Marketing & Growth

How to launch an email marketing campaign as Fitness Studio Founders

Marketing & GrowthFor Fitness Studio Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You built your member list inside Mindbody or MarianaTek, but those platforms weren't designed to send a targeted re-engagement email to the 23 members who haven't booked a class in three weeks. You export a CSV, paste it into Mailchimp, manually untangle duplicate entries, write a subject line at 11pm, and hope the segment filter worked. If you run a second location or a seasonal challenge promo, you're doing that twice. There's no connection between your attendance data and your email list, so your campaigns go out to everyone or no one — never the right slice.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Marketing & GrowthFor Fitness Studio Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A member segmentation system that automatically pulls class attendance from Mindbody or MarianaTek through browser automation and sorts contacts by risk level — lapsed, at-risk, active — so you're always emailing the right people.

A campaign drafting workflow where you describe the promo or re-engagement goal in plain language and Starch writes the email copy, subject line, and follow-up sequence, then queues it for send via Mailchimp or any email tool in the integration catalog.

A post-send digest that tracks open rates, click rates, and which members booked a class within seven days of receiving the campaign — so you know if the email actually worked, not just if it got opened.

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

CRM Growth Analyst

Data sources & config

Starch automates your Mindbody or MarianaTek account through your browser — no API needed — to pull class attendance, booking history, and member billing on a schedule. Gmail is connected directly so Starch can read reply threads and sync conversation history to member CRM records. Mailchimp is connected from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries it live to push segments and trigger campaign sends. PostHog is connected directly so Growth Analyst can track post-send booking conversions.

Prompts to copy

Pull all members who attended at least twice a week for the last 60 days but have zero bookings in the past 14 days. Create a segment called 'At-Risk' and draft a 3-email re-engagement sequence with subject lines. First email is a personal check-in, second is a class highlight, third is a limited-time offer.

Every Monday, email me a digest showing how last week's campaign performed: open rate, click rate, and how many recipients booked a class within 7 days. Flag any segment where open rate dropped below 25%.

Build me a CRM that tracks each member's home class type (yoga, HIIT, open gym), average weekly visits, last attendance date, and lifetime spend pulled from our billing records. I want to filter by any of those fields and launch an email to that group in one click.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your email account — Gmail or Outlook — so Starch can read reply threads from members and attach them to CRM contact records automatically.

2 Tell Starch to automate your Mindbody or MarianaTek dashboard through browser automation. Starch will log in on a schedule, pull class attendance, booking frequency, and billing data, and store it so you can query it without touching an export.

3 Open the CRM starter app and describe your member schema: 'I want fields for home class type, average weekly visits, last booking date, membership tier, and lifetime spend.' Starch builds that schema instead of forcing you into a generic contact list.

4 Define your segments in plain language: 'Anyone with zero bookings in 14 days who was booking at least twice a week before that is At-Risk. Anyone with zero bookings in 30 days is Lapsed. Everyone else is Active.'

5 Connect Mailchimp from Starch's integration catalog. Tell Starch: 'When I mark a segment as ready to campaign, push that list to Mailchimp as a new audience segment and trigger the campaign I've already drafted.'

6 Use the CRM app to draft your re-engagement sequence: describe the goal ('win back members who dropped off after the January challenge ended, mention the new Tuesday evening HIIT class, offer a free guest pass') and Starch writes three emails with subject lines and send timing.

7 Review the drafts in Starch, make any edits, then approve — Starch pushes the finalized copy and segment to Mailchimp and schedules the send.

8 After the campaign sends, Growth Analyst picks up from PostHog and your booking data. Tell it: 'Track how many members in the At-Risk segment booked a class within 7 days of receiving email one. If fewer than 15% booked, flag it in my Monday digest.'

9 Set up a weekly automation: 'Every Monday at 7am, refresh my member segments from the latest attendance data, identify anyone who moved from Active to At-Risk this week, and draft a personal check-in email for my review by 8am.'

10 For event-driven campaigns — a new class on the schedule, a pop-up workshop, a holiday promo — describe the one-off: 'Pull every member who's attended a yoga class in the last 90 days and draft an announcement email for the new Saturday Yin class launching April 20th.' Starch builds the segment and draft on demand.

11 Monitor the CRM for reply threads: members who respond to campaigns get their replies logged automatically so you can see 'Maria replied to the re-engagement email and booked the Thursday 6pm class' without leaving Starch.

12 Each quarter, ask Growth Analyst: 'Compare open rates and 7-day booking conversion rates across all campaigns sent this quarter. Which message type drove the most return visits — promotional, personal check-in, or class highlight?'

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

April 2026 At-Risk Win-Back Campaign — Riverside Yoga Studio

Sample numbers from a real run

At-Risk segment size (browser pull from Mindbody)	41
Emails sent (3-part sequence via Mailchimp)	123
Open rate, email 1	48
Booked a class within 7 days of email 1	14
Estimated revenue recovered (14 members × $22 drop-in)	308

Riverside Yoga had 41 members who'd been attending twice a week through February but went quiet after the March weather turned and a competing studio opened nearby. Owner Priya ran a browser automation to pull three months of Mindbody attendance, defined the At-Risk segment in the Starch CRM, and typed: 'Draft a 3-email win-back sequence. First email is a warm check-in acknowledging we haven't seen them. Second highlights the new Thursday sunrise flow class with instructor Maya, who they've attended before. Third offers a free class credit good through April 30th.' Starch wrote all three emails in under two minutes. Priya edited the tone on email one to sound more like herself, approved the rest, and pushed to Mailchimp. Email one hit a 48% open rate — well above her usual 31%. Fourteen members rebooked within a week. Growth Analyst flagged in Monday's digest that the personal check-in format outperformed the offer email on click-to-book rate, so Priya used that finding when she set up the May sequence for her Lapsed segment.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

7-day post-campaign booking rate (members who booked a class within 7 days of receiving an email)

At-Risk segment size week-over-week (members who dropped from 2+ weekly visits to zero in 14 days)

Campaign open rate by message type (personal check-in vs. class announcement vs. promotional offer)

Revenue recovered per win-back campaign (returned members × average visit or membership value)

Member churn rate month-over-month (share of active members who go 30+ days without booking)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Mindbody built-in marketing emails

Covers basic blast emails but has no segmentation based on visit frequency or drop-off patterns, and no way to connect campaign results back to actual class bookings.

Mailchimp standalone with manual CSV exports

Capable email sender, but requires you to export and clean your member list every time you want a fresh segment — there's no live connection to your attendance data.

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Robust marketing automation, but priced for larger teams and requires significant configuration time that most single-location studio owners don't have and can't justify.

ClassPass or MarianaTek built-in messaging

Useful for in-platform notifications but siloed — you can't combine attendance data, email engagement, and class booking outcomes in one view or run sequences across platforms.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — crm, growth analyst all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Mindbody and MarianaTek don't have open APIs for independent studios. Can Starch still pull my attendance data?

Yes. Starch automates your Mindbody or MarianaTek account through your browser — no API needed. It logs in on a schedule, pulls attendance, booking history, and billing data the same way you would manually, and stores it so your campaigns always run on fresh data.

Does Starch actually send the emails, or does it just draft them?

Both, depending on how you set it up. Starch drafts the copy and can push finalized emails to Mailchimp (connected from the integration catalog) to handle the actual send and delivery. You can review before anything goes out, or set it to send automatically once a campaign meets your approval criteria.

I use Gmail for member replies. Will those threads show up in the CRM?

Yes. Starch connects directly to Gmail and syncs message threads. When a member replies to a campaign, that thread attaches to their CRM record so you can see the full conversation history alongside their attendance data and membership status.

Can I track whether an email campaign actually drove someone back into class, not just whether they opened it?

Yes, but you'll need to close the loop manually or via PostHog if you're running a web booking flow. Starch can compare your post-campaign attendance pull (via browser automation from Mindbody) against the segment that received the email and surface how many of those members booked within a set window. Growth Analyst can include this in your Monday digest automatically.

Is Starch SOC 2 Type II certified? I'm storing member contact and billing data.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If that's a hard requirement for your studio's data policy, it's worth knowing upfront. For most independent studio owners the data involved is the same type you'd store in a spreadsheet or Mailchimp account, but you should make that call based on your own comfort level.

I have two locations with separate Mindbody accounts. Can Starch handle both?

Yes. You can set up browser automations for each Mindbody account independently, pull attendance data from both, and combine them into a single CRM view. You'd describe it to Starch as: 'Pull attendance from both locations and tag each member record with their home location so I can segment campaigns by studio.'