Are You Building A List?
April 23, 2009 by Ryan Wheaton
Filed under Online Marketing
Building an email list for your martial arts school is one of the smartest things you could be doing for your business.
When you own a list of qualified prospects and students, you can weather any recession. In fact, having a list is the single biggest asset you can have in business.
On average, it takes 7 times before someone buys from you. You can either wait for them to come to your website 7 times, or you can reach out to them proactively 7 times.
Which method do you think will bring you more students?
People are easily distracted. However if you capture their name and email, you get to reach out to them instead of hoping they come back to you.
How many prospects have you lost because you didn’t offer them a way to keep in touch with your martial arts school?
AUTORESPONDER RECOMMENDATION
I have used AWeber’s email autoresponder service since 2005. They are my top pick and I HIGHLY recommend that you use them.
AWeber provides you the freedom and flexibility to create a series of emails or newsletters in advance and set their delivery frequency.
You can also send out on demand broadcast emails anytime you have something urgent and important to say.
AWeber makes building, managing, and growing your list a snap. They give you the HTML or a javascript to add an email capture form to your website. It’s literally point and click!
In fact, you can try AWeber risk-free for a month to get more email subscribers, enhance your subscriber relationships, and increase your sales. Try it out today!
Frankly, I’m surprised at how many martial arts school websites I visit don’t have a basic online form where they make an offer and trade free information for a name and email address.
Are you guilty of this?
Building a list helps you build long term relationships with prospects and also helps people to know, like, and trust you.
I have a list with hundreds of people. It helps me connect with past students, existing students, and future students. I am building trust and have had people on my list for over four years. Not everyone has become paying students on my list, but they haven’t opted out, either.
When they are ready to take lessons, who do you think they are going to call?
I send out a monthly email newsletter as well as instant updates whenever I add a post to my blog and it helps me retain students, get new students, and keep my martial arts school on the top of their minds.
Now, before you go off and start building a list and start pounding them with offers, you might want to reconsider.
People are trusting that you won’t abuse the privilege of having their email. It’s funny, most people hate spam but don’t think twice before sending it.
You have to give people useful, relevant information. You shouldn’t build a list solely to push your latest discount, newest class or Tshirt.
You have to build value and provide great information they can’t get anywhere else and then you supplement the valuable information with your offer, not the other way around.
Like your website, don’t make your email communications about you. Make them about the person who subscribed and it will come back to you ten fold.
Don’t forget to check out Aweber email Communications and start building your list today!
Agree or disagree? Leave your opinion in the form of a comment below!
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I'm Ryan Wheaton. I'm a marketer, martial artist and martial arts school owner. My website 
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Great stuff! Building an email list transformed how I get students. I don’t have to wait for them to come to me, I go to them. So simple, but so effective. I’m surprised more dont do it!