The Surprising Case Study Of How One Language School Doubled Their Database Of Potential Clients With Just One Event (SCREENSHOTS!)
DISCLAIMER: In the article below we are not using our client’s real name, nor are we sharing any data that might direct false traffic from this article to his actual landing page and webinar. We don’t want to obstruct the results he’s getting from the event and we do not want him to pay for hosting email addresses that aren’t his potential clients.
However, ALL THE DATA PRESENTED BELOW is authentic and represented on ACTUAL SCREENSHOTS from his email marketing tool which he allowed us to use in our communication.
If you’ve ever tried to fill up your classrooms, then you know it’s not something that happens overnight. In fact, a lot of people who try to advertise their classes just with social media ads and lowering their prices never succeed. Sure, sometimes they make progress for a while, such as reaching the targets for the upcoming semester, but eventually, the traffic stops coming in.
That’s the way it used to be for one of our clients (let’s call him William. William is a strong name that suits our client 😉).
William used to rely heavily on Facebook ads and word of mouth to reach new clients. That is until he decided to trust us, that email marketing was the way to create a sustainable flow of students in the upcoming months (please note that we were at the peak of the pandemic at that point). Then things turned around in a big way, as he set the email growing machine in motion.
Here’s his case study, which is sure to inspire you too…
Shortcuts:
William was playing catch-up every time he’d open a new course
William was probably a lot like you…
Every few months the time came to open a new enrollment. He dreaded that time – the uncertainty of his ad results, of whether the existing students will sign up for the next level. The stress of figuring out how and where to find people potentially interested in his courses.
You can bet William had tried all sorts of different solutions, like changing the targeting of his Facebook ads, going into expat Facebook groups, and making sure they know about his offer. But nothing seemed to work in the long run. All of the above are just immediate solutions, that need to be repeated over and over, like a crazy hamster wheel of marketing. Are they effective? Sure, we do not deny that, and we still use them in William’s marketing and sales strategies. But they’re also not long-term strategies.
“Cold leads”, “warm leads” and “hot sales”
Basic marketing tells us that you have three potential types of clients - “cold leads”, “warm leads” and “hot sales”.
Cold leads are the ones William (and probably you) was struggling to gather at every launch. The random expats possibly interested in learning the language. The problem with them is that they convert exceptionally low – they need some time to “warm up” to your offer.
Warm leads are people who have already interacted with your brand: on social media, through your emails, or “word of mouth” clients. They are far more willing to buy, though most of the time they could use some more attention from you. They need some time to get to know you before you’ll ask them to enroll in your classes.
And the hot sales are those who are already reaching out for their credit card. Your previous students, people with whom you’ve been exchanging emails or those who really want to learn the language and your school is an obvious choice for them (usually because of the price or location).
[You can read more about cold, warm and hot sales leads in this article (click here)]
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Change in tactics
When we introduced William to the theory of warming up the contacts before trying to enroll them into courses things changed. He has decided to invest his time and resources into expanding his email base. And that was a very good decision, since the return on investment (ROI) of email marketing can be as high as 4400% and the cost of running the event we’ve proposed was extremely low (it was an online event).
Here’s how William doubled his email list with one event:
Step one: Defining the needs of ideal students
In the initial phase, before creating the marketing plan, we’ve taken a very close look at William’s clients. Together we have prepared a detailed description of the clients he wants to attract and we’ve run a survey among his existing clients to get to know them better.
Even though most of the existing clients have confirmed all the assumptions we’ve made, we came up with a few surprises. It’s crucial for you to survey your current students BEFORE you start planning any further marketing actions, events, etc. They will help you to avoid shooting in the dark and make sure you’ll put your money and effort into actions that will bring amazing results.
[You can read more about creating a client avatar in this article (click here)]
Step two: Running the event
Based on our client avatar we’ve decided to host an online webinar about the job market in his city. That wasn’t the most obvious choice to make for a language school and it was a brave decision for an owner to go down that uncertain path. Which – most certainly – paid off.
To run the webinar William had to find a reliable partner and create the presentation together with them. Our agency was responsible for creating the marketing campaign around the event, including preparing social media posts, ads, and emails.
We’ve started teasing the event in late January, advertising it around the 8th of February. The event took place on the 26th of February. On the screenshot below you can see the significant increase in email subscribers precisely in that period:
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Step three: Setting up an evergreen replay
After the live event was over, we’ve set up a replay website, which is constantly bringing in new warm leads to William’s email list. Periodically we are also running Facebook ads directing cold prospects to our webinar.
As you can see on the screenshot below – the new audience that came from the webinar DID NOT unsubscribe from the email list after receiving over 8 emails (including sales messages) from the school in the span of almost two months.
The webinar brought in total 22 subscribers in 6 weeks AFTER the live event, with only 2 unsubscriptions (that’s less than 1% of total subscribers gained through this webinar!)
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Moreover – we can see that they are indeed warm leads or possibly even hot sales when we look at the three most important numbers in email marketing:
average open rate at 75,5% (when a good result is between 15-25% according to campaignmonitor.com)
average click rate at 26% (when a satisfying result is about 2.5% according to campaignmonitor.com)
which gives William a click to open rate (CTOR) at 34.44% (again – a good CTOR according to campaignmonitor.com is between 20-30%)
Now those are some spectacular results, would you agree? 🤗🥂🍾
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Conclusions
William’s school isn’t special (even though it is very special and relevant to us here at ELC 😉🥰). He doesn’t have some groundbreaking offer or an enormous marketing budget. He is just like you – an owner of an expat language school who’s trying to enroll more students.
The bottom line is that if William can double his chances of selling out his courses in full using the power of one targeted low-cost event, then you can too.
Feeling like you could use some help figuring out what might work for you? Schedule a FREE discovery call and let us have a look at your unique situation!
