Okay, you have a website, maybe you have a few sites now after reading my article about microsite campaigns, and with any luck (or should I say some SEO effort), you have visitors to your site(s).
Every visitor to your site is cherished – you worked hard or paid a lot of money to get those visitors – now it’s time to ask “how much money are you leaving on the table?” In other words, how can you get as many of those visitors to become students and clients of your yoga business?
There are two proven tools that will result in more website visitors trying your yoga studio. That’s all you ask – that they give your studio a try. Those tools are:
- free stuff; and
- live chat (discussed in Part II).
Let’s start with free stuff. Do you see the form with “Biggest Mistake” at the top of it? When you fill in that form, you get free stuff. That form is filled in almost every day. I like giving away free information – after all this blog is loaded with free information for yoga marketing. But I also like establishing a relationship with my readers. When you ask for my free stuff by filling in the form – you not only get the report “Huge Mistake Many Yoga Websites Make”, but I send you other e-mails with useful information for growing your yoga business – some of which is not on this blog.
Here’s the key – you can do exactly the same thing with prospective visitors to your website(s). Give them free stuff – all they have to do is ask for it. You can then establish a relationship with them by sending them e-newsletters and e-mails in the future. Even if they go to another studio for awhile, you’ll be able to gently remind them over and over that you’re around.
But isn’t sending out emails and e-newsletters a lot of work?
Nope. That form to the right is created by AWeber (read below why choosing the right service right off the bat is so important) which once filled in by a person requesting my information, it triggers a series of pre-loaded email messages. You can do the same. Write up 50 messages and send one out each week or 12 and send one each month – whatever you think is best. Offer free stuff every week. Some examples might be:
- One free class
- One free week of classes
- Free videos of your classes so they can your routines at home.
- Informative / Entertaining articles
- Invitations to events and workshops you’re hosting.
- Yoga clothing / accessories sales.
You get the idea. Even though not all visitors to your website may not become customers right away – you can dramatically increase the odds of them becoming a customer in the future if you maintain a relationship with them.
You aren’t limited to sending pre-loaded emails either. You can send out a new email to your entire list any time.
A great sign-up incentive for your site visitors
I think the best sign-up incentive is to offer videos of you or one of your teachers teaching a class. This way you’re pretty much giving away a free yoga lesson that people can follow along with at home. Since the video file would be too large to send by email, send your email list a link to a page where they can view the video.
IMPORTANT #1: DON’T BREAK THE LAW
There is a difference between the people who simply contact you and people who ask to get your free offering and end up on your email list. YOU CANNOT send unsolicited emails to people who do not double opt in. What is double opt in? When you sign up with my form to the right (Biggest Mistake Form), you’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. This process is the double opt in – you fill in the form and then confirm your subscription. The CAN SPAM laws forbid you sending emails to people who only fill in a form. Therefore, people who contact you via a contact form cannot be added to an email list (a law I suspect many business break – but you can reply to inquiries set out in the contact form).
Should you have two forms on your site?
Absolutely. Put your simple contact form in your contact page. You don’t want a double opt in for simple inquiries. Then place your free offer elsewhere on your site. In some of my offline business sites I place both the simple contact form and my free offer form on the home page. Experiment.
IMPORTANT #2: CHOOSE THE RIGHT SERVICE FIRST
Let’s say you don’t want to pay a monthly cost for AWeber (it’s $19 /month). So you try a free service to start – such as MailChimp. BIG MISTAKE. Why? Because when you do decide to upgrade to AWeber you can’t simply import or transfer your list. You will have to get your entire list to confirm their subscription again. Yup – you will lose most of your list.
Let’s look at the numbers
Suppose you get 50 visitors per day to all your websites. Let’s say 1 out of 10 people who visit your site sign up for your free video. That’s 5 subscribers per day. Let’s say 1 out of 35 subscribers become a student (that’s 1 per week) and that the average student attends 4 classes per month ($10 / class). That means your list will result in approximately 52 new students each year which profits you $520 per year. If your email service costs $19 per month, you net $272 in your first year.* However, as your list builds, you maintain the potential to turn existing subscribers to paying students years down the road. As you send them more great information, the better the chance they’ll eventually check out your studio. Your email list also adds huge value to your yoga studio if you ever wish to sell.
If in two years you switch from your freebie email service to AWeber and you lose 3/4 of your list, you will lose out on a great deal of potential profits just to save $19 per month.
How do I know this? Because recently I switched from MailChimp to AWeber and I lost most of a list I had built. I learned the hard way and it cost me big time!
What if you don’t switch from MailChimp or some other free service?
Yeah, you could stay, but it’s not as good of a service. Besides, MailChimp is only free up to 500 subscribers. If you add 35 subscribers per day – you’ll be at 500 in about a year. Then you either start paying for MailChimp or pay for a superior service such as AWeber.
What’s so great about AWeber?
- Easy to use;
- You can set up your blog posts to broadcast to your list;
- There are dozens of great looking forms to choose from that will look terrific in any website design;
- You can get pop-up forms for even greater subscription rates;
- There are fantastic analytics reporting all kinds of data about your subscribers (email open rates, delivery rates, etc.);
- You don’t need to know coding at all – just copy and paste a snippet of code and plug it wherever you want it in your website;
- The email delivery rates are second-to-none; and
- The customer and technical support is fantastic (phone and e-mail support is available).
So – don’t break the law and don’t build a list that you’ll eventually lose. Most importantly, start building a list now. If you add 500 subscribers per year (35 per week), in 4 years you’ll have a list of 2,000 subscribers. If you ever roll out DVDs for sale, start selling other products, expand your studio, or start any other revenue generating service – you’ll have a massive customer base right out of the gates.
Perhaps you’re thinking “I’ve signed up for email lists and they annoy me constantly with lousy sales pitches every day”. This is a very legitimate concern. But how you treat your subscribers is up to you. Treat them like gold – send them nothing but useful information and you’ll have grateful subscribers who trust you and who may one day become a customer of your yoga studio.
Internet Marketers aren’t the only business people using subscriptions
Fortune 500 companies, law firms, consultants, medical treatment providers, banks – pretty much all types of businesses build subscriber lists because “the money is in the list”. Start building your yoga business bigger and faster with a subscriber list today. You won’t regret it.
Click Here to Visit the Official AWeber Website
Part II of How Much Money is Your Yoga Studio Leaving on the Table
* The numbers used in this post are for illustrative purposes only. I intended to be conservative. Numbers and results may vary.
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