The Best Free Way to Fill Your Dance Classes

Hello, friends. I'm Amanda Barr. And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principals United, the podcast. Together, we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio. Join us as we talk everything from marketing systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between. This is the Dance Principles United podcast.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the D Principles United Podcast. It is Nathan here, obviously with my amazing and lovely wife, Amanda. Hi, Amanda.

Well, hi, friends. Hope you're all having an amazing week so far.

Yes, we decided to jump on and look, it was. This is a little bit of a follow on from our last no Bullshit Business Tips episode because we had lots of great questions, comments and feedback from something that I think sometimes is so simple, but sometimes it's those really simple things that get overlooked, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And so what we're talking about is the last episode of no Bullshit Business Tips. If you saw that, was about the importance of using the cold email list as a marketing tool for your studio. You know, your email list is such a valuable asset to your studio, to any business. Right. Because it's something that you actually own.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that, like, we all know how important social media marketing is about. Important. Building up a huge Instagram following is building up your Facebook followers and all those kinds of things. But there's a lot of people out in the digital marketing world that, don't get me wrong, are incredible on all these platforms and they invest a lot of time on these platforms. Everybody or people that listen to the podcast would probably know I'm a huge Gary V. Fan and he talks about it all the time, is that he focuses on all those channels. But he's also acutely aware that even though it's probably not going to disappear overnight, that Instagram or Facebook could pull something huge that could make your audience not disappear overnight, but significantly impact your audience, because they own all of those followers, essentially. Yes, they're on their page, but if you've got people's email addresses, their contact details, that's an asset that you own that you can use to market your studio.

Absolutely. And I think that that's a really, really valuable thing, but it's also that thing. Right. And I don't know if you know, but only like 5% of people of your followers will ever, ever see your organic posts on socials. Really, really small number, but email lists, Email lists, you know, number one, you might have a smaller following. You talked about having a growing your following on Instagram, and I have to disagree with that sometimes. Because, you know, it's not all about the numbers. It's about having engaged people and people that are on your email list. They're on your email list because they are a past client, a current client, or they've inquired with you. They are so warm. They're not just someone that just clicked a like button because they like watching what other dance studios do or whatever. All right, so they are a super warm audience, which means you're going to have so much more luck selling to them. As I started saying, 5% of followers will only ever see your organic social posts. But a standard email open rate is like 30, 40%. So much higher. Plus they're warmer and more likely to buy from you. And so it was really interesting having all that feedback because I think people get a bit confused about what to do with the cold emails list. Right?

Yeah. Or even how to build it properly. And that's something that we're super passionate about with everybody that we work with. Because whenever you get an inquiry in whether it's through your website, like a website form or things like that, it's a bit harder when we get like messages and DMs because we don't want to like appear too thirsty and get people's emails straight off the bat.

Yeah.

We often we want to chat with them on like wherever they're coming into us, but we see too many studio owners that once that person fills in the website form and they land into their inbox and they reply to the email maybe once or twice, then they don't actually do anything with that email address. They don't build the list out so that they can be sending those emails to them. And look, it's obviously, you know, everybody obviously knows I'm a huge software nerd, so love using platforms like Enrollio, mailchimp, Chimp, like all those sorts of things we can use to mass email people. Yeah, but you don't have to be using those programs. It can be just as simple as having a Google sheet where you absolutely name email address and hopefully phone number if you've got it as well. But it's just so, so important. I always tell the story about like one of the biggest events we always run is our open week event.

Yeah.

And you know, we would get over 200 students every year sign up to come along and trial classes at the end of term two coming into term three. It was our biggest enrollment boost of the year. Yes, it was a huge event for us. Now, out of those students that signed up, believe it or not. I would run huge Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns to that. That was a huge part of our marketing around it. But we would often get just as many students. It was usually about a 50, 50 split because I had spent so much time building up that cold email list with every single person that's ever been through our system, whether they're were a past student, like you said, a somebody that's just inquired and maybe it wasn't quite the right time for them, but 50% of people for that open week would come through our paid marketing and 50%. So about 100 students was just from that cold email list. Yeah, because it was such a huge list.

And that's free.

Yeah.

That's the big thing, right? That is free.

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, you sort of talked about how we organize them and how we sort of build that cold email list. And one of the. We actually got asked it a few times in the follow up to that last episode is once we have all these emails, what do we actually send them? And most importantly, how often do we send them? Because we sort of don't want to be that annoying person that's showing up every second day in their inbox, Right?

Absolutely. There's got to be a happy medium with that. So the how often question. Look, it's got to be what sits right with you? You know, once a term, as a absolute bare minimum, two or three times the term is a better number. That's kind of like, you know, once a month or something. That's not a lot. A lot. Right. Like, think about how often do we get emails from, you know, our favorite brands, Country Road, the iconic, whatever. You usually get one every few days. It doesn't annoy you about the brand though, does it? It just sort of sits there and you're like, oh, cool. When you're ready to read it, you read it.

Yep. Yeah. And that's the thing, like, so we would, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but we would always send one the start of each term. Just trying to get a little bit of like a bump for some new enrollments. Some people that we know, you know, might just be coming back, soccer's finished, football starting. Like that.

Absolutely.

And I think we'd send one end of term as well. And I know you love a good promo. So, like, what else would you always be sending it with an offer, things like that. Or do you think it's okay just to be sort of touching base?

I think it's all right just to be touching base and that's what I kind of wanted to chat on. You know, I think when you've got something great to sell, definitely sell it. If you have a promotion coming up that's, you know, an open week, a free uniform, a holiday workshop, that's a great thing to be sending to those people or enrollment stuff. Definitely. But I think sometimes just sending interesting information or story based emails can be really great. So I have a big list that I'm sharing with my studio growth club members. Do you want to hear it?

Absolutely.

All right, let's go through a few of the things that might be some good email prompts to get you started. If you're looking at that, email is going, what the hell am I going to send them?

Perfect.

All right, so I've got my list open in front of me. What about a story about a student who was scared to go into class and then overcame that fear?

Perfect. And that doesn't have to be. And look, what about the people then that say around that? Because I know so many dance studio owners can maybe like speak about that really well. Do you have some like tips around if you're not the best at writing.

How could you go, oh, good question. Because Nathan knows I'm not the best at writing. I much prefer to speak. So I use Otter. It's called Otter AI. It's an app for your phone or on your computer or whatever. And I speak out my newsletters or my emails or my whatever because I actually find that I speak better than I write and then I get it to transcribe it and then I tidy it up, of course, and fix it from there. So that might be a thing for you. But yeah, that's the one thing that you could share, share a story about is, you know, a story that you know about a child who is scared, who then has gone into class, you know, and giving that sort of value because that makes parents see, you know, just selling, you're not just selling to start with, but it also adds value. But it also, you know, makes people go, oh, that might be my child. Oh, that's so good. That reassures me that, you know, if my child's a bit scared to go in, they obviously know how to overcome this, right?

And especially if it's that cold email list because that they might have been that parent that they came and they tried when they were a preschooler and they were just a little bit hesitant, couldn't go in, maybe a bit clingy to mum or dad. So they didn't, they didn't Sort of push through with it. And so maybe if they read that and they think, oh, yeah, time to give it another chance. Amazing. So we've got the story type email. Everybody loves a good story. We see it all the way through marketing and advertising anyway.

Absolutely. And I've got so many other story ideas I haven't finished. That wasn't just the one story idea. There's heaps of story ideas. Because I think that's the biggest thing that you should be doing right, is telling stories through your marketing. So, you know, the student that overcame that, you know, being scared to walk into the first class. What about a before and after story about a student who might have been like that and gained confidence and made their best friend, you know, 10 years later, not just that first two weeks, but 10 years later, you know, what about, you know, a story from a teacher about what dance has meant to them in their life? You know, they're so, so great. What about like a success story of a student who, you know, just won their public speaking competition at school and, you know, a lot of that comes down to their drama training or their singing training or, you know, the confidence you'd given them through dance.

Yeah, absolutely. So you, like, you've thrown three or four ideas out there or maybe even more. I'm just thinking, as you're saying those, like, if you're thinking, if you sort of thought at the start of this, oh, what am I going to send? You could literally speak out four or five of those stories and they could be the four midterm emails that you sent to your cold list and it's done.

Absolutely. I think that's so, so great. You could do other things as well. You could do more education based ones. So that's kind of like story based. That's one idea. The next kind of thing would be like education based. So, you know, education based in terms of, like the history of dance and, you know, what you teach or why you do this specific syllabus and why you're really passionate about doing this syllabus, or why you believe in competitions for kids or you don't believe in competitions or you believe in examinations or, you know, any of those kind of things like education. Like what kind of, you know, advice could you give to a young dancer starting out or how to do the perfect cartwheel. These are all education kind of based emails. And I think that's a whole nother topic.

And I know that sort of feeds into something you're super passionate about. All studio owners making themselves or positioning Themselves as the expert in their local area. Right?

Absolutely. Because you are the expert and I think that's really important to remember. Do you want to hear a few more ideas?

Do you have any others besides. We've got storytelling, we've got that, that. So yeah, that transformation around storytelling. We've got the education side of things.

I think also the why dance kind of style thing, which, you know, kind of goes back into that education. But like what are the benefits of dance? You know, not just, hey, we're here teaching kids steps, but what are the benefits of dance? We know that it's confidence, we know that it's, you know, mental health benefits, we know that there's social benefits, we know that there's physical benefits. All of those are great things to put into emails as well and share that with them. The last kind of things I'd be talking about is exciting events that are happening in your studio that you're performing at the local school fate and how great it is and sharing that, you know, to your community. Like, hey, you should also go along and support the local primary school fate because they're an awesome, worthwhile, you know, reason. Plus we're performing there, you know, telling people about your mid year concert or your end of year concert, you know, all of those kind of things as well as those offers. I do think, you know, we did say their value base but a small call to action at the end is really important for every single email.

Exactly. It doesn't have to be a huge sale, it doesn't have to be come and get a free uniform, but it can just be like if you're interested in, you know, coming along for your free trial class, click here and book in.

Absolutely. That's all has to be PS at the end. I actually really like the PS emails. Yeah, have you seen those? And it's like just a little bit.

And it doesn't have to be big fancy with like images all throughout the email or something like that. Sometimes just those simple text based ones hit on a little bit more of a personal level.

Right, Absolutely. So it just could be at the end PS if you're interested in, you know, starting your journey of dance like little Susie who overcame her fear of going into the classroom, drop us a line and we'll get you in for a free trial. Like that's all it has to be.

Amazing. So you just gave us like four overarching ideas there with lots of different ideas within there. I think the key for like anybody is don't think you've got to do, like one story, one education, one, like, just sit. Just find what's right for you.

Absolutely.

If you're just really good at, like, the education side of things because you're a dance teacher and you're an expert, then just like sit down for an hour on otter. If you, like, speak better than you write whatever it is and just type.

Up four emails and schedule them.

And schedule them. Have them sitting there ready to go.

Absolutely. It really shouldn't take you more than an hour to do four emails. And if you can get a handful of new trials from that, wow. Like, how amazing. So we would love to, you know, really encourage you to make sure that you are making the most of that cold emails list. It is such a beneficial thing. And let us know if you give it a try and how it goes.

Absolutely. We'd absolutely love to hear from you. We so love the feedback that we get from the podcast episodes because just like with that last one, the feedback that we get helps us to give more episodes that are going to get benefit to you guys. So we really, really love it and appreciate it.

Absolutely. Hey, we have to remind everyone that we have a bootcamp starting tomorrow. Our no Bullshit Business Bootcamp. It's a free online bootcamp where we're talking about ways to grow your studio using no dollars and cents, keeping it absolutely free. So this is one of the things we're talking about and so many more things. If you haven't signed up, check out our socials to sign up so that you can join us on camp this week and next. It's going to be an awesome time.

Absolutely. We'll put the link in the show notes for this as well. Thanks so much for listening to the Dance Principles United podcast, guys. Have a great rest of your week. Bye.