This is a guest post written by Elena Tahora.

Everybody, from executives to business owners, needs coaches. From leadership to relationship coaches, just about any professional can benefit from working with a coach. Despite an increase in the popularity of coaches of all kinds, they often have a hard time finding clients. This is why they should focus on email marketing to build an audience. This will also help them find potential and long-term clients. Here are nine strategies to help coaches around the world benefit from email marketing:

1. Include something attractive

It's a great idea to provide your visitors with a resource in the email. This could be a worksheet or an eBook that offers useful insight to the recipients. This helps you attract more subscribers and is a useful method for building your list. People who subscribe to your mailing list are important because they are interested in learning more about what you have to offer as a coach. Tweak your present lead magnet if it's not doing well, as you may need to offer another solution to motivate people.

2. Create an autoresponder

Since coaching comprises of a lengthy sales cycle, it is best to offer your clients a series of emails. This can be done by designing a chain of emails that take the visitors from one point to another. An autoresponder is great help if you have difficulty sending a weekly newsletter out. When you automate your autoresponders to go out every week, the audience will not even know they are on an autoresponder. It also means there is one less task for your marketing campaign.

3. Greet new subscribers

You should welcome your new subscribers with a brief intro to your coaching in the email. You can share information about yourself and what led you to coaching, offer up some testimonials from past clients or share a few tidbits about what it's like to work with you. Since this is your first interaction with them, you can capitalize on this opportunity by giving the best content you can to impress them.

4. Be visible on webinars

Several marketing professionals dub webinars as a highly effective tactic of modern times. They are effective for showing off your skills or to simply stand apart from other coaches in front of your particular audience. You can expand your reach by hosting webinars and asking market partners or influencers in your field if they can share your event with their audience It is a great way of showing what you are capable of by flaunting your coaching expertise.

5. Ask for feedback

Coaching is all about giving and receiving. So, it is better you also use this principle in your emails. It doesn’t matter if you are sending autoresponders or weekly messages, you must seek active feedback from the audience. Ask them what you should include in the next series of your emails.

6. Personalize your message

Personalization is highly effective. Personalization refers to segmenting your emails and creating different funnels according to different factors, such as age, occupation, geographic location and gender. It is important to add content that addresses the client’s most important issues for more engagement and higher open rates. For instance, if you specialize in helping doctors and other health care workers deal with stress and burnout, you should filter all physicians into categories based on their specialties (mental health, dental, nurses and doctors, therapists, etc) and put them into separate email lists. Send out relevant content to these lists exclusively. Coaches can do this for any profession or set of clients that they want to serve.

While other businesses are unlikely to get personal, it's a coach’s job to cater to personal issues of their clients. Not just that, you can also segment your audience by filtering people whom you have worked with in the past and people you haven’t. Once you do that, you can customize the content of your email and it will be more personal to the recipients. A weekly email or a monthly newsletter is of little value if it doesn’t offer the right content to your past and existing clients. You must provide them with something that is of great value to them to win their trust and convert them.

7. Be pro-active

There are many ways by which you can automate various tasks. Marketers and consultants can benefit from tools such as Madmimi and Aweber, which allow you to schedule emails in advance. These tools let you prioritize what should be sent out and when, making it easy to schedule posts well in advance, saving you time in the long run. Email automation is necessary for making your life easier and helps you to become pro-active as a coach. It's a good idea to set aside time weekly, or even daily, to plan all your email marketing, either in the evening or on the weekend.

It doesn’t take more than a few hours each month to plan out your email schedule. Start by writing as many as four emails for your weekly clients and one email for your monthly customer. By hitting ‘send later’ button, you can easily pick the best time you want your email to be sent out. Staying in touch with your clients has never been this easy.

8. Exclusive content

Your subscribers would be happy to get something exclusive each time they open your email. This content should ideally be not available anywhere else, such as your social media accounts or your website. Including unique content in your emails creates a demand for attention. You can also include exclusive offers to your loyal email subscribers, such as a short-term discount on your coaching with a coupon. It can be a video series or private session. Let your potential client feel valued and important and he will be less likely to go away without signing up for something.

9. Offer giveaways

You don’t want to giveaway an entire coaching package, but a session or a discount is a good way to entice potential into purchasing your services. Gifting small items as giveaways are always helpful in retaining old clients as well. It can either be a subscriber-only sale or coupon code that people can redeem by connecting to your social media pages or via your RSS feed.

Final thoughts

Coaches are hypersensitive to people’s needs and feelings. That’s what makes them good at their work. You should reflect how deeply you care for others and how you can add value to their life as a coach. Don't bombard them with unwanted emails filled with sales pitches or endless promos, instead offer juicy content every time you initiate an email marketing campaign to give them true value and show them your expertise.

About Elena Tahora

Elena is a content specialist and social media manager at CSB Group. She runs a personal development coaching class for youths under the age of 18.  She mainly focuses on her energy on business development and marketing. 

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