Ep 13: Emails - How Building A List Can Catapult Your Business

Let’s talk about the value of having an email list, bc if you don’t do anything else, you MUST cultivate and build your email list. One of the most important pieces of the puzzle in your business.

I don’t want to assume where you are in the process of having or building an email list so let’s begin with the basics…

An email list is a collection of email addresses that you can use to communicate with your students or clients. You can gather names and email addresses everywhere you teach. Whether it’s in regular classes, workshops, special classes… and so forth. It’s always a good business strategy to get people on your email list and deliver helpful and useful information that will make them want to read your emails. 

Transcript

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Let's talk about the value of having an email list, because if you don't do anything else, you must cultivate and build your email list. It's one of the most important pieces of the puzzle in your business. Now, I don't want to assume where you are in the process of having or building an email list, so let's begin with the basics. An email list is a collection of email addresses that you can use to communicate with your students or your clients. And you can gather their names and email addresses everywhere you teach, or everywhere you go, really. Whether it's in regular classes, workshops, special classes, and so forth, it's always a good business strategy to get people on your email list and deliver helpful and useful information that will make them want to read your emails. Welcome to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers Podcast with me. I'm Monica Bright, and I've been teaching yoga and running my yoga business for over a decade. This is the podcast for you if you're a yoga teacher, you're looking for support, you love to be in conversation, and you're a lifelong student. In this podcast, I'll share with you My life as a yoga teacher, the lessons I've learned, all the stuff that wasn't taught in teacher training, my process for building my business and helpful ideas, tools, strategies, and systems I use and you can use so that your business thrives. We'll cover a diverse range of topics that will help you whether you're just starting out or you've got years under your belt. And you want to dive deep and set yourself up for success. I'm so glad you're here. Listen, I don't take myself too seriously. So expect to hear some laughs along the way. Now let's do this together. Welcome back to the Essential Conversations for Yoga Teachers podcast. I'm Monica Bright, and I'm so glad that you're here for another. Before we get started today, I just want to give you a little, um, update on what I've been doing as far as like my teaching. I'm going to explain to you why I'm sharing this information with you. So recently I was asked to teach a special class for the, um, Chicago lovables and the lovables are the dance team. For the Chicago bulls basketball team. And when I was asked to teach this class, I was like, so excited. Like, absolutely. Yes. I would love to teach this class. And the reason why I share this with you is because that. Inner joy that I felt like right away when I was asked to teach this class is what I want you to feel when it comes to teaching. So we had a wonderful time, this yoga class, it actually was pretty long, it ended up being about an hour and 40, 45 minutes, and I promise you I could have like kept going on and on. And it was. It was gentle, but kind of challenging. And what I've come to really understand about me and my teaching style is I love working with people with injuries. I love working with people. I mean, let's face it. We all have aging bodies, right? Every day we're aging a little bit more, but people whose bodies. Are, you know, not moving like they used to. Like, that brings me so much joy to work with these kinds of bodies. And so not to divulge, uh, too much information, but there are a few injuries that we kind of had to work around in this class and like that lit me up from. The insides. So again, I share that with you just to say again I want you to really be lit up by the classes that you're teaching and if you're teaching class after class I get it like this is your schedule now But ask yourself and be honest with yourself. This is all that I ask of you all, is to really be honest with yourself. Like, are you really lit up when it's time? Aside from the dopamine hit, right, from teaching classes and getting feedback and kind of feeling a high from that, aside from that, just teaching your classes really, really give you this inner joy. Another thing that I'd like to share with you is, and I didn't really realize this until not being in the situation, but my schedule before 2020, so before COVID, I thought I had the greatest schedule. I was like, this is awesome. I wouldn't change a thing about it. At one point I had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off, which is a dream when it comes to creating your schedule, right? You know, three days off in a row. So it took years to get to that point, but I loved it. My Tuesdays were horrendous, like Tuesday. I'm just gonna go through the schedule with you really quick just so you can get an idea of it. So, at this point I still, I'm still taking both of my daughters, um, to school in the morning. So I'm getting up at like 5. 30 in the morning, getting them ready for school, dropping them off. And then heading downtown Chicago to teach my first class. So I was teaching at a studio in River North. And so I was fighting morning traffic, which is not fun, but I was doing it. So I taught that one class. And it was a 9. 45 a. m. class, so it's, I mean, this is not a huge class, it's never gonna be full, full. But I had regular students in that class, and I enjoyed that class. So I taught that class, and then I would come home, would typically get home around noon ish. Then I would have a couple of hours to myself. To do whatever I needed to do, which was mainly just recovering from the morning and the morning commute before I would have to go pick up my daughters from school. Then I would pick up my daughters from school, come back home, try to hurry up and fix dinner before having to leave again around 5. 30 to go back to River North. Literally, these two places that I taught were like six blocks away from each other. So I would have to travel again back to River North. This time in the evening commute to go teach a class that started at, I think it was around 6. 30. So I taught that class at 6. 30, and then I went to another studio in the South Loop, which started at, it, the class times kind of changed between 8 and 8. 30. They, they changed the class times a couple of times, but The 8. 30 class obviously didn't end until 9. 30, and sometimes I would have some students who straggled behind after class and we kind of talked a little bit and so I didn't end up leaving that studio sometimes until around 10 o'clock at night. Then I would get home, and I never get in the bed without taking a bath or a shower, so I would have to do that, and then wind down from the day. All of this to say that I did not fall asleep or wind down enough to fall asleep until after midnight. So this is a really long day from 5. 30 a. m. all the way until, um, midnight. But I kind of hung in there with this Tuesday schedule because I had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off so it was like just Just make it make it through Tuesday, and then you get the the extra days off in a row And so I kind of enjoyed it, this, well, I really did enjoy this schedule until I wasn't doing it anymore. Obviously, that was because of COVID, right? And we were all home. And then I looked back and I was like, Oh my God, like I never want to do that again. I never want to have a day where it's that long, 5. 30 a. m. to past midnight, and I'm really only teaching three classes. So I know you know as a teacher how we can have these gaps between classes, and so say you only teach. Two classes in a day, but your whole day is taken up because of the gaps in between these classes. So it really. Isn't as efficient as we think it is, right? It's like, I've got two classes today, yet I'm still spending like four or five hours away from my house. So I just want you to think about your schedule now and do you enjoy it? Do you not? And I bring that up again to say. Really be joyous about your teaching schedule, how you're spending your days, how you're teaching your classes, like, what is that feeling inside of you? Are, do you feel joyful about it? Or do you feel like, let me just get through this day so I can get to the next day? And that's really, honestly, how I felt. So maybe you make some little tweaks and changes in your schedule. Okay, I know you can hear it in my voice. I'm still nasally, still got, like, a little, like, post nasal drip. I don't know what's going on. And I've literally tried everything, right? A little, like, facial massage. I've done gua sha. I've done some lymphatic drainage. And it's just still around. So I'm gonna accept it again for this episode. And again, try to speak as clearly as possible for you so that you can hear everything that I have to share with you. And we'll just go with the, with a sexy, sultry voice for yet another episode. All right, let's talk about the value of having. An email list, because that's what we're here for, right? To talk about email lists and why they're important. If you don't do anything else in your business, you must cultivate and build your email list. This is one of the most important pieces. Now, I don't want to assume where you are in the process of having an email list, so let's just begin with the basics, right? An email list is a collection of email addresses that you can use to communicate with your students or your client. You can gather names and email addresses everywhere you teach, whether it's regular classes, workshops, special classes. For example, I used to be a brand ambassador for Athleta and every event I taught, I would give, um, students an opportunity to share their information with me for updates on future events and a lot more. And I'll discuss that in a little bit. It's always a good business strategy to get people on your email list and deliver helpful and useful information that will make them want to read your emails because there's no use in sending out emails if people don't even want to open them, right? So that's a whole another strategy that We'll get into as we move forward. I want to help you understand why having an email list can be an important tool for your business. And for several reasons, it's super important. So the first reason is that it provides a way for you to keep in touch with your students, right? You use your emails to keep in touch with them by sending them, you could send them your class schedules. You could send them updates and all sorts of other important. information. So I want you to ask yourself, like, how are you currently keeping in touch with your students? Are you waiting until just the next class when you see them to have another conversation with them? One of the, I'll just share this with you, one of the strategies that, and I think that you need a strategy when you have an email list, not just, we're not just sending out random emails about class schedules, right? One of the strategies I would use in my emails, upcoming emails, is to talk about some things that I saw in class. So I used my email list in order to give tips and tools and strategies that students could Read and implement in their practice. And this is like outside of the studio conversation. I think we all know we have just a few minutes at the start of class to either theme or tell students what the class is going to be. And then students get a little antsy, right? And they want to get on with the class, but in your emails, you can go a little bit deeper with explaining stuff. So think about that. The second is you can use your email list to promote your classes and your services. So yeah, when you're in front of students, you can always talk about like workshops that are coming up. But say you have a student who has missed a number of classes, say for an injury or whatever the reason, but you've got a special workshop that might be interesting to them. So. Another example is Like, say you have a student who has an injury, so of course they haven't been to class, but you're teaching a restorative workshop, which is something that their body would absolutely love to experience. So you can use your emails to send that information out. And even though the student isn't. In class, they still get the information of what your future offerings are that might apply to them. So, here's a question for you right now. In what ways are you promoting yourself, right? Is it just when you're in class, when you're in person, for those first few minutes before class, or maybe some studios do announcements. at the end of class. Is that the only place? Is another place just on social media? You know, that only about five to six percent of the people you're connected with on social media even see your posts. You know that, right? So social media is not The most effective way to promote offerings for people to actually sign up for. So think about how you are promoting your offerings, how you're talking to students. And can you expand that by incorporating an email list and newsletters? The third way you can use your email list is to increase your class. attendance. And so we know class attendance is super important, right? But this can be a way to help motivate students to attend more classes and keep them engaged with your teaching. So here's a question for you. Can you share with students in your email, like, why they'd want to come to class on a particular day? Maybe you entice them to come to class with what you're going to teach, for example, like what kind of theme you're going to be focusing on or what style of class you're going to be teaching, like hip stretches or back bends, you know, or maybe it's a, like a seasonal theme and you want to celebrate the equinox or the holiday or something along those lines, but you can use your emails To get that information out there so that people know that, yeah, I want to come to that class or that class seems like really interesting. I'm going to make it a point to just go. And it's a way to help your students be consistent with their practice, right? It's like, okay. You know the saying, out of sight, out of mind, right? It's like, oh, I haven't been to yoga in like forever, I'm not even thinking about it. But when I get an email that reminds me that class is this Thursday, and this is what we're going to be doing in class, that's a way to draw students back into your classes. It's a really great strategy to help increase and maintain your class sizes. So the next reason is it can help you to build your brand and when you send regular emails out that reflect your philosophy and your approach to yoga, you start to or continue to establish yourself as a reputable and professional yoga teacher. So here's a question. How are you practicing your voice? The voice of you, the voice of your brand, what kind of yoga you teach and who you serve. And this is your opportunity in your emails to say it again and again to help refine who you are as a teacher. Because you get to practice it in your messaging with every email. And we know messaging is so important. And refining your messaging is also super important. important. So we have to constantly be working on how we're talking to students, what we're saying to them, how we describe ourselves as teachers, and you only get that by practicing again and again. Another way you can use your emails is to create a sense of community among your students. And you do this by sending out regular newsletters or updates that include information about upcoming events, student spotlights, and other relevant content that might help to connect one student to another. So, The question is, how can you foster community within your email group when these people aren't necessarily connected with each other? So, there are ways to introduce or highlight members of your email list. With each other, and I found that people really enjoy hearing about other students and their stories because they may possibly be able to relate to them too. I'll give you a quick example of this. So I have a student, a member of my online studio who loves being in the live classes, they're in live classes every single week. And. They just enjoy the accountability and having, um, me there as a live teacher to teach. But what he has started to do was on the days when I wasn't teaching live classes, he started to take the recorded classes and found that he enjoyed the recorded classes because what he could do is pause the video. And refine the alignment for a particular pose for his body, or he could linger in a pose for a little bit longer without having to keep up with the rest of the class, right? So that was something that he kind of found out on his own, kind of by accident when he started taking recorded classes. And so I shared that story with the rest of the people. That are in the membership, I was like, Oh, look at how this person has found value in another way. I share that to say, you could share stories with people, they'll feel connected. I mean, they see this other student in class every weekend live. And so it's just a nice connector. So that's one example. And I invite you to think about different ways that you could. Connect students with each other in, in your emails. I've seen also where it's been student highlights and a student gets to answer questions about themselves so that other people get to, to know them a little bit better. That's always really nice. The thing is there's so much you can do, you are not limited by anything, just really like your imagination and your own creativity. So think about how to bring email list subscribers together with one another. Another way, and I'll just touch on this really quickly, is you can use your email list to retarget your audience. So I want you to think about people who kind of just come and like, we talked about websites, right? People who come to your website to get to know you a little bit more. Okay, so they're on your website, they're looking around, they're trying to find out a little bit more about you. Gathering their email address from your website is a great way to say, Hey, come into my world. And when you come into my world, we can start to have A little bit deeper conversations. I think in a future episode, I'm going to talk about email strategy. So like, what would you do when somebody first signs up for your email list? How would you begin to talk to them? Cause there's, um, some great strategy out there that will make people feel welcome and feel like, yes, I'm in a great place here and I enjoy being on this. Email list. So think about retargeting your audience that just kind of land on your website and how to get them into your world. And then the final way that an email list is super important and beneficial is that it's really a cost effective way to reach a large audience. And it's much more effective in attracting new students than just kind of hoping and praying and waiting for them to show up in class or show up in some of your other offerings. So email providers don't cost much. They are monthly and yearly plans, and they're worth it. Trust me, spend the money. I mean, on average, Like a monthly plans are somewhere between 25, maybe 40 a month. And then there's some email providers that if you have, if you're just starting out, like say you have below a certain number of subscribers, it's free. So you want to have an email provider though. Don't, don't be, don't be sending emails out from your Gmail account. That's, that's bad business practice for one, and then number two, you can't track any analytics when you do. So, and I'll talk about that. Like I said, I'll do probably a, a future episode on a little bit more information about email providers and strategy and all of that, because we could really go down a. A rabbit hole with that one. I love emails instead of social media to talk about my offerings because my emails are going to land in their email inboxes, whereas on social media, I'm just like hoping somebody scrolls past my stuff on a particular day, who knows? I have no idea. So I don't want to be putting my eggs in. In that basket, so again, like I said, social media is not going to get you in front of your entire audience every time you post, right, is like maybe 5 to 6 percent of your total following is going to see your posts. And so that's not going to cut it. If you're trying to build a consistent message with your students and your clients. So you've got to utilize your email list to accomplish the goals you set for your business. And if you aren't doing that, then it's like trying to play darts blindfolded in a dark room and somebody spins you all the way around. And nobody wants to run their business like that, so don't do that. Turn the lights on, take the blindfold off, see where your target is, set your goals, and work on this strategy of having an email list. It's really simple. So my coaching program, The Business of Yoga 2. 0, is going to teach you everything you need to know about email lists and email marketing. If you want to learn a step by step process on how to create a strategy around your email list, And getting emails out to your people, if you want to save time and energy trying to figure out what to write about or how to keep people engaged with your emails, the business of yoga 2. 0, which is my four month coaching program for yoga teachers is the coaching program for you. It opens for enrollment every April. And it's the big workshop that we never got on how to actually make yoga your career. Every round, I work with a small group of teachers and to make sure we're a perfect fit, there's an application process so that I know for sure that you and I can make a difference in your career. The Business of Yoga 2. 0 will teach you everything you need to know about email lists and email marketing. So I advise you to join the waitlist if you're not on my email list already, and I'll link that. waitlist in the show notes below. So we are making moves and building careers in the business of yoga 2. 0. And I want that for you too. So again, just join the waitlist. So, you know, exactly when applications. I hope this episode has been helpful on understanding the benefits of having an email list. It's so important. It is probably top three of the things that I recommend you do for your business. You cannot run a business without an email list. So definitely start. One, if you haven't already, and if you do have one and say, you've gotten away from it, or you're not really sure, like what kinds of things you should be saying in your emails, don't worry about that. Just, just restart or get back to talking to them, continue to practice writing newsletters. So you hone in your voice, get clear on what. You want to say what point you want to get across in each email and let that be it, okay? So just do it. Get started. Keep going. Build that email list. It's so important and you'll never regret having an email list. Now you know me, I want you to be clear about your career or at least be getting clearer on it every day. It's so important that we have this conversation about why having an email list is so important. It's so that you remember that the opportunities are endless for you in the teaching world. If you want to change what you're doing now, if you want to start to do something a little different, email lists and newsletters help you get the word out about it. You know that my goal for you is to love the teaching life and allow it to be fulfilling and rewarding. So if you love this episode, let me know. I'll give you a shout out in a future episode. I love the feedback I've heard so far. Subscribe to the podcast so you know when a new episode drops and share it with another yoga teacher who you think would love to be in on these conversation. Because teachers have asked for business related episodes. I am excited to continue to bring you more, but I want to thank you again for helping to spread the word about this podcast. And finally, again, if you haven't joined my newsletter, it's just for yoga teachers. It's linked in the show notes below and I would love for you to join it so we always stay connected. You see how I did that, right? Join my email list. Sometimes all you have to do is just ask for people to join and it's like, oh yeah, I'll do it. I love it. Okay. All right. That's it for now. Bye.