202: On Air Coaching with Joellyn Andrews. Topic: Email List Building for Music Teachers

This is the first of several on-air coaching calls that I am airing this month. Today's episode is circled around adding an email list to your studio, and Joellyn has graciously joined us to ask really pertinent questions. As you listen in to Joellyn’s questions, I want to invite you to think about how YOU are going to grow your studio and what the next online step is going to be. One thing I mention in my conversation with Joellyn is ConvertKit, which I really recommend that you check out. (That’s my affiliate link) And, as always, I love being in conversation with you. So any feedback that you have for me or for Joellyn, please share with me over on Instagram at @jaimeslutzky or feel free to send me a friend request at Jaime Slutzky on Facebook. Now, for this coaching session where we talk about some of the considerations going into adding an email list to your studio. Joellyn had posted in a Facebook group - about the whole idea of having an email list for her studio and after chiming in on the thread, I invited her to join me for this coaching session. She has been working on marketing this year, but not seeing that turn into new students… it’s kinda just been “like a trickle.” So, she also started a Facebook group because that seemed like a new and fresh avenue. And other people were talking about it in regards to marketing- start a community. That hasn’t converted to students either… so this is where we start. The Call To Action What is Joellyn inviting group members to do once they start interacting with her content? How does she want her Facebook group and her email list to function together? Part of this journey is really just trying to figure out how you want things to work and discover how you can best serve your audience. Tweaking Joellyn’s approach and trying to get people onto her new email list is a starting point. It's really a matter of understanding what you're wanting to get out of that list and how you are going to serve the people on it. Everything that we do, if we don't create it for the benefit of the consumer, then it's going to fall flat. Joellyn and I go on to chat about how to give people just enough in your unrestricted free content to want to provide you with their email address, and the importance of nurturing that audience by continuing to provide value and credibility to the content you share and what you have to offer. I advise Joellyn that, with your email marketing strategy, it’s ok for you to give away a lot in there- just because you give the how doesn't mean that you give the energy that's going to help them put the how into practice. “So I'm going to hold their hand really. It's like you can give away everything. But what they're paying for is for you to hold their hand through it.” I asked Joellyn, when it comes to getting people interested in her email list, if she has any ideas as to what type of freebie or product that to give away. Her first reaction was no, but we talked it out. Thinking about quick wins that she’s getting in her interest-based piano lessons. This also brought up the question of what type of people she would ideally like to work with? But then also, if the ideal client is working with children, the parents are your audience - so how do you tailor value toward them when it’s the child who is actually benefiting? Therefore what does the parent need to do in order to say, YES, my child's ready for piano lessons with Joellyn! Joellyn had the best answer- They need to see the results! And YES, she is exactly right! You don’t necessarily need to give away something to DO, you can share results that will make the parents really appreciate the value of your lessons for their child. Something that the parents can see their kid's eyes lighting up, that's the kind of experience we want the parent to have for them to say, OK, I think I might try lessons. The freebie is definitely important being that this email is the one that gets opened most often, but then we move into talking about ‘post-freebie mode’ where we switch into educating the parents into all the reasons why having their child in music classes and having their child learn is a value. We can remind them of the freebie and WHY they chose to sign up and get that, and then we go into a little bit more education and giving them the experience of what it looks like to work with a music teacher. We talk all about email sequence and cadence, and I share with Joellyn some of my best recommendations as far as timing and how not to inundate your audience, but how to give them enough information that they are going to take action quickly while this is on their mind, because the longer that they're on your email list, the longer it may take for them to actually take action. It’s also important to keep in mind that you want to do what is sustainable for you to make happen as a music teacher, but also that you can recycle your content rather than starting from scratch each time. And remember, the focus of your email should ultimately revolve around what is going to benefit your audience, especially at that moment they are reading it! Give people the opportunity to explore working with you, and then you can offer sales emails every once in a while. Joellyn asks, what's the correct practice on asking people for their email addresses and properly adding them onto her list? We talk about the incentive of the freebie, word of mouth advertising, current students being added, and really knowing that it’s permission-based and making sure people are giving us permission to email them. Next, Joellyn asks about what services I recommend most often for email lists? As mentioned earlier, I recommend ConvertKit most often. (My affiliate link again!) And remember, it doesn't cost anything more to go through someone's affiliate link than if you went straight to their website. It just means that they're going to pay me a percentage of what you pay on a monthly basis as a thank you for sending the client over. My reason for Joellyn for going with ConvertKit is because of the price point and functionality. I really like the ease of use and I've been able to help a lot of other music teachers feel comfortable using the platform and I can't say that for some of the other platforms that are out there.They have landing pages and they have forms so you can actually have a landing page right on their site. It doesn't have to live on your website. You can actually have it right in there that you can send people to as well, which is always nice. One of the really nice things about ConvertKit and many of the other platforms that are out there is that you can write your emails in advance. This brought up the follow up question of, could I ask permission through emails? The short answer is yes, you could email them a landing page. As long as you get permission from them, you can add them. You really just don't want to add them blindly. One of the last things that I touched on with Joellyn is when we grow an email list, the biggest advantage to us as the service provider is learning who the people are, who are on our email list. So you want to give people an opportunity to re-engage with you. We talk about fun ways to get the engagement going, and really making the opportunity for a two way conversation We are starting the email with the emails that go out the broadcast emails, but we're always looking to engage with people because the better that we engage with them, the more likely that we're going to create content that's going to be relevant to them and then they're going to become our customers. I really loved this on air coaching session with Joellyn talking about all things related to email list building. Interested in being on the podcast for a coaching session like Joellyn? Be sure to reach out on Facebook at Jaime Slutzky or on Instagram at @jaimeslutzky. And of course, if you would like to have a call with me off air, head on over to http://callwithjaime.com and book a call. I’d love to chat with you! It's time! Round 3 of the Online Music Course Accelerator is open for application. Click here for details.