Inspiring healthy lives with fitness professionals
canfitpro drives global member engagement and marketing strategy with Marketo Engage.
50%
Increase in email open rates
Products:
Objectives
Create better digital experiences to help more than 110K members and community in 15+ countries access training and information quickly
Create central repository for customer data by removing silos and integrating marketing tools
Improve marketing efficiency by consolidating marketing stack
Results
Centralises customer intelligence across multiple systems including Microsoft Dynamics 365
Consolidates seven different legacy applications into just two
Increases email open rates by 50%
Simplifies member interactions and accelerates sign up times with web forms
Improves customer experience with email frequency capping
From CrossFit to yoga and more, physical fitness inspires healthier, more fulfill lives. And, for the past 26 years, canfitpro has made it its mission to support the legions of fitness professionals who work hard every day to help people achieve their goals. With a membership and community of 110,000+ fitness instructors and allied health professionals across Canada and in 15 other countries, canfitpro provides fitness pros with important certification, continuing education, events and networking opportunities.
“Our goal is to create fantastic and seamless member experiences by giving people the tools and resources they need to succeed,” says Janessa Gazmen, Digital Marketing Manager for canfitpro. “Over the past several years, our membership has grown from being primarily Canadian to a global membership in more than 15 countries. With members worldwide, we needed to take a closer look at our marketing technology to ensure that we had the tools to communicate effectively with our members everywhere.”
As canfitpro grew, the company added different technologies and tools to better engage its growing number of members. But the company soon realised that it needed to mature its marketing technology stack to offer members the next level of service and experience.
“At one point, we used seven solutions to communicate with members, from commercial products to custom-built solutions,” says Michael Best, IT Manager for canfitpro. “The biggest challenge for us was that those applications didn’t always communicate well with each other. We had all of these silos, with no central way to look at data and figure out how to best approach and serve our members.”
“We looked at a lot of options, but nothing could compete with the power and features of Marketo Engage.”
Michael Best
IT Manager, canfitpro
Imagining a new customer journey
Today, canfitpro transforms how it understands and interacts with members using Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Partner Perkuto spearheaded the implementation, using its experience with both applications to set up strong integrations.
“We started our digital journey with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM for customer data,” says Best. “From there, we needed a marketing automation platform that could support all of our communications. We looked at a lot of options, but nothing could compete with the power and features of Marketo Engage.”
For Best, one of the biggest benefits of Marketo Engage was the reliable integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Previously, Best struggled to manage and connect member data between multiple applications. Every time he transferred data, there was a concern about accidentally introducing errors into the system, which meant having to spend extra time validating data. Through the tight integration, canfitpro now has much greater confidence that the data provides true insights into member behaviours and needs.
Gazmen enjoys working with Marketo Engage’s robust campaign builder that allows marketers to create campaigns and automate customer journeys. The intuitive smart lists offer granular options to personalise email messaging for different audiences, while A/B testing allows marketers to optimise emails, from subject lines to layouts.
“Marketo Engage allows us to create ways for our members to interact with us as they move through the customer journey,” says Gazmen. “We use web forms to collect information on the website and we’ve used surveys to understand what our members think. Marketo Engage brings all customer interactions into one platform, giving us a single source of truth that we can use to better understand and engage our members.”
Driving higher engagement through web, social media and email
canfitpro is already using Marketo Engage to drive new and innovative engagement initiatives and the results they are seeing so far have Gazmen excited for the future. For example, a new “Passion Pays” social media campaign aims to drive professionals to specific training and certification programmes, such as the Personal Training Specialist programme or the Fitness Instructor Specialist training programme. Members are guided to a special Marketo Engage landing page with a web form that feeds directly into the application. Then the customer intelligence is funneled directly into Microsoft Dynamics 365 for use by sales reps.
“Before, people who wanted to become members or sign up for training needed to download and fill in a form,” says Gazmen. “Our new web forms make it much easier for members to sign up, which improves the member experience and encourages them to sign up straightaway.”
Marketo Engage also allows Gazmen to adhere to email best practices more easily using features such as email frequency capping to prevent members from being overwhelmed by emails. “We just started optimising our email strategy with tests and automation, but we’re already seeing results,” says Gazmen. “Since deploying Marketo Engage, we’ve seen email open rates increase by 50%. We expect even more as our strategy matures.”
“Marketo Engage is a big part of our success at understanding what members want and how to best support them. With Marketo Engage, technology is no longer a barrier to our strategy. It’s driving the strategy of how we improve member experiences. ”
Janessa Gazmen
Digital Marketing Manager, canfitpro
Meeting member needs for an industry in transition
When the global pandemic rocked the fitness industry, canfitpro turned to Marketo Engage to get the latest information out to its members — fast.
“Members wanted to know about the virus, about safety recommendations and about what they could do to support their clients and keep their businesses afloat,” says Gazmen. “While we were sending way more emails than we normally would, we could see through Marketo Engage data that our open rates were improving and engagement was high. That let us know that we were on the right track. Members were craving information and we could fill that need.”
Like many organisations, canfitpro started holding more virtual events and training. Integrating Zoom with Marketo Engage has allowed the team to gather critical intelligence around these virtual events to better understand how to further engage members.
“This recent experience has shown us just how important it is to listen to the needs of our members,” says Gazmen. “Marketo Engage is a big part of our success at understanding what members want and how to best support them. With Marketo Engage, technology is no longer a barrier to our strategy. It’s driving the strategy of how we improve member experiences.”