The Winning Open Week Strategy for Dance Studios

Hello, friends. I'm Amanda Barr. And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principles 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. Hey, friends, and welcome to another episode of the Dance Principals United podc. Nath, how you doing?

Really good, thanks. Really good. You need to stop playing with your microphone, though.

Sorry. I've already stuffed. I'm already in trouble. I've already stuffed it up. It's fine. Don't worry about it.

I'm okay. I'm okay. The podcast listeners aren't here. Aren't here to hear us fight. But no, I'm really good. Really good. Always enjoyed jumping in and coming up and doing the podcast, especially with you.

It's a. We've driven to Penrith today, so we had to get up early, do all the things, get the kids out of the door and to the grandparents by 7:30 and stuff. But it's great to be up in a proper studio. Yeah. A little bit better than being in our house podcasting.

It really is. It really is. And I think it helps. Like, if you haven't checked this out on YouTube yet, please jump over and do that. You always.

Shameless plug.

Shameless plug for the YouTube.

Yeah, keep shameless plugging it. We're gonna have to start putting some other content on there as well. So this is my. I'm saying it in front of you because you'll make me do it. Actually putting stuff onto our YouTube as well as our podcast, some other tips and videos. We might do some little tutorials. So maybe if that's something you're keen for, let me. I will make it happen. Hey, we're here to talk about our favorite saying. Beck and I's favorite saying. Your favorite saying. So much so that we had it on shirts last year. But doing all the things. Yes, right. You know, we wanted to talk about. I know it's something that came up in your tribe conversations yesterday, but when we have enrollment pushes or, you know, enrollment events to try and get more students into our studio, the things that make a difference and you know, the. That notion that big moves equals big results. Right?

Absolutely. And yeah, the quality of the input is the quality of the output.

Absolutely.

And you know, we are so big on always having those big enrollment pushes throughout the year because gone are the days that sort of like model of a dance studio where we do all enrollments in January, and then you just sort of like the enrollment's essentially just, you know, going a little downhill, spike as kids drop out and things like that. But we know that that isn't what we need to be doing in 2025. We know that. You know, it's one of those things that I've talked about a few times. I think that people on some studio owner Facebook groups see it as a bit of a negative that kids aren't as committed as they used to be.

And they're not.

And they're not. But on one hand, yes, I get that it's frustrating and a little bit of a negative, but the plus side to that, guys, is that there's always so many more students out there for us to.

Because they weren't committed to soccer either, and they weren't committed to swimming, and they want to try different sports, and their parents want to give them a go of everything. Yes, absolutely. So there's both sides of the coin. So we need to be making sure we're appealing to people all the way through the year. Yeah, so. So important. So tell me you had a question. Tell me about your question you had yesterday.

Yeah, absolutely. So we had on our tribe call yesterday, we had somebody asking that they've tried the. The Bring a friend week before, and it just hasn't quite worked out for them. And it's something that they've seen. They feel like they've seen other people do successfully and just asking for. For some tips around how to make a bring a friend week more of a success in their studio.

Yeah, okay. It's really interesting. And obviously, I don't know this person and. And what they did and any of that. I wasn't on that call yesterday, but to me, as we mentioned before, the quality of the results that we get are directly associated with how hard we, you know, how many levers we pull, how hard we put in the effort, the marketing, the conversion. There's so much to it. And it's really about doing all the things right. Yeah, it really is. And, you know, also gone are the days that you could send one email out and go, oh, I didn't get.

You know, or put some flyers in reception or put some flyers.

Flyers and reception. And. And if you're just doing one of those things, well, great. That's one step. But the results are going to reflect that as well. And, yes, you might get a couple of new students, which is awesome because you didn't try very hard. But, you know, if you want to get huge numbers and have Huge results. You've got to put in huge amounts of effort.

Yes. And you know, Beck was, you know, we just. Beck and I just recorded a podcast about concerts and she was talking about people's attention spans there. Yeah, it's the same in like the marketing that we see.

Yeah.

People's attention is going so many different ways. And the bring a friend week, I think is a great one. It's a really interesting one because it's something that we're only really looking at marketing internally within our studio community. Yeah, it's probably something we don't really need to be spending ad spend on to like get those external, like people external. If it's a bring a friend week, it's all about trying to get people that are already enrolled to bring a friend along that might enroll in your classes also.

Absolutely.

So it means we can focus on, you know, we can't just put out one email like you said. We've got to do the emails. We've got to do. If we're using something like band or your Facebook groups or whatever you're using, you got to be posting all over those as well. Not just one email, just one band post, but multiple. We're talking like a two week lead up. At least five emails.

Yeah, at least. And it should be a two week lead up as well. Always a two week lead up for these big events. You know, it should be done via text messages. The teachers should be really, really pushing and hyping it in class because I think we sometimes forget the power of that, that every single teacher should be hyping it in class and making it sound so incredible. And the way that they're positioning it to the students that the kids are so excited by it. Right.

Yeah. And you, you're turning into an event promoter. Yeah, we talked about, we, we all wear so many hats. Dance teacher psychologists support, like we always so many hats in our studio. But event promoter is also one of them.

Absolutely.

And when we're doing these big enrollment events, we need to make sure that we are, like we said, doing all the things. So on top of those few that we've already talked about, like making sure that like nobody can walk into our studio for those two weeks and not know. And not know.

Absolutely.

It needs to basically be slapping them in the face, metaphorically.

Posters, flyers, balloons, you know, messaging the receptionist, talking about it, the teachers talking about it, the assistant teachers talking, talking, like, what can you do to make it such an event that nobody can miss? Right.

Yes.

Like, and it just be so exciting. Rather than just an email that the parents got that the kids didn't really know that was happening or that dad happened to get, but mum didn't know. Like, do you know what I mean? It really needs to be everywhere.

Yes. Because like we said, like, there's just so much noise in everybody's inbox, SMS, inbox, everywhere, that we need to be just hitting them from all angles.

Absolutely. Because who else gets 4,000 emails a day? Like, and sometimes you just don't read them because, you know, it was a busy day, work and it wasn't super important. That's how it happens. And we really wanted to chat about this because you might have seen on our socials, we were celebrating some successes that we had from some of our studio growth club members. Y we helped all of our studio growth club members run a open week event, which is something we've been teaching, we'd been doing for 10 years in our studio, getting bigger and better each time. But so we've been teaching to our studio growth club members for the last four years and they're having epic results. But the epic results were directly associated with how many things they did and how much work they put into it.

Absolutely. So, like, we with them, for example, like, we start the lead up the month before.

Absolutely.

And making sure that all of those moving parts that we talked about are in place.

Yeah.

That they've got the emails, that they know that the sort of the cadence and the emails that need to be sent, as well as making sure that it goes all over socials organically.

Yeah.

Which is just one part of it. And, you know, gone are the days, like you said. The same with emails where we can just send one. The social algorithms are changing, especially on Instagram and Facebook, that putting it up once and expecting all of our audience to see it just doesn't happen.

It doesn't work. Right.

It's such a small percentage now that we need to keep doing it and it's okay. You know, we don't want to put the same post up every day.

No, you do a different version of it.

A different version of it. But you know, if you can do it, maybe you repeat one like a couple of days later. Things like that. If it's just a story, especially, like, we can do, like, we can make sure that we're working smarter and not harder. But we need to put loads of organic socials out as well.

Yeah. As well as the paid ads, the, the emails, the text messages, the band posts, the flyers, the invites, the posters in the community Page. Sorry, the posts in the community page. The posters on the Woolies community doors, on their notice boards. Like so many things. And that's how we get such big results. I think that's the real thing. And it's not just. And then it doesn't just finish there. It's about following up those leads. There's so much to it.

And I think that's, that's the key. And where we see so many studio owners maybe. Yeah. Maybe fall over a bit is that they, they get that first half. Like even those that get the first half. Right.

Yeah.

And you see them, you're like, oh, wow. Like they've got great.

Yeah.

They've gone all.

Coming through. Yep.

Yep. They've done all the things. And then it just gets a bit overwhelmed.

Yep.

During that week because it's gone crazy. And you've had all these students come in and you've ended up not being able to follow them up because you haven't been able to get the details because this kid came with like little. Their friend over here and that cat. And you had all these students through the door. But then, you know, you might have had 100 students through the door, but then you look at it and you got eight new enrollments.

Yeah. You're like, yeah, absolutely. So he did all this work for nothing. So it's like the fortunes and the follow up and it's continuing that through. And I think that's so important to really think about is, you know, it's got to be a whole. You know, we talked about being a marketing promoter, an event promoter, and you really need to make sure that you have all those things in place. But then you need to be like the follow up queen and be like calling those. Or king. Sorry, calling them, texting them, like getting people to actually enroll in your classes as well. Because, you know, go hard or go home is my big motto. Like if you're gonna do something, do it really well rather than do, you know, these little things and then kind of go, oh, why don't my results match?

Yes. You know, I think sometimes we worry about being too and like that's the thing we see so often with studios we work with is that almost I think it's a fear of being annoying.

Yeah.

A fear of being too salesy.

Yeah.

And it's that thing that we always talk about. Like if you're a business owner, whether you're a dance studio owner or any small business owner, you are in sales.

Yeah.

Yeah. And absolutely, you need to work it. You need to not be afraid, like keep sending the text. Like you said, like, have a system. And that's why we love, like helping our studio owners, like with the automations and things like that around it. Because, you know, sometimes if you've got 100 texts to send, we know guys, that takes a long time.

Absolutely.

But if you've got a system that you can maybe send all those hundred at once in a bit of a bulk SMS, then maybe 20 of them actually respond to you, then you send, then you've only got those 80 that you need to send the next email to because you're like, it's, it's all about sort of like having a bit of a systemizing.

Yeah, yeah.

Optimizing and having a bit of a system and a process around it so that you're working smarter, not harder, but still giving every single lead that you've had, every person that's signed up for your open week, the best chance of signing up.

Absolutely. Now, you know, you mentioned before that a few people said that we've heard from studio owners before. Hey, you know, they're not in sales and they don't see themselves as a person, they get nervous. And I get it, we've all been there. But I think sometimes knowing the numbers makes it so much easier to get excited about it and knowing what that potential looks like, you know, for our members that just ran their open week, you know, we, we worked out, I think we had about 60 members run their open week in like a couple of week period that we measured all their numbers and they generally increased about as an average across the board, 61 class placements a week. So that's 61 new classes, whether that's new kids or old kids picking up an extra class. But we worked out that that's about an average of about A$915. That's very specific. A bit over $900, you know, increase to their weekly revenue.

Yes.

Now, they didn't add extra classes. They might have spent some money on advertising for sure, but $900 extra a week in their bank account, like, isn't that incredible? Huge. And that makes a difference to wanting to pick up the phone?

Oh, 100%. Because like taking that out over that's what, nine grand for the term, 18 grand for the year. And that's before you even factor in, all of those kids are getting an extra costume now.

Yes, Uniform.

The new kids are getting the uniforms. We're talking minimum 25 grand.

Absolutely. That's for the second half of the year.

For the second Half of the year. Not to mention those new students or the people that are doing extra classes for years and years to come.

Absolutely.

And so like the, the trade off for that work, when you get it right, when you've done all the things, is absolutely incredible. And you know, is, is takes, helps take your studio to the next level.

Absolutely. You know, and I said to so many of our members who had increased by, you know, as we said, the average was about 900 a week that they increased by. And we're like, give you, you know, for some of them, they deserved a raise because that was additional profit going into their business. And like, how exciting is that when you're like, hey, I could add to my family's income.

Yes.

Per week. That's where that gets exciting. So if you sometimes think, oh, that's too hard to call back that lead to do that, look at the numbers, look at what that person or those people. If you have a list of 20 kids in front of you that you need to call back, look at it as a potential. If all 20 of those kids enroll, how much is that worth to you?

Yes.

You know, 20 kids times if they're only taking one class a week, at 15 a class or whatever it is, it's a lot of money. It's worth, you know, spending a day on the phone because that could change, you know, what it is to your bottom line.

And I think it's something that we need to be comfortable with is getting over that fear of rejection.

Absolutely.

Because that's what I know from talking to so many studio owners over the years. I know that that's what's, what's the fear is behind them not picking up the phone and calling those leads back a lot of the time.

Yes.

Because don't get me wrong, guys, like, I love a good automation. Anybody that knows me, that's worked with me, I love sending that email and being able to automate this, that and the other. But the reality is we're dealing with, you know, the most important thing in parents lives. And sometimes they want to hear from another human being.

Absolutely.

Some people, of course, like, the reason we do it is because some people respond to the email or the text and enroll straight away. Click the link, click the button. Awesome. We love that. Yep. That's why we do it.

But not everyone.

Not everybody.

Yeah.

And there are some people and like a good chunk of people that not only will picking up the phone and calling get them over the line.

Yeah.

Or it's actually going to help you upsell them as well. And you know, when we talk about like some of these, like, even bring a friend week or an open week event.

Yeah. Or whatever it is.

Like, like these are what we call, like, generally they're like lower quality leads.

Yeah.

And like, so we talk about like when you're running, like your normal, like when you're getting your regular inquiries, generally they're like pretty good leads. They're people that have been actively seeking out dance classes.

They've googled dance classes in my area or something along those lines. Yeah.

And so those people are generally a little bit easier to convert into classes when we go, like actively seeking them through these big events. Yes. We get more like trials in through the door.

Absolutely.

But there's sometimes a little bit lower quality.

Yeah. And harder to actually enroll.

And harder to actually enroll. And that's okay as well. But knowing that, you know, sometimes especially like, you know, the people that are super keen beans, you know, let's say that you've got 50 students that came to your open week.

Yeah.

Well, hopefully you got 20 of those enrolled. They were the super keen beans.

Absolutely.

Awesome. So you've got a list of 30 to go. The reality of that, guys, is of those 30, they. They snaked out of the building for a reason. Yes. They might still be interested.

Maybe they just wanted a free class and some babysitting because mum had to work late on Wednesday night. So they sent them with their friend. Absolutely.

And so out of those 30 remaining, we might only get six or seven yeses.

Yes.

Which means we're going to get 23 no's. But that's okay. Like, I think making sure that we let go of that fear of failure and think I'm okay to hear 23 no's if I get 6 new enrolments from it.

Absolutely.

Because like you said, like, what is.

What does that mean to you financially actually adding that up. Hey, can I tell you about Candace and Brad?

Yes.

You probably already know this, but, you know, they were. We announced our three top win of our open week. We kind of did a bit of a competition between our studio growth club members just to make it a bit exciting. And the people who increased by the highest percentage won some incredible prizes. And we've put some stuff on our social, so check that out if you're interested to see a bit more about that. But I'd love to shout out to Candace and Brad who got third place in our competition. They had told me that they had run an open week for many years. Yep. They've seen the Hype that. And it didn't work for them. They were like, it doesn't work for us. People in our area just want free classes. You know, we always just get these people that just rock up and then they never enroll or we don't have really great results. We even did it last year and to be completely honest, that were in Studio Growth Club last year as well and did it and didn't have great results with it. But then looking at their what they did this year, they were like, but this year we went all in. We committed, we committed, we did all of those things. We looked at the numbers, we got excited about it and it made such a difference because, you know, that's what we're talking about. Like when you actually commit to it, not just send a couple of emails and then hope for magical results. You know, a couple of emails that take 15 minutes to write. You know, you can't expect magical results from that. You need to do the work to get the results. You know, they ended up with 135 extra class placements a week. Huge, right?

Yeah.

Which is absolutely huge. So if you're looking at, you know, depending on what your class prices are, if that's 15 or 18 a class, 135 extra class placements is a lot of money. Like, you know, it's.

You're sitting here listening to 135 times 15.

Yep.

And that's like the weekly amount extra.

How much is that?

Oh, I don't know. But do you want me to get it?

I can't calculate that at the moment, but yeah, I think that that's really interesting and going, wow, that's a lot of extra money. But they did a lot of extra work to get there. And I think that's the big thing. Right. Is doing the work to get the.

Results, expecting awesome outcomes without putting the input in is it's, it's not, it's not realistic. And it's, you know, if it's the same as I always say, like if a student came to you and told you all these incredible dance goals that they had.

Yep. They want to get to the Australian.

Ballet, but then they stop turning up to class.

Yeah. Or they're only half assing it in.

Class, well then of course that's not going to happen.

Absolutely. So, you know, if you're listening to this and you're thinking about running an enrollment event, which we definitely suggest that you do.

Yes.

Really think about planning it out. Really go through. Okay, what is every single thing I can do and Maybe even, you know, let's be honest, someone like Candace and Brad, you know, they started small and their results the first year reflected that. Reflected that. And they were still good results. They still got new students and all of those things. But they were like, oh, we only did, you know, and I can't remember the numbers but you know, for example, you know, we only did two emails. So this year we're going to do five emails. We didn't spend much on, we didn't do any paid advertising. So this year we will, you know what I mean, like even look at what you've done in the past and then go, okay, how can I up this? What's something extra I can do this year? Our bring a friend week last year got these results and we did these things. What can I do on top of these things? And where were the holes? Where did it break down? Did I not get enough registrations? If you don't get enough registrations, well then it's a marketing problem, you know, if it's that you don't convert enough people, it's a conversion problem which has to do with, you know, the training of the staff, the follow up. It could have to do with an offer of the prices or how you put the offer in front of them. But having a look at where the problem is, putting a scientist hat on.

Yes.

Diagnosing the problem and then trying to improve your results. You don't have to go from 0 to 100. And let's be honest, you're probably not going to get 135 class placements in a week on a new event that you've never done before. But like Candace and Brad, you get a little bit better each time. Yes. And build it up and keep doing more and more things so that you can get those incredible results.

And I think that's something that we always talk about and something that I'm always big about talking with our incredible. Any in studio owners that we're working with is that making sure that like we focus like in the business world.

Yeah.

Redoing the same thing and especially the marketing world, redoing the same thing is a really good strategy.

Absolutely.

We don't always have to be.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel. And that's why like for us our open week was something that was so successful. It was an event on our calendar that we did every single year.

Yep.

The first year we did it, we didn't have the results that we did.

Absolutely not.

By the end, like, we were consistently having 200 students sign up for open week.

Yeah.

A mix of new and existing students. We'd have a huge boost in class placements every single year from it. But that was because it became a regular fixture on our calendar. Our staff became used to it. Our staff knew what they had to do, from the teachers revving it up in class to the admin team's job, to all of those things. And it just built year after year and built that moment.

And every year we got better at it. We did something extra. We did more to get more people in. And I think that's the thing. Like, just like we do with our concert every year, we sit back and we think, how can I make this better? How can I change this up and do a better job of it? What didn't work? And I think it's so important. We always think about that inside our enrollment events, too.

Exactly. If you've got, like, if bring a friend weeks worked well for you the last couple of years, go again. But make it a little bit better.

Yeah.

If you've got other events that really work well for you, again, it's just like that. Consistency is absolutely key, and it's what. What gets us results from the business side of things.

Absolutely. Hey, and I just want to, before we finish up, just give a bit of a shout out because, you know, we had some studios that did incredible results and, you know, we were talking big numbers.

Yes. However, tens of thousands of dollars.

Absolutely. Absolutely. However, any increase is an increase. So regardless of what you're doing inside your studio, if you are getting five new kids, that is incredible.

Yep.

And celebrate that. Don't, like, don't dismiss that, because five new kids at, you know, maybe $15, maybe $20 a class like that might be an extra $100 a week into your pocket. And if that is profit, because they're already just going into additional classes, if it's additional, like, that could be $100 extra that you're paying yourself a week. Obviously, there's more to it than that. Like, yeah, like, obviously. Jst. And there's all this kind of crap, but, you know, boring. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, celebrate that, because if you could put your current wage up by a hundred dollars a week, well, that's great. That is an incredible thing and an incredible lever that you can pull. And most people who work our employees for a company who work for somebody else don't just get to go, hey, I'm going to put my Weekly wage up $100 in one lot lot. You know, that is incredible. So, you know, don't dismiss it. Be super proud of your results as long as they're going in the right direction.

100. And like, like, we always talk about, like the lifetime value of that client.

Yeah.

If you haven't figured that, if you haven't worked that out before, you know, go and look at it. We always talk about like, you know, families that we had in our studio. And you've all got, like, I'm sure a lot of you have got them in your studios as well. If you went over those students that have been with you for 15 years, have a look about how much money that they have paid you over that time, it would be for a lot of you in excess of $100,000.

Whoa.

Yeah. And that one preschool inquiry that you could be calling back that you're a little bit afraid of getting the no from, that could be 100 plus thousand dollars over the next however many years.

Because it could be that client that turns into the 15 year kid that.

Does every single troop class from when they're 5 years old to when they're 18.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Hey, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. You know, I hope you got some ideas from this and, you know, really think about going all in on your next enrollment push. What can you do to increase it to do better than you did last time? Big shout out to our studio Growth Club members who had incredible results. You might hear some of them on the podcast very soon. We're hoping that we might be able to convince them to come on and chat about it. But thanks so much for joining me, Nathan.

Absolute pleasure.

Thanks, guys. Bye.

Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dance Principles United podcast. If you'd love to learn more from us, we have a special offer just for our podcast listeners. Go to the link in the show notes right now to get two weeks free in Dance Principals United Tribe. We would love to see you there.