Email Marketing that Gets Prospective Martial Arts Students to Respond

This question came from one of our readers, John Young, in response to one of my posts (I need your help). Here is John’s question:

What is the best type of message to send out to potential new students? Those who sign up for more information on our school’s site receive an email I send to them. The emails contain all the information about a trial program and the procedure to follow to sign up. However, many of our leads do not respond to the email. Is there any guidelines for us to follow, when writing a message, that will make them want to pick up the phone or email back about joining our trial program?

And, the answer is yes, there are absolutely things you want to include that will help prospects want to respond.

Before I go into all that, let me say this topic is actually one of my favorites in online marketing.

The reasons is because the use of Email has transformed my business. I still get (and return phone) calls but the ratio is totally lopsided now at about 15:1 emails to phone calls.

Let’s just say I’ve learned a lot in the last nine years of replying to emails from potential students and converting them to students. And, if I had to do it all over again, I would make sure I started my business with email marketing just as I did from day one. It’s that important.

Now back to John’s question…

Here’s how you can increase response rates using email:

Email Basics

1. Have permission – Make sure you’re only sending emails to people who have directly asked you for it. Do not buy lists and send emails to people who haven’t requested information. This is SPAM.
2. Send frequent emails - Most martial arts schools send one email to their prospect and expect them to respond. Then they don’t send any follow up emails because they don’t think the prospect is interested. Remember, it can take up to 7 contacts before someone responds. This is a marathon and not a sprint.
3. Develop a campaign – Devise say 8 emails that are automatically are sent out of a course of 3 months with more frequency in the beginning and less towards the end of three months. Then test to see at what point you’re getting the most response then tune up your campaign as you get more people to respond closer to the time of sign up. Remember, that’s when they’re most interested so you have to front load the “good stuff” early. You can even write follow ups that are sent in 15-30 day increments so you can keep in touch.
4. Timing of emails – Timing is everything. You should have a system set up to instantly respond to inquiries. You can’t wait until the next day, you have to begin the process the second someone emails you because, again, you have to act while the prospect is most interested.
5. Use email software – This is one of the best investments you can make. I use Aweber.com to keep in touch with all my prospects, current students and past clients. This way, I don’t have to retype a ton of repetitive emails. I can send custom emails to all of my lists or just to some people on my list. My system responds 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. The best part is that no matter what time of day a person requests for more information, they instantly get an email from me…even when I’m sleeping.

Email Message Strategies

1. Subject line - I will actually do a separate post on this topic but needless to say it must capture your prospects attention and get them to want to read the rest of your email. Testing the best headlines for open rates is something you want to do and can easily do using Aweber.com.
2. Make an offer – Making an offer in your email will definitely help increase response rates. A hard offer is where you are stating specifically what they’ll receive by responding… “Receive one month of lessons with a black belt instructor for only $49!” while a soft offer is passive… “Contact us to learn about our holiday special” where there isn’t anything specific mentioned.
3. Call to action – A good call to action includes urging the prospect to respond now, includes the deadline, restates the offer and provides an easy way to contact you.  Are you using strong calls to action or just hoping they know they should contact you now? Sending an email doesn’t automatically mean you expect a response. You have to ask for it.
4. Use hard deadlines – This alone can significantly increase response rates. When people there is a time limit, it drives them to take action. With no deadlines, people know they can put this off.
5. Social proof – Another good thing to include is social proof like testimonials or that other people are taking you up on your offer. If you’re sending HTML emails you can include photos with testimonials, which can be very powerful.
6. Keep emails on point- Your email shouldn’t be long winded. Keep it on point and remember you can break the message up into multiple emails.  This way, you get the benefit of frequent messages and demonstrates you respect your prospects time. Plus, you maximize the communication.

Further, if you have a lot of references to “free” in your email, you might be getting caught in spam filters at a mail client level or at the ISP level. Here are some other words and phrases that might flag your email as spam:

• 50% off!
• Click Here
• Call now!
• Subscribe
• Discount!
• You’re a Winner!
• Information you requested
• “Stop” or “Stops”
• Lose Weight
• Opportunity
• Amazing
• Satisfaction Guaranteed

John, I hope this thoroughly answered your question and that it helped give you some ideas to consider to get more response to your email.

For everyone else with experience, what else would you add to this list of important email ideas?

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