In-Shape Health Clubs
In-Shape was a regional fitness chain with solid name recognition and a marketing operation that had not caught up yet. Over two years I rebuilt how they showed up digitally: content strategy, email, photography, and social, set up so it could keep running after I touched it.
23.3%
Email open rate (industry avg: 15.9%)
20–26%
Weekly Member Buzz open rate range
18%
Social engagement lift
$10–20K
Annual savings from in-housing photography
Strategy & Systems
The 365
The first thing I built was the content plan. A full year mapped across email and social so neither channel was running blind. Everything organized into four pillars: Get Fueled, Get Moving, Get Inspired, Get Involved. A framework the team could execute from week to week without starting from scratch.
Segmentation followed the same thinking. Member Buzz was not one blast to everyone. Content was matched to member type: seniors, new members, fitness-focused, weight loss-focused, built from survey data and activity tracking. The strategy and the system were designed together, which is the only way either one holds.
Buzzing with Engagement:
Email Design & Deployment
Built to Send
I ran Member Buzz end to end: content planning, design, and coordination with the ESP team to make sure what I was building could actually be deployed. That meant creating two parallel template sets, one for designers and one coded directly in the ESP for developers. It stopped the back-and-forth where designs would come back broken or changed because something was not feasible in the platform.
Design approach was restrained on purpose. Clean palette and type so seasonal creative, things like illustrations, animations, and campaign graphics, could flex in without fighting the structure.
Open rates held 20–26% across the run. CTR grew from 0.95% to 1.5%.
Shaping the Brand:
Creative Production
Brought It In-House
I built out an in-house photography program from scratch: shot product, service, and lifestyle content for campaigns, and trained the design team so they could keep producing independently. Those assets fed directly into email, social, and membership promos.
Two outcomes worth noting: 10% higher conversion on original photography versus stock, and an estimated $10–20K in annual savings on external production costs.
The Recipes for Vitality series ran on the same model. I shot each recipe, built the social posts, and wrote the SEO blog content. That series drove a 20% increase in social shares.
Innovating Wellness:
Social & Multimedia
Tested, Not Assumed
Social was treated like a running experiment rather than a publishing schedule. Carousels, GIFs, animated workout posts, video teasers, all A/B tested against each other using Google Analytics to find what actually drove engagement. Animated content and campaign teasers consistently won over static posts.
Extended the content calendar into Spanish to reach a broader audience in key markets. Performance data went directly to senior leadership and fed back into the calendar regularly.
18% engagement lift overall.
