Client Communication 101 with Cat Zbar

0:00 Let's go ahead and get started. welcome everyone to our Walla webinar series. for those of you that are new to this experience, we have a webinar once a month. we try to bring you specialists, experts in the industry and in certain aspects of the industry to help you not only with, you know, kind of bigger picture strategy in the business, but also little things that you can take care of today. So, we always try to have things in our content and in these presentations that are actionable and that you can accomplish now if you want to. these are definitely you know, two-way conversations. So, Cat, who I'll be doing an introduction on in just a moment, will be sharing a lot of incredible information with us, but we also want to hear from you. So, please don't be shy. You guys, everybody in here owns a studio and is going through a lot of the same things. So, you know, everybody will appreciate your thoughts, your questions, and your insights. On that note, it is quite a bit easier if you use the Q&A section.

1:07 So, if you hover over the bottom of your Zoom screen, you can just click on Q&A and you'll be able to ask a question or and we'll see it. So, that way we can kind of monitor it and if it's been answered. but we will kick off and turn things over to Cat. So, I'm excited to have you guys meet Cat if you haven't already. We have done one webinar with you before on video content and it is one of my favorites. So, thank you for joining us again. Cat Zbar is the founder of Telmir Consulting and she's been working in this industry for quite a while. we've interacted many times and I've always been drawn to your expertise in marketing and your datadriven business assessments. So, you're really interested in not just sharing ideas and thoughts, but backing it with data. And you guys actually have an agency side of your business as well. So for the people out there that are interested in doing a lot of this work but just don't have the time, the energy, or the staff to help with it, now you've got a team that can do the execution. So Cat, thank you for being with us today. We are honored to have you.

2:22 Thank you so much. such a great introduction, Laura. I'm glad this is being recorded because I can maybe repurpose on some of my social channels. Okay, I'm just sharing my screen here. Laura, I'll ask you to give me a thumbs up. You're good. We can see it. Okay, awesome. Okay, so as I said, that was a great introduction. Thanks so much, Laura, for having me. I'm always really excited at the opportunity of chatting with you and with your community. I know there's a few other folks here as well, so glad to be here. I am based in Toronto for those of you that don't know. And today we will be jumping straight into the DL on the how, the what, and the when. So I'm going to cover what this looks like today. I'm hoping that you'll leave with some clearer direction on how and what you should be sharing with your clients. We will be focusing the majority of the conversation on email communications today, but hopefully this will provide you with an approach that you can apply to other channels.

3:35 and just quickly, I'm going to jump in before the first slide. Part of the reason we decided to do this right now and to bring email communication into the conversation and really highlight it is around our studio insight survey that we executed in Decemberish. So we sent out a survey to a few hundred studios. We had almost 200 responses and one of the interesting things we found is that there isn't as much in time investment and money investment in email communication and marketing through email. that a lot of studios weren't really sure what to do with their lists other than send a newsletter on a monthly basis. So, we immediately thought of CAT when it comes to this because it's such a vital I mean having an email list of engaged people is gold for your business. And we wanted to share insight into what you can do with it. And again, the how, the what, and the when. and keeping people subscribed because that is always key as well.

4:40 I won't interrupt. I'll let you go back in. Oh, that's that's great. And keep interrupting me. so first things first today we're going to be talking about studio best practices. So obviously communing communicating with your clients at all is up there and one of the most important best practices. It allows you to tell your story to build rapport and therefore trust. It enables you to build community with your staff with your clients and allows them to build community connect with each other. And it also lets you keep everyone in the know and engaged, therefore increasing retention and sales. so first things first, you want to make sure that you have a strategy in place for your studio communications and that you have very specific goals for them. So these are some of the most common goals that we see with the studios that we work with. Maybe you will have a different mix, but you definitely want to make sure, as Laura said, that you're maximizing the opportunity within the sub the subscribers that you already have in your mailing list. By definition, they're interested in learning more from you. So today I want to make sure that this isn't the traditional boring webinar and that I actually talk through really specific actionable takeaways that you can then go away and implement and then come back and tell us how they worked. So, we're going to discuss how.

6:06 So, what kinds of channels you should be focusing on, how often you should be sending messages, speaking to the timing and the cadence of them, and also the content, which is sometimes a big hang-up for studio owners. So, what you're saying, why you're saying it, and how you're saying it. So, in terms of the different channels, obviously, different people will identify with different channels. I recently just came to terms with the fact that I hate Facebook personally. I it's very triggering for me. I go on there and I'm seeing all sorts of things happening and it just kind of makes me triggering in the sense that it makes me a bit anxious and it's not it's not pleasant for me. And so I realized, okay, my space is Instagram and that is where I'm going to be engaging with the businesses that I want to be engaging with and that's totally fine. But what does that mean from the business's standpoint? it means that they need to be on Facebook for the Facebook people and Instagram for the Instagram people and so on and so forth. So you'll you want to make sure that you'll you're covering yourself on all fronts. And it's also a nice way to ensure that you're te you're you're telling the same message over and over again to everybody in your audience without it feeling overly repetitive. So what this is called this multi- channelannel approach is an om or omni channel. It's developing a strategy where you're

7:33 mapping out what channels you use. You're making sure that you're reiterating the message in a comprehensive way and that you're understanding why you're on certain platforms. It's typically because you're aligning your customer types and your existing. So, your ideal customer types, which I like to call customer avatars, with your existing customers. There's definitely a myth out there that different channels should be managed separately, and this is absolutely not the case. You want to be looking at everything in a very comprehensive way. What this means in practice is that you might have either you as the studio owner or you might put your studio manager in charge of making sure that everyone is kind of aligned from a content planning perspective. This means that it's pretty important to take the time out whether it's once a month or once every two weeks to take the time to sit down and map it all out. We're seeing now more and more that this raw organic straight from the owner content is doing really well. And as a studio owner, I'm sure you all know you're like, "Oh my god, but I'm so busy. How am I going to find the time to do that?"

8:48 Well, I would say just try and test out different cadences for these meetings to make sure whether it's once a week or once every two weeks. For me personally, since I'm the owner of my our business, and it works really well when I'm speaking directly to our audience on Instagram, I find that once a week works really well for me because it kind of keeps me accountable. On every Monday, I'm like, "Okay, on Tuesday I'm going to talk about this. On Wednesday, we're going to send out an email about that." And making sure that we're repurposing the content along the way. So, separately managing each channel can lead to inconsistent messaging. I don't know, Laura, if you if you have your own approach. For sure. I was going to add a couple things in here. Those of you that are Walla on this call, I would also add to this list are your app announcements. So, app announcements are within your app where you're engaging with your clients and they are probably the most visible to your members. So, something to consider when you're thinking about the omni channel approach. But I've often heard studio owners say, you know, I to your point about organic kind of content coming from the owner or coming from a teacher that people get uncomfortable being on screen or, you know, being the center of attention when it comes to this. And Megan, I saw that you're on this webinar today. Megan

10:12 Kinsey from Motivate Bar actually sent me a note at one point and was like, "Why are you not doing this? you need to spend more time on social media because I went on and didn't see your face in much of your content and then I got to interact with you on Zoom and I was like, "Wow, if I would have seen that on her content, I probably would have bought from them sooner." So, they're having that validation and just remembering that people like you and want to hear from you and are interested in what you have to say. it's not egotistical and it's not you know self-centered to go into it from your angle. So, I don't know, give it a try. Don't you know step out of your comfort zone and see the results. Yeah. And that's that speaks to, you know, opening up about your personal story on Instagram or those kinds of more video channels as well as via email. We have one studio owner who just as an example, she is really tragically suffering and has been for the last two years with her daughter. it's now it's not public, it's it's it's public information now, but her daughter was struggling with an eating disorder and it was really impacting her relationship with her mailing list and with her people because she was hiding something so important that was really impacting her. and she finally came out and shared her story and shared what she's been going through with everybody

11:43 and the response and the support and just how people have been able to connect even deep on a deeper level with why she started the business and what she why she's so dedicated to her yoga practice. It really proves that we're all just humans behind our brands. And sometimes being vulnerable and authentic is what is going to create more authentic and more long lasting connections. So sometimes it's about, you know, how we look. If we're having a bad hair day, we go on we go on stories and we're like, "Oh my god, no." And other times it's because we're scared. And so just getting, you know, seeing that support is going to it's going to pay off in the long term for your community is worth taking the risk for. And we have a quick question, Cat, from Matt. He said he's heard that reals or videos should be actionoriented, doing poses or demos, and shouldn't just have someone talking. he's not a teacher, he's the studio owner. curious if he should do videos of himself talking about studio events without any poses or is that going to be ignored?

12:52 that's a great question. I mean, it really depends on what your audience wants from you and what your audience is accustomed to receiving. I like to switch up the content and alternate with stories and poses so that you're kind of justifying and authenticating, practicing what you preach on both fronts. people definitely want to hear from you straight up, talking, listening to what's going on in the studio other than, you know, poses related. So, I would not hold back also. and maybe we can link the video marketing webinar because I was going to say, yeah, we really dug deep into that. and I have some content ideas further along this presentation that might help you, but I would say definitely do both. And if you are the studio owner and you want to get any kind of message out, don't feel that it needs to be a pose at all. I mean, if anything, if it's different content from what you're used to posting, it will resonate and stick out for people.

13:56 So in terms of the frequency, so how often you're sending messages. This is actually quite an important point that I hope everyone is listening extra carefully on. It's something that a lot of studio owners struggle with because we all know the feeling of getting too many emails from a random website we forgot we signed up for to get that 10% off or what that we never even used that we can't even remember about. So, it does make us overly hesitant to overload our customer base with emails in the fear of being annoying or tedious. Now, here we're talking about newsletters. We're talking about those kinds of scheduled emails that we're sending, email blasts, however you want to call them, that we're sending at specific points in time. The reality is that countless surveys have shown time and time again that your community does want to hear from you. anything. They want to hear more from you because they are involved and engaged by definition with what's going on and they're interested to learn more. So, this kind of helps to maintain mind share with them as you're communicating with them frequently and helps you retain them and keep them interested. So, long story short, they want to hear from you more, not less.

15:12 So, don't be shy and don't hold back. So as a result here we have some highle tips on the ideal frequency for email communication. Now Laura touched on this earlier. We are a business consultancy and a marketing agency for fitness studios which means that we're running the newsletters for studios every week or every two weeks depending on the ideal frequency. And as a result, we've managed over the last three years to accumulate a ton of data on open rates, click-through rates, frequency, cadence, what works and what doesn't. So, separate to the statistics and the data points that you might find on the internet, these are actually statistics that we're pulling from our own studio clients that we're gathering over time. So this is really speaking to the type of businesses that you're managing and the type of people that you're speaking to. So as so in terms of cadence, weekly or bi-weekly, preferably weekly, but at a minimum bi-weekly, that means every two weeks.

16:26 Now, we're hearing from surveys that we're running on behalf of our studios that more than half of their subscribers want to receive more emails. So, they're not feeling like overly bogged down with them. But 38% of them, I mean, not but actually, and 38% of them want more frequent. So, what this does mean, however, is that perhaps they are shorter form emails that are coming in more frequently, giving you quick tips or quick news. For instance, new class added on Tuesdays or Laura is getting married. Congrats to Laura. Things that are, you know, f easy to digest but coming in at a faster rate. Obviously, that's a little bit more work for us, but that does come down to the organization and the content planning that you might be doing at the top of each week or at the One quick thing I was going to throw in there. I receive so many, as I'm sure you do, newsletters from studios. They're usually massive, right? Like, yes, this is this is something that I think our industry started with years and years and years ago was like, okay, once a month we've got to dump everything into one email and send it out. That in and of itself is four emails right there. So, it's actually not more work for you. It's just piecing peacemealing it out.

17:46 Yes. And on that point, in terms of the amount of content you're putting, it does vary whether you should be going for more shorter form or longer form. But what I like to recommend when you are writing your emails inhouse is to write it, step away, and then come back and reread it and see have the goal of your rereading exercise be to make it more concise. It's so easy to write how we to write kind of this stream of consciousness of how we feel and how we think. And I think a lot of it has to do with how we grew up being rewarded at school for writing these long essays. But actually, if you go back and you reread it, it's very easy to remove the we're truly, we're really, I just, all of these words that just add that then make it easier for your clients to digest and you will actually get into a faster flow of writing content on a more frequent basis. Okay. Another great way to kind of test what your ideal frequency is for your own studio, I would say, is to monitor your open rates. So every four weeks, look at your open rates. If you're seeing high open rates, so we like to see that at a minimum of 40%, then it means that you're on track. If you start to increase that and it either lowers or increases that will be your kind of message to either slow it down or increase it. Obviously this is if you have kind of nailed the content ideas and the content approach that we're

19:35 talking about. And then in terms of when and when to send it, weekdays perform best. Usually some studios have great success with a Sunday night email the week ahead. So I would say test everything and kind of do two to three emails in a row of those days and those times. 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. local time. Typically and traditionally engagement good engagement is midm morning or mid-afternoon but we're now seeing evenings having great engagement also it's kind of when people are kicking back and actually absorbing the nonwork related stuff. So test trial and error be open to fail don't forget to repeat and try again regularity. So regularly sending communications will be more important than sending things kind of at random in random bursts. we have a quick question from Matt. He was wondering if you've used chat GPT to develop newsletter content yet. Yeah, great question. So we've started testing it. I think if you can figure out how to absorb the tool into your day-to-day, then all the power to you. There are a few things I would caveat there. However, the first one is you will still need to do that strategic planning process. So, chat GBT or any other AI powered tool is not going to know, you know, what's in your heart and what's in your mind and what your people want to hear about. So, you are going to have to put some thought into what you want it to regurgitate back out. You

21:23 will have to carefully weave through what it does give you because oftentimes it's it can be very off and it can be very obvious that a robot has written it which is now very steadily becoming the largest concern for consumers of robot of AI created content. What that means is people are kind of looking to see if maybe a robot wrote it and they will immediately be put off and discredit it if they feel it has been. So I like I right now based on the field we're in, we're obviously keeping a very close lens on what's going on. I am suggesting that studio owners try to leverage the tool for some really powered SEO keyword style blog content that will help traffic to your site. Of course, you still need to do the strategic planning and the review at the end of it, but I think that's where you're going to save a lot of time because it doesn't need to feel as authentic for it to perform in the way that you want it to. That's kind of my take on it today.

22:39 Will you guys put like an emoji like a thumbs up or a yes in the chat if you've used chat GPT yet for content? I'm just curious how many of you have started. You can use the chat. You don't have to use the Q&A for that. Looks like some of you already. Awesome. Daily. Wow. I love the idea of blogs because you're right. so much of that. You edit a lot. Yeah. Christine says she uses it daily, but she edits a lot. The blogs do so much for your website and for SEO. So, and it's they're not necessarily going to be read every day by your clients. Your emails will. So, that feels like a little less personal or the necessity for the personalization isn't quite as heavy on blogs. Yeah. And like we said, the content when it's short form, which more often than not it will be, it'll take you more time to go to the chat GBT and do all that process than to just write it out yourself.

23:44 C Katrina is wondering if she should put blog content in her newsletter with like a read more link and link out to blogs. Great question. I think if it's linked to what you're saying or if it's strategically going to help you then yes. For instance, you're talking about an upcoming teacher training that you're really excited about. You have never you're a yoga studio and you have never led an inversions only teacher training. Maybe that's where you link to a blog post that talks more about inversions or that gives you more of that theory or that's just kind of helping your point. in those instances, I think it can work really well. Obviously, in that blog post, link to the page on your website where they can read more about your training and sign up or contact you to reach out. Don't forget to always be linking things so that you're also boosting your SEO in that way. So linking from your email to your blog, your blog to that page and back. I think if it's just for the sake of sharing something, maybe if you think that it's too long for the email, I think a lot of times we think that blog posts need to be not about something that's going on in the studio and that they need to be a bit more theor theoretical or academic or something. You know, it could very well be that you have interviewed a client recently and you put the whole interview into a blog post and then you

25:22 call out some highlevel points on the interview. For instance, Laura, she's been with us for 10 years. She just did her hundth class. Did you guys know that Laura is a genius and has a software company? Learn more about it over here. So, obviously an example, but it's just to give you a sense of how you can leverage how you can leverage the blogs in your emails. Good question. I linked out to chat GPT by the way in the Q&A. So, I guess I can put it here in the chat as well. So, for those of you that hadn't heard of it or haven't used it before, it's it's an AI tool that will generate it will blow your mind like you'll go down a rabbit hole for a little bit on it. So, just prepare, give yourself like an hour to be well. but it's it's pretty wild. I mean, it wrote me an offer letter the other day because I was too lazy. Yeah. Or for me, it helped with Google ads. You need to be really specific on character count. So, I tested it out for helping me say what I wanted to say in a specific amount of characters. Some of it were absolute nonsense, but some were good.

26:37 I've heard it's really good for meal planning. So, if you tell it, you know, make me five dinners, low carb, gluten-free, and then it just pulls out some ideas and then you can tell it again. For instance, you can say, "Okay, do that again, but without cauliflower that." well, if you get nothing out of this webinar, now you can meal plan for the next week. Then it can pull you the grocery list for all of the recipes that it linked. It's pretty that is quite helpful. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, I don't enjoy like meal like cooking for my family. So, it's help so it's helpful. But if you don't enjoy writing emails, then you might be able to find a way to Well, talk about a fun email idea for your for your next newsletter, guys. like meal plan something that is healthy and you know fuels you up for classes for the week and send something from chat GPT. Okay. So in terms of messaging so here we're going to cover what to say, how to say it, why you're saying it. I've thrown a few content ideas onto this slide. A lot of people feel like in order to send an email, they need to have something, some new news. They need to talk about only a promotion or only an upcoming event, something that they feel they absolutely need to sell. I think a really important thing to remember is that people want to hear about people. They love stories about your members, about your teachers,

28:22 things that are going on in people's personal lives. celebrating personal events, staying in the know on what's going on in the studio, for instance. You know, if you're doing a an expansion or a new studio or a buildout, keep them involved and engaged by showing them progress pictures, before and afters. Maybe ask them, you know, for their advice. Kind of see how you can absorb them into obviously where it is appropriate, but into the dayto-day so that they feel like they're more of a part of the studio success. Yeah, I something I'll call out and I think everybody on this webinar owns a non-franchise business. So, one of the ways I see independent studios, even if you're a multilocation, but independently owned studios stand out from the, you know, big corporate franchises of the world is by doing things like this. I get so many, you know, weekly, bi-weekly emails from, you know, any of the exponential brands or you know, Orange Theories or F45s or the big brands out there. Almost every single one is selling me something or telling me to book a class. So, there is no story behind it. It's not personal about that franchisee. There's nothing that makes me feel connected to that specific business. And where I see studio businesses, independent studios doing really well is when they absorb you, like you said, Cat, they absorb you into the story. You feel

29:53 when you read about people, you feel something. And when I read content and, you know, perfectly pictured, you know, graphics from you know, core power yoga or whatever it might be. None of that feels like they're speaking to me. It all feels like buy from me. when are you going to come back in and buy from me? And when you can shift your mindset into this you know brand story, progress pictures, your community, that's when it's like, oh, I'm a part of something. They care about me as an individual. I might end up in one of those emails one time. So anyway, yeah, and sharing the good and the bad. I mean, another I don't mean to only have sad stories today, but my husband who goes to this local CrossFit studio, one of the members there has a daughter who has a really sad disease and so they've all come together to raise funds for research for this type of disease and they all wrote her a card and it's so sad, but it's just such a beautiful thing that they can now feel like they're really, you know, more connected and supporting him through it.

31:00 So, it just is it's it would be also a shame to not leverage the fact that we care about each other. question from the group. in a newsletter or when I'm emailing and when I'm prompting folks to purchase an enrollment or register for a class or you know buy a teacher training, is it better to link directly to purchase to the cart or is it better to link them to our website which would then link them out to that? That's a great idea. we like to do both. So the way that we do it is we'll have the call to action button in the email. So, you know, the little button that you can add in, but we also have within the text a link to the page in the text or vice versa because we find that different people will identify with different language and different approaches. So, for instance, and if we have time at the end, I can pull up an example or whoever asked that, email me and I'll send you the example. But it's it's if you're if you'd like more information, click here to learn more.

32:08 Link the learn more to the page. Or if you're ready to take the next step, click the button below to apply. And then that button links you to the application page, for instance. Awesome. Okay, a few content examples. I'm excited to get to this part because I always find that some visual examples help. So here, encourage engagement through user generated storytelling. A lot, you know, we've kind of been talking about this, but don't be shy to ask members of your community of your community whether or not they'd be okay being profiled. More often than not, they'll be honored to do so. This is an example of a studio that sent out a request for people to submit their story. So, you can either do it in person or via email. And this was just like that share my story link. Did it take you to like a Google form or something? That exactly. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Communicate your values and communicate them often. So, we need to we all know we basically need to bang people over the head in order for them to remember anything that we tell them. So, communicating it frequently and in different ways. there's no shortage of opportunities to do this. And again, don't be afraid to do it often.

33:28 Sharing news via regular newsletters. This is an example of a more traditional format. We like to encourage studio owners to personalize them with a note from the owner at the top. When you have this kind of newsletter, it's often nice to, at least, this is kind of a personal preference that we always lean toward is throwing in the more kind of boring housekeeping stuff in there because then people will think, okay, newsletter, it's kind of like the studio news of late cancel, weight list, pricing, updates. They kind of get accustomed to hearing from you in that sense in these kinds of more traditional newsletters. And then you can throw in the fun stuff as you go. Personalizing your email. So switching it up with plain text, no formatting, and creating a new opportunity to engage with your clients so that sometimes, you know, they'll just they'll absorb the content in a different way. in this case, they are they also have the opportunity to link out to more information, but we're not including all the information in the email. So we want to keep it very short. One thing we haven't mentioned is the tone of your email. So making sure that your tone is consistent. This is maybe also linked to the AI conversation.

34:51 Your tone just like your body language is going to is going to help your brand build with that consistency. So, think about your tone being consistent. And in terms of sharing your story and how new clients can participate, this is a slightly different example, but it's and the text might be a little bit small, but in the middle of the email here, we've got we've got this spin studio talking about what their goal is, what their story is, what their mission is. This, I find, is a really nice way to introduce yourself back to someone that's just subscribed. so thinking about, okay, how can I turn this digital transactional exchange of information into what feels like more of a conversation? And we learned how to do this o during COVID, right? We learned in the pandemic how to take touch points that may typically be face toface in person and translate them to something digital digitized. So think about this as you're creating your emails as well.

36:04 Okay, a few more guidelines for email communication. we're talking here about how you're writing and how you're communicating in your emails. We of course have automations, workflows, drip campaigns within the wall of software. There are a few that are native to the platform, but automations are targeting customers in different stages of the journey. Happy to answer questions on that, but it's a little bit different to the guidelines that we're kind of referring to here just as a little kind of disclaimer. So CTA's call to actions, those are the buttons. they're calling us to action. the more specific the call to action, the better. So, for instance, book Tuesdays with Claudia versus book your next class. We find that the more specific the language, the more the better it performs. And also, like I mentioned before, provide multiple opportunities to click through to the same link.

37:07 That's also going to increase our chances of getting them there. So, linking it in the in the actual, copy versus having a specific button. Laura, interrupt me whenever. I know I'm talking a lot. Well, no, one thing I was just going to add in there on the CTAs or actually ask you on the CTAs that specific languaging is really interesting. do you do you find that I guess my question is like reiterating that specific languaging multiple times in multiple buttons or more in the copy? Maybe I didn't understand what you just said there, but like should it be in the content or book with so and so at this time in a button? Yeah. So, when we're talking about the button, the button is more specific than not. it gets more clickth through. So, even though it's gonna make the button really long, that's fine. It works. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. where length comes into play is in the subject line. So, personalizing it wherever possible. So, adding your client's name into the subject line, but making it as short as possible is, better than having a super long one. again, similar to getting specific with subject lines, we want it to be personalized, short, and we want it to be timely. So, did you hear the news or today's class has this or tomorrow we only have three more spots? So, being making giving it a little bit of a sense of urgency in the

38:52 subject lines will encourage people to be interested. I have two examples of two subject lines. One had a 70% open rate and another had a 47% open rate. First name. So, Laura, how does a weekend yoga retreat sound? Had 70% open rate. Oh, wow. is Laura, don't miss this last chance to join the Raz the yoga the Raz yoga retreat this weekend. 47%. Interesting. So, making it shorter. I think also it just has to do with if you're opening it on mobile, there's less space to see the subject line. So, some of it is also determined by like the fact that we only have a specific length of space there, but the shorter, the more thoughtful, the more personalized, the more likely people are going to engage. And how about emojis? Emojis is really brand dependent. If it works with your brand, then go for it. If it doesn't, then you know there's a time and place for it. I like a sporadic use of emojis, but it can really help something pop visually. so, something that, sometimes people recommend is to have an emoji on either side so that it kind of balances out what you're trying to say and that pe people's words go into the middle of it.

40:36 I don't know. It sometimes it works. Sometimes it's a bit farfetched. I don't know. has a quick question for you. is it best to only have one CTA per email or multiples? So, for example, she has three things coming up at the studio. Is it best to have multiple focused emails or better to have the one email with three different CTAs? Good question. Again, it really depends on what your content strategy is. If you're marketing events, you're probably going to want to talk about them more than once. So, I like to have kind of like highlevel what's going on at the studio. These are three upcoming events. And then have an email on each one that will have it alone. maybe those alone emails are segmented to people that may be more inclined to join that event or not. But I would say no problem in having multiple call to action buttons in that type of email. But also in this case, it sounds like you could add a single email per event.

41:40 Yeah. Sometimes what does work is you have three different call to action buttons, but if you're if you're linking out to the same page, then you don't need to have three. So you can find a workaround. So, if you have an events page on your website that lists all the upcoming events, maybe you're doing, you know, you're grouping all the events like learn more about our upcoming spring events here and you're linking them all to that one page. This is a perfect example of testing. So, I would do I would send two emails with both, see which one works best, and then have individual emails as well. More is more. remember. Yeah. okay. Very content, so it isn't all salesy. We've covered that. Personalize your messaging. personalizing it with merge tags is a really easy way to do that. And again, frequency generally equates to higher open rates. clients that have at least two emails a month see significantly higher open rates and then clients who have more irregular communication. And most importantly, we are seeing that clients that are sending out more frequently are seeing a higher uptick in sales. So emails equals more sales. And that's kind of why I love email for studios so much because not only as a as an agency can we prove that there's direct ROI but we can see that communicating more is going to be more helpful for everyone in the long run. It's so interesting, guys,

43:27 because that's like the thing I hear so often is, "I don't want to bug people or people are going to unsubscribe." And you know what? They will unsubscribe if every single time you email them, you're just asking them to buy more. Bye. You know, but as she talked about here, varying the content, making it personal, making it really communitydriven, and you know, keeping it keeping it short enough so you're not overwhelming them every time. It's it equals sales. So, fantastic. Yeah. So, that's the end of the presentation. I don't know if there are more questions or Yeah. Matt was asking merge tag. So, that's just the like first name. You know, how you can have hey, first name or hey, first name, last name, or hey, you know, whatever. That's that's a merge tag. Yeah. And depending on the visuals that you not visuals, depending on the software that you use, you might have access to more merge tags. So, definitely look into that because it helps you personalize more throughout.

44:35 Yeah. Awesome. Okay, perfect. I was just going to say, how can they find you if they have more questions on this? I'll I'll be posting the recording for this in our Facebook group. And I would love if anybody has examples of emails that have performed really well for you or more questions on this after the fact. I would highly recommend that you bring that into the Facebook group so we can have conversations, we can share. just super helpful. And you'll see in there very soon we are going to be releasing a weight list kind of a you know interest list for our marketing suite that we're launching in Walla in the next couple of months. So lots and lots of opportunity to be doing this all under one roof coming very soon. we've we've been so exciting working on this for a while and I cannot wait to unveil to you guys. It's for those of you that dream about marketing software, it is it's the stuff of dreams.

45:38 actually on that note, it looks like somebody has an a question right now. Favorite like email newsletter software. Yeah. So, I definitely have a preference for email software that integrates with your booking software. So, if you're on Walla, that's a great start. there are a few other softwares out there that have some email marketing capabilities. Otherwise from email only my personal favorite is flowes. we use flowes at Telmir. We don't require for what we do super sophisticated workflows. So for sending newsletters, weekly emails, it's great. I recommend it for studio owners as well because it's very cheap. if you if someone has recommended you to join the software, it's only like $19 a month. So, if you're interested, let me know and I'll share my link with you. because works with Zapier with Walla. So, we will feed subscribes and people who come into Wallet into Flowesk for you.

46:46 Perfect. so Flowesk is a personal favorite. I find Mailchimp is giving a little more than what you need and it feels less clunky. Katie, I know that you've been on you're an OG Mailchimp gal, but yes, let me know and I'll tell you about Flowesk. Flowesk I would say is my favorite. Yeah, that's so interesting. I know there are so many out there. There are so many. There's Constant Contact, Loop Spark, Convert Kendrick. We could be here all day, but if you're thinking about a easy to use, beautiful platform that gets your message out easily and allows you to just turn them out, it looks like Yeah, Megan, she just I think if you get a referral code, it's like 20 bucks a month on Flowesk, so might be worth it. re Yeah. So with Walla right now the only newsletter platform that is direct integrated is referr but we have Zapier so you can essentially pick what you'd like really what's what's mo you know what's sent over the data that's sent over is clients subscribes unsubscribes and then there's a list I think in our help center of what data is actually API driven over there so you can you can check that out and support will have all those answers for you too.

48:15 I have we have quite a few studios we're helping with that are with Walla and on referris and I'm happy to show anyone that's interested some examples of what they could look like because you can really beautiful. Yeah. Who somebody who's restarting referris? It's, you know, here's the thing with Referizer. If you're if you need a stop gap right now until we have Walla's product. Absolutely. Because it will, it pulls a ton of data. I mean, you'll be able to create very specific segments, whether it's personality type or you know, women over the age of 50. But they also have a really nice reputation management platform. So, even having it for a couple months, you'll be able to get 60 new Yelp and Google reviews or 100 new Yelp and Google reviews, which is really invaluable. I mean, I almost recommend most studios when they sign on with Walla give Referris a try for a month or two, even just for that. If you do that and send out a couple newsletters, fantastic.

49:18 It's I mean I'd pay 200 bucks for a or 400 bucks or whatever for a newsletter I'm sorry for a newsletter platform that delivers me 100 Google reviews. Right. You can get very creative with it. We've we've been able to. So don't sleep on referris. Oh Christine was able to get her feed dropped down because I only use email and reputation on referris. Love it. Good. So, go negotiate. Wow. Okay, every single person on here, go negotiate with them. Say, I only Good. Way to go, Christine. I like you. I already liked you, but now I like you more. All right. Awesome. when are we expecting Wallace? So, it will be released in Q2 for sure. we will be sharing a lot more. I'll we will have most likely a live demo coming in April. that we'll probably do all either on Facebook live or I'll I'll schedule a webinar. the Facebook link for the Walla group. Love to get on. Yes, absolutely. give me a second. I got to pull that up for you. but for those of you that are, you know, right now needing to send newsletters and aren't or need a better platform for it, Referizer or one of the ones that we mentioned, Flowesk, Mailchimp is absolutely fine. Facebook groups, here we go.

50:54 Wallace Studios and Friends is what it's called. It's also not hard to change email marketing softwares. So, you're better off getting things out now and then switching. It's not it's not a it's not a big lift like migrating softwares or something like that. So, yeah, Hannah, we were planning to integrate with BrandBot and honestly, they went completely dark on us. They said yes, we were all ready to go and we had our development team lined up for it and they went dark on us. It funny enough, I did get an email from them because now we're moving so many people off of BrandBot asking us now to reconsider, but we're what we're building is going to be better is better already and we'll do the things that you needed from BrandBot. So, you won't need it. all of the past wallala webinar recordings, we typically share them, Matt, in our Facebook group after the fact. although the Facebook group wasn't around for all of them, so I will find out if we have them in our support center or not for you, but I'll I'll find a way to get them to you. I'll let you know.

52:10 okay. Awesome. I know we're a little over time, so thank you for having me. Yes, we are so glad you were able to make it. And guys, yes, if this all seems overwhelming that you have to share more content more regularly, Telmir does a fantastic job. Your emails actually, Cat, are some of the ones that I without a doubt open every time. They're always That's such a big compliment coming from you. I feel like you're probably exploding. It is. But I love them and I've I send them to my partner to Doug. I'm always like, "Oh, check out Cats." whatever. So, she knows what she's doing. Wants to give us a follow on Instagram. We post lots of tips and free content on there. So, yes. Awesome. Well, have a great day everyone. Thanks for being here. We'll see you soon. Bye.