If you’re running a tutoring business, it can be tiring marketing to your students one by one. Instead, why not use email? It is a great way of reaching out to students (and potential students) at scale, leaving you more time and energy to teach.
But running an effective email marketing strategy is more than just typing and blasting emails to your subscribers. There are various things to consider, especially if you don’t want your emails to be sent to spam.
In this guide, it’s kind of a crash course on marketing your tutoring business using email. I’ll be sharing how to get subscribers, how to keep them wanting your emails—and yes, how you can help prevent your emails from landing in the dreaded spam folder.
Class is in session!
1. Build your email list
Before you can start emailing your subscribers…
You’ll need to have subscribers to email in the first place!
There are many ways you can start building your email subscriber list. Here are some ideas:
- On your website, offer freebies that visitors can download in exchange for signing up to your email list. For example, if you’re a physics tutor, your freebie could be an ebook with tips for acing a physics exam, or a video of you explaining a particular physics concept.
- If your website has a registration form, you can use that form to build your email list too! Simply add a form field that asks students for their email address.
- Don’t have a website? No problem! You can use online forms such as Google Forms or Typeform to sign students up. And don’t forget to include an email address field in your form!
2. Segment your subscribers
Unless you teach exclusively one subject and for only one grade level, your subscribers likely have different academic interests.
If so, it’s a good idea to segment your subscribers. This way, you can send them only emails that relate to their interests.
For example, perhaps one subscriber of yours, Charlie, has signed up for ninth-grade math tuition. On the other hand, another subscriber, Wanda, is looking for help with twelfth-grade history.
If Charlie starts getting emails about history, and Wanda starts getting emails about math, they might start getting confused—because these aren’t the subjects they asked for help with! And if they get unhappy enough, they might just mark your emails as spam.
To prevent this from happening, Charlie could be placed in an email list for math-related emails, while Wanda should be in a separate email list for history-related emails.
If you want to send even more targeted emails, you could further segment your subscribers based on their grade levels.
3. Don’t use spammy words in your email subject lines
If your email subject line doesn’t catch the recipient’s interest, there’s a high chance that your email won’t get read. In other words, your hard work in writing and designing the email will have gone to waste. A tempting solution might be to write over-the-top email subject lines that will make recipients absolutely want to open your emails.
But here’s a heads-up: some words have been (mis)used by spammers so much that they throw up big red flags when they appear in email subject lines. As a result, using them in your email subject lines can cause spam filters to send your emails to spam, never to reach your recipients’ inboxes.
Here’s a list of spammy words to avoid using in your email subject lines:
- Free
- Sale
- Discount
- Lowest price
- Guaranteed
- Solution
- Take action now
4. Create engaging content for your emails
Let’s say your (non-spammy) email subject lines are so good that recipients open your emails. Now that you’ve gotten their attention, follow through with engaging email content! People have short attention spans nowadays, so don’t give them a long wall of text to read. Instead, break up the text of your email into short and easily skimmable paragraphs.
Adding graphics to your emails can also make your emails look more visually appealing. For example, your emails can contain tutoring flyers that promote upcoming classes.
PosterMyWall makes it easy to create eye-catching tutoring flyers for emails, even if you have no background in graphic design. To get started, pick your favorite tutor flyer template and use the drag-and-drop builder to customize the flyer’s text and images. Once you’re happy with your design, you can then either download it as an image for embedding into your emails, or use PosterMyWall to email it to subscribers directly!
5. Keep your subscriber profiles up to date
Your students’ tutoring needs are likely to change over time. Some students may no longer need tutoring in certain subjects, but want tutoring in other subjects instead. Or perhaps as a new academic term rolls around, your students may want to be tutored at a more advanced level for the same subjects. So whenever your students’ tutoring needs change, the content of your emails should ideally change to match as well. This helps keep your subscribers interested in your emails so that they don’t unsubscribe (or even worse, mark your emails as spam).
If you’re aware of changes in your students’ tutoring needs, you could update their preferences on your own. But for other subscribers on your email list who haven’t engaged your services, there are other ways of keeping their profiles up to date.
For example, you could add a handy “Update your preferences” link in your emails for subscribers to update their profiles anytime. Periodically sending out surveys can also help you get your subscribers’ latest interests.
Take your tutoring business to the next level with email
I hope you’ve found this lesson on email marketing useful. To recap, it involves first building a list of subscribers and categorizing them based on their interests. Then, when preparing your emails, keep your email subject lines spam-free and make the emails themselves a joy to read. (As mentioned, adding graphics can go a long way!)
Finally, keep your subscriber profiles up to date so you can continue sending subscribers emails relevant to their interests. Do all of these, and you’re on your way to expanding your tutoring empire with the help of email! Good luck!