Tip 4 - Newsletters

Tip of the Week
Newsletters

In one of the past Tips that I sent out, I mentioned 7 easy methods to increase your cash flow. One of the methods was to create newsletters for both leads and students. In this issue, I want to go more into depth and explain what kinds of information should be in a newsletter.
First, make sure you have content that will engage your audience. You don’t want to have the spot prices for oil in a newsletter for martial arts student. Take the time to get to know your students and see what kind of topics and issues stimulate them. Then, come up with a general layout. One thing with newsletters is the tendency to overload the layout with content. You want to position your newsletter so that each section is clear and distinguishable, and the content isn’t cluttered. You want your promotional sections to standout from the rest of the content, and your banners and headers to jump out.
Here is a general layout for a typical newsletter:

Article: This should encompass a short piece of prose or news that talks about the latest events at your school or in the martial arts industry.
Success story: This can be a student testimonial, a short testimonial written by you regarding a student etc.
Events and News: Events and news that are happening at your school . Example: Belt testing, new classes, new program, new instructor, new black belts and etc.

One thing that you shouldn’t forget is to two different kinds of newsletters-- one for your students and one for your prospective leads. There isn’t such a big difference between the two except that the Leads Newsletter is filled with offers and promotional material, giving them the chance to get them interested once again and potentially signing them up.

Another tip when creating a newsletter is to condense the material as much as possible. Try to put hyperlinks on some of the information that sends people back to your website for more information or for the rest of the article. This way you will be able to generate more traffic to your website which in results it will help you with your search engine ranking and also increases click through rates.
This is important because with hyperlinks it tells you what people are looking at it in the newsletter. This way you can test different materials and different themes so that after a successive newsletter, you can drill down content so that it is targeted and relevant to your demographic.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Simo Rita on October 7, 2008 at 7:26pm

One of the problems I have had with newsletters is that people do NOT check their email! I probably have 1/3 of the students open the monthly (and more) newsletters regarding current and upcoming events--and concerns. I copy the newsletter and have it available for students to read and/or pick up at the gym...but I am still not convinced that the word gets out.

Permalink Reply by Jon Malach on October 9, 2008 at 1:44pm

Dear Simo,

Unfortunately I do not know enough about your school to zero in on the exact solution to increasing your readership, but here are some things to try:

1) Announce the newsletter the day of it's blast:
I am not sure if you have an announcements list that all instructors are briefed on at the beginning of the day/week, but this can play a key role in improving readership. Each month on the day of the newsletter blast we have our instructors inform students at the end of every class that "the monthly newsletter which has important information and updates concerning the school that will be emailed to you tonight, be sure to check your email, and if we don't have your/your parent's email address, be sure to go right to front desk after class and give us the new address!"

You'll quickly find that the reason that the open rate is 1/3 is because we probably either don't have all the email addresses, or the ones we have are no longer being used.

So note this portion is a strategy to create some buzz about the newsletter as well as enforce the importance to the students of always keeping us updated with the latest email address. Do your best to have the younger ones inform their parents for you, it might take giving the younger ones a hard copy version of the newsletter for 1-3 months, and then have at the bottom of the hardcopy version:

***We are going green, please help us eliminate paper usage by providing us with your email address so we may send you the online version of this newsletter!***

2) If you haven't already, give the students stronger reasons to want to see the newsletter:

It works really well when you can say "don't forget to check your email tonight for the monthly newsletter, one of you has been featured in the newsletter as the student of the month, and you won't know who until you check out the newsletter we are emailing tonight!"
>> All this requires is having the students write a quick bio on themselves (have 10 of them ready at all times). The bio can be really short, but always have a sub-heading: "What martial arts has taught me" the parents love this and it's great for your website.

For your adult students, a featured technique of the month works well, just video tape your highest ranking instructor (the one that everyone wants to be in class with but they may not always get the opportunity) performing the technique. Upload it to youtube (hey you might get some hits here!), and then put the youtube link in your newsletter - done! Again, if you have 10 of these 45-90 second clips ready at all times, you'll never be scrambling for content, and remember, there is nothing wrong with re-using a video as long as you space it out. I know some of my clients record these video tips from their phone, so don't worry about the video equipment - if it's digital it will do!

Lastly, having links to videos and articles is further reinforcement that the e-newsletter is SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE HARDCOPY VERSION, (next month the instructors can say during announcements) "if you are still only reading the hardcopy version of our newsletter, you are missing out on our videos section!" etc.

3) Work with you ChampionsWay account manager to add a section to your website entitled "NEWSLETTER".
- one hyperlink from the home page will do the trick
- add a page to your site www.yoursite.com/newsletter.html
- each month we simply replace the old template with the new one
Benefits: those who didn't get the email can go to the website to see it (eventually instead of picking it up from the front counter), and for your prospects - it's great for them to see/feel what it might be like to be one of your students who receives this newsletter...

Hope this info is helpful!

- Jon Malach
The sales guy who does tech support occasionally : )

Permalink Reply by Nima on October 10, 2008 at 4:30pm

Previously Mr. Malach brought up a good point which was :

I like tip 4 - newsletters, but one thing I wanted to make sure our users know is how to create their template using the MyOffice editor. Using the Import menu, then "Retrieve HTML" lets you retrieve your home page, or if you copy/paste from the address bar, any other page of your website, this will greatly reduce the time you spend on the design of the newsletter, and it further brands your online image.

So I decided to just quickly explain how its done.

1) Log into MyOffice and go under the library section.
2) In the library section you can save template emails in order to retrieve them later on and speed up your work. This way you can save a newsletter template and every month just change the content.
3) Press Add on bottom right hand side of the screen.
4) At this point MyOffice editor should open up for you on another window.
5) Through the MyOffice Editor as Mr. Malach said you can retrieve HTML; what this means is you can retrieve the design of your homepage and create your newsletter within it.
6) Click on Import Menu and choose Webpage.
7) Another window should open up asking your website address.
8) Simply put in the address and press retrieve.
9) After retrieving the graphic you can start in placing the content. The first that you are doing this you might have to spend a little more time to delete some stuff in order to make the design to look like a newsletter but after you done that you can save it and retrieve it later to speed up your work.
10) after you are satisfied with the design you can click on file menu and save your work as a template.