

SPAM text messages suck, and that’s exactly what mass texting does. FitnessTexter DOES NOT and WILL NOT support any form of SPAM texting. Imagine if you’re a big buff gym guy and you receive a text message offering 50% off your next hair coloring at the local hair salon. You’d be pretty angry that someone just wasted your time by sending you a text message that doesn’t have any relevance to your life. That’s how EVERYONE feels when they get a SPAM text message.

When someone signs up for FitnessTexter deal (by texting your keyword to 95577), they are added to a database so that we can send them the 2-day reminder message. Your contact database will never be sold to a third-party for promotional reasons, nor will your contacts ever be sent a text message about something other than your business. They legally signed up to receive your FitnessTexter promotion and the reminder message. Those are the only messages that we will send them.

Choosing a texting keyword for your business is the fun part! The only requirements are that it contain at least 4 characters and doesn’t contain any special characters (anything besides a number or a letter). We usually try to keep the keyword short and sweet so that it’s easy for your clients to text. If you business name is Rage Fitness & Training Center, a great keywords would be RAGEFIT. It’s short, sweet and makes sense. Making your keyword RAGEFITNESSANDTRAININGCENTER would not be smart. People will surely commit spelling errors and it’s just way too long to text. Most popular texting keywords have already been taken by our larger clients. Words like FITNESS, YOGA and WEIGHTLOSS have long been snatched up. If you’re a CrossFit box, our normal texting keyword will be CF[your-name-here].

Absolutely not. Unfortunately, uploading lists of phone numbers is usually synonymous with SPAM texting. There are companies that will let you upload phone numbers, but we don’t believe in the practice. FitnessTexter is a way to convert website and Facebook traffic into new members; it’s not a way to send out mass text messages to huge mailing lists. Unless you have a signed contract for every single phone number, stating that the owner of the phone number wants to receive promotional text message from your business, you legally cannot send them any text messages. So that list of 5000 phone numbers that you purchased from that sketchy guy in Miami won’t work. Sorry! Here’s a great article on the rules of texting.

Your FitnessTexter text message promotion is not permanent. Changing your FitnessTexter deal is quite simple. Send us an email info@BoostFitnessMarketing.com and let us know what you want your new deal to be. Remember, text messaging promotions have to be promotions and not soliciations; that means that the offer has to be something free. You can’t ask people to buy anything via text message; you have to be giving something away for free.

95577 is the text message phone number that was been assigned to FitnessTexter. Therefore, you are not able to change this number. However, we’re kind of fond of 95577 and think it looks pretty darn nice on marketing materials. If you’re looking to use a different phone number, you’ll have to work with a different company, sorry.

Your business will be billed quarterly for your FitnessTexter texting keyword. Our current price is $150 per quarter. Please talk to your FitnessTexter representative if you’re interested in going to a month-to-month billing structure; we’ll be able to work something out.

Patrick Jones, the creator of FitnessTexter, started the company while he lived in Miami during 2011. It was originally a text message marketing company for nail salons and restaurants. Once he realized that the majority of his clients were fitness centers and CrossFit boxes, he rebranded his company from Text Marketing Miami to FitnessTexter.

There are absolutely no contracts with FitnessTexter. It’s a quarter-to-quarter service. Use it for one quarter, two quarters, three quarters or a year; it’s totally up to you.

When we set up your FitnessTexter account we will ask where you want to receive your sales lead emails. We usually send it to the info@ email address of your business, but we can send it anywhere you’d like.

Yes, up to three different email addresses can receive the sales lead email. If you have a very large sales team, it’s best to send the leads to a central email address and then let your sales team divide them up amongst themselves.

Nope. FitnessTexter is a flat-rate-fee service. The $150 quarterly payment is to own your texting keyword. It doesn’t matter if you generate 10 leads per month or 100 leads per month, you’ll always pay the same quarterly fee. We’ve had businesses generate over 400 leads during one quarter of using FitnessTexter. Imagine if they had to pay $5 per lead generated; that’d be ridiculous!

FitnessTexter is currently a quarterly-billed service. However, if your business isn’t willing to make the 90-day commitment, we can work out an arrangement to set up monthly billing. We normally charge a slightly more expensive monthly fee as opposed to our quarterly fee. At $150 per quarter, FitnessTexter is one of the lead expensive lead-generation services around.

FitnessTexter currently doesn’t offer any Google AdWords or SEO services. However, we have written a couple helpful blog posts on these topics. AdWords is a great tool, but be prepared, you’ll need to spend quite a bit of money to get any traction. We spend roughly $500/month using Google AdWords. Some months we get enough new clients to justify the cost and some months we don’t. As they say in the business world, it takes money to make money. Finding a good AdWords agency isn’t too hard. WordStream and PPCHero are both great companies. Watch out for the SEO companies that claim they can get you a #1 ranking in Google’s organic search results. No one (but Google itself) can do that. Even Google can’t force a search results to be #1 in the results. Getting a #1 ranking is all about clicks, links, keyword usage, website age and about 100 other factors. SEO is a great tool, but it takes a long time to see the results.

This is a business decision that you’ll have to make with your business partners. We work with some businesses that have various locations and want to have a special texting keyword for each specific business. Imagine keywords like FITCENTERDOWNTOWN, FITCENTERUPTOWN, etc. We also work with multi-location businesses that use the same keyword for all their locations. Having a special keyword for each business allows you to have a special promotion for each location. If you’re using one keyword at many locations, you’ll have to use the same promotion at all locations.

If you are unsatisfied withe the results of FitnessTexter, we will indeed refund your payment. However, we’re a small business just like yourself, and refunding payments hurts our bottom line (just like refunding a monthly gym membership hurts your bottom line). That said, if you truly put in a good effort to make FitnessTexter a success (and it turned out to not work as well as you hoped), we will happily refund your quarterly payment.

The FitnessTexter 10-day free trial is just what it sounds like; 10 days to use FitnessTexter free of charge. You will be provided with a functioning SMS texting keyword as well as all necessary marketing materials. You’ll be able to use FitnessTexter for 10 days to see for yourself how well it works. If you like the results of the 10-day free trial, billing will start automatically at the end of the 10th day. If you don’t like the results, simply cancel your free trial (or email us and we’ll cancel it for you) and you will not be billed.

At the time of writing this FAQ (July 2015), FitnessTexter only works in the United States of America due to current phone regulations. There’s a potential that we will be launching a Canadian shortcode to help out our brethren to the north. However, at this time, we are currently only allowed to work with businesses located in the USA.

We’ve had clients use their SMS texting keyword in just about every imaginable way. We have a client who wrapped his Hummer in marketing materials and included his texting keyword on both the driver and passenger door. We have a client in Orlando who uses his texting code in radio advertisements. Many of our clients put their texting keyword on coroplast yard signs, like the ones you see during an election year. They’ll put these signs up at popular “traffic jam” intersections where people will be stuck in traffic and have time time to send a quick text message. You can put your texting keyword on your business cards, in your marketing flyers, in your email signature, on bumper stickers, just about anything you can think of.

Thanks for asking! This is one of the best questions that someone can ask. Many people call us asking if we’re similar to websites like Groupon and Living Social. We’re not. While those websites can be great for businesses that are brand new and need an initial boost in membership, we don’t personally believe they generate long-term membership. Let us explain. If you give someone a free one-week pass, they’ll come in two, maybe three times, maximum. They’re basically curious about your fitness business and want to see if it’s the right choice for them. Maybe they want to see your training style, or maybe they want to see if they like the “culture” of your business. Those two or three classes/lessons are just the right amount of time to figure out if your business will be a good fit. Plus, there’s no physical benefit to a free week of class. They won’t see any difference in tone or muscle mass. That means you won’t get people who are taking advantage of your business. Switch over to the idea of giving someone a 75% off discount for their first month. Now you’re going to attract people who will be coming in every possible day for a month. They’re going to drain your business of valuable resources and, basically, take advantage of your business. Once their discounted month is over, there’s a very good chance that when you ask them to start paying full-price membership they’re going to say something along the lines of, “Sorry, but I just don’t have the money right now. Sorry!” Then they’re going to go back to their computer, find another cheap month at a different gym, and go do the same thing at that gym. Plus, when you give someone a huge discount, you’re instantly devaluing your business. If someone only had to pay $25 for the first month, there’s a high probability that they won’t be comfortable paying $125 in regular monthly membership. When you give someone a free week pass, there’s no value attached. People know that when the free week is over, they’ll have to start paying regular membership prices.

We’ve got you covered there. When someone signs up for your FitnessTexter promotion, their phone number is saved into a database. If they try to sign up a second time, they WILL NOT receive the texting promotion. The only way that someone can get around this is by removing themselves from our database (sending STOP to 95577) and then signing up for your offer a second time. However, even if someone did try to come in twice with two different FitnessTexter deals, you, as the business owner, could simply refuse them and say that the offer is only valid once per person.

We here at FitnessTexter have worked with just about every type of fitness business there is. Our first client ever was a boxing gym located in Miami, Florida. After that business gave us a raving testimonial, we started working with a large quantity of CrossFit boxes. Since 2011, we have worked with boxing studios, kickboxing gyms, CrossFit boxes, pole-dancing studios, yoga studios, Tae Kwon Do dojos, mixed martial arts gyms, Krav Maga studios, karate studios, and I’m sure we’re missing a few types. If you’re a fitness business of any sort, there’s a good chance we’ve worked with someone in your industry. If we haven’t worked with your type of business, we’d LOVE to give it a try. (We’re looking at your indoor cycling gyms!)

Our most successful clients put their texting code on their business cards, marketing flyers, window signs, billboards, radio advertisements, car/truck marketing wrap, email signatures, Instagram pictures, Facebook postings, etc. At the start of your FitnessTexter campaign, you will be provided with a Facebook flyer, a website banner and a 8″x11″ window sign PDF file. Take this file to Kinkos, print out a handful and put them up around your neighborhood.

The success of your FitnessTexter campaign is entirely in your own hands. The more you promote your SMS texting keyword, the more signups that you’ll receive. That said, our clients tend to get between 10 and 25 new paying members per quarter of using FitnessTexter. So, if you’re charging $100/month for membership and FitnessTexter produces 5 new paying members per month, that’s a $500 increase in your monthly recurring revenue.