Getting Started with Email in Your Children’s Activities Business

In this brief guide, we delve into Email Marketing 101 with guest expert Tamara Holland from Dot & Stripe. She is an award-winning marketing consultant with over 20+ years of experience including as a franchisee for a messy play franchise.

As seasoned children’s activities providers, we all know that marketing is vital to making your children’s activities business a success. We understand the need to identify the perfect audience and utilize the right channels to reach them. Email marketing remains a powerful tool for marketing, and understanding the basics can help us move away from time-draining and non-revenue-generating channels.

Email can outperform social media on almost any key metric, including reach, click-throughs, conversations, and return on investment. Additionally, it is easier to build and share communication at speed.

Why Email Matters for Children’s Activities Providers

While social media is a vital channel to grow your children’s activities business, it is just one piece of the puzzle. Our audience is accessible across a broad range of platforms and wants to digest content, ask questions, and engage with your business in different ways.

Email marketing is an excellent way to grow a list of perfect customers (those who want to hear from you). Moreover, the list of data is not on the 'rented land' of social media platforms that can be taken away at any time. This list provides a way to instantly engage with your audience through timely and targeted communication. Whether you want to promote a new class, share upcoming events, or provide useful tips, you can have a direct conversation with your audience.

When budgets are stretched, email marketing is also a cost-effective solution, with many email platforms offering free accounts to get started. A recent article from Cheetah Digital also shared that ‘Email remains one of the most effective channels for driving sales, with over half of U.K. consumers (51%) purchasing as a result of an email they received in the last 12 months’.

It’s easy to see the potential value of this marketing channel, but where do you start? I have broken this guide into three key areas you should focus on:

• Building and growing your email list

• Creating compelling content

• Taking your campaigns to the next level

  
  

Building and Growing Your Email List

Pick an Email Marketing Platform: There is a wide range of email service providers (ESPs) that offer various functionalities and pricing. One of my top recommendations for businesses just getting started is MailerLite. In my opinion, it is one of the simplest platforms to navigate and even offers a free account for businesses with under 1000 subscribers.

Create a Plan – The Who, What, and Why: As with any marketing channel, you should consider whether this is the right platform for your audience. Start with ‘WHO’ you want to join your email list and create segmented lists if you have audiences with different needs.

For example, you might want to consider a list for teachers if you are targeting schools and one for parents if you are promoting a class-specific campaign. In our strategy, we should also consider WHAT we will be sharing with them over email and WHY. For example, consider a welcome series for anyone new joining our list or a regular newsletter that shares updates on the business and/or regular seasonal marketing campaigns via email.

Your emails should have a clear plan and purpose so your audience can know, like, and trust you in their inbox.

Grow Your List: Capturing the right audience onto your email list is one of the first steps to a successful email marketing strategy. We can use data within our business-like website forms, sign-ups through Pebble, at our events, and other marketing channels, with our audience’s permission. A lead magnet is also a great way to offer a free asset or a special deal in exchange for contact details.

Lead magnets should:

• Fit into our goals and campaigns

• Add our ideal customers to our list

• Provide value to our audience

• Ultimately help YOUR business too

Lead magnets don’t have to be discount codes or free trials; we can share top tips, templates, offers, recipes... the list is endless.

Crafting Compelling Content

Once we have the perfect customers on our email list, we need to nurture our audience in their inboxes. Email is a great way to remain top of mind when we are at the top of their inbox. If we are only sending a monthly newsletter to our email list, then we are only hitting their inbox 12 times a year.

Email marketing can be much more conversational and friendly. Think of how you might email a friend to tell them about your day. These campaigns build better engagement and can result in much more direct conversations with your perfect people.

Consistency is key when it comes to email marketing. Stick to a strategy that keeps your emails on brand, on message, and on a delivery schedule that your audience comes to remember. Whatever approach you consider, it’s essential to be consistent. So, stick to a strategy that keeps your branding, messaging, and delivery schedule.

Taking Your Campaigns to the Next Level

Good email marketers can become great once you start to track and measure your success, and email marketing platforms provide a plethora of amazing data to help you make better decisions. This data can help you track your performance and see what has worked well and what you might want to try differently next time.

A/B testing on your emails allows you to try different versions of campaigns against each other to see which has performed better, enabling you to tweak your emails for success. Email service providers even provide functionality for you to build automated email sequences and schedule emails in advance, so you are not tied to your desk.

How to Get Started

Email is a versatile and powerful tool for your children’s activities business, offering a direct channel of communication, cost-effective promotion, and the ability to build lasting relationships with your audience. If you are ready to get started with email but would like some support, Tamara Holland from Dot & Stripe is on hand to help you get started. She will be hosting her next Capture & Convert program soon to teach you how to build an email campaign that lands you more children’s activities customers in 4 weeks. Pebble members will have an exclusive 10% discount code on the programme when paying in full. Use discount code PEBBLE.

Learn more about working with Tamara at www.dotstripe.co.uk or connect with her for lots of children's activities marketing tips on Instagram.