Invoke simple email marketing to get more students (& build trust)

Sep 23

Written By Andrew Woodbury

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Read time: 4 minutes

Here’s our TTT for this week on how to grow your online teaching business.

What is TTT? A Tip, Takeaway, and Task. On Thursday.

Enjoy!

Tip: Focus on building relationships before selling

Let’s get one thing clear: selling is hard.

When you get on a call with a prospect and discuss their needs, struggles, and goals, it usually sounds really promising. You then tell them about your program and they get excited. Then you let them know the price.

And they say “I need to think about it.”

This is a disaster.

We should never hear this phrase when we’ve gone through the process correctly. Your program should be a no-brainer for the prospect. But we hear it all the time, so what’s going on?

One leading factor is that the prospect likely doesn’t trust you.

Not in a “you seem unsavory” kind of way, but rather in a “I just met you” kind of way.

This is why having a prior relationship before making an offer makes the selling of your program a lot more seamless.

So, how do we build a relationship before ever meeting someone?

Through email.

Takeaway: Utilize email sequences to nurture

Relationship building is the essence of any business. There are many avenues to accomplish this, but it mostly breaks down into two buckets:

1. The Public Bucket

2. The Private Bucket

The Public bucket is what everyone sees. What you post on social media, your YouTube videos, podcast, webinars, and anything else. We all make these as personal as possible, but each individual knows we didn’t make it specifically for them.

This is where the private bucket comes into play. This is your email strategy.

This is something that should work in tandem with the public bucket, not instead of it. If you’re only using email, it’s not going to be effective. We bring people from the public to the private (and sometimes back to the public again) until we build enough trust.

The first, second, and third rule of email marketing: it’s about building relationships, not about selling.

Through your emails, build trust by focusing on:

1. Who you are and why you’re the person to help your niche

2. Why what you offer is a fit for them

3. Proof of you helping other people like them

And you can accomplish this through two very simple sequences.

Task: Create two automated sequences

Take this next week to set up two automated sequences in your email marketing:

1. Welcome sequence to your newsletter opt-in

2. Simple sequence for your lead magnet

3. That's it.

Add a newsletter opt-in to your landing page (see our September 1 newsletter for how to set that up). Then, in the back end of your email marketing, write a 4-5 day welcome sequence that teaches your niche all about you, what you do, and how you help people just like them.

This is super powerful.

Next, create a second landing page for a lead magnet. Something of high value your niche wants and are willing to pay with their email for. Write out another 4-5 day sequence that teaches them how to use it as they go.

Embrace a dialogic approach with this. Email isn’t a one-way conversation. Ask questions and ask the reader to respond. Learn about them. And prompt them to talk to you on the phone when they’re done.

This builds relationships. And you’ll hear “I have to think about it” much, much less frequently.

Do this at scale and you’ll develop a pipeline of people perpetually interested in you.

We hope this helps.

See you again next week.

Leo, Andrew, and Mike