How to Leverage the Power of a Coaching Newsletter

Coaches wear many hats, particularly when it comes to running their own businesses. Beyond requiring the knowledge to guide and support clients as they navigate life’s biggest transitions, a coach needs to be an effective business owner who can adequately market and promote both themselves and their services. One challenge that comes with this business development side of the job is making the initial connection with a potential client and nurturing that into a longstanding relationship between coach and client. This is where your marketing toolkit comes into play.

As with so many aspects of being a coach, communication is key. Ensuring that you communicate effectively, consistently and with the correct audience can make or break the success of your business. One strong way to do this is by leveraging the power of an e-newsletter.

An e-newsletter is a digital communication tool that connects with an audience that has opted in to receive news, tips, offerings and updates by email. The cadence, style and voice of your e-newsletter is entirely up to you. Given the extensive range of communication tools at your disposal, we’ve broken down a few key reasons to utilize an e-newsletter for your coaching practice.

Know Your Audience

As a coach, you likely connect with a variety of different groups, but who are your primary target clients? What are their challenges? Do they work in a certain industry? Hold a certain kind of role?

An e-newsletter allows you to develop targeted content about coaching and your area of expertise. By sharing relevant information that applies to the recipient, you increase your chances of having the content read, retained and ultimately accepted to build a rapport that leads to a coaching relationship.

In order to get noticed, consider how you might connect differently with the individuals in your target category if they are ready for a coach now versus just starting to understand what coaching is? By using various email lists or tagging, you can meet each new subscriber exactly where they are in their journey and offer content specific to their needs. In the process, you build trust, demonstrate your value and credibility and guide them toward your shared coaching journey.

Rather than mass-distributing content to a wide array of contacts via social media, online blogs or other mass media, the e-newsletter connects you directly with an audience that you feel confident is the correct group for the information you are providing.

Send Newsletters on a Regular Schedule

When creating an e-newsletter, you have the power to decide on a cadence, or frequency, that works best for you and your audience. Whether you’re trying to share general information with prospective clients on a monthly basis, or sharing tips weekly for current clients, an e-newsletter gives you the control to decide who needs what information and how often they should receive it.

When considering how often to send an e-newsletter, weigh factors such as the time-sensitivity and value of the content you are providing, as well as your capacity to commit to that schedule long-term. E-newsletters range from daily (think news-driven roundups like TheSkimm) to quarterly for less immediate, more in-depth evergreen content. Weekly to monthly is often just right for most audiences.

Use a Clear Call-To-Action

As with any business, the goal of your communications is to build an audience and ultimately bring in new clients. This is where calls to action can be a game-changer.

A call to action is a marketing term that refers to a clear, direct “ask” that you make of an audience toward your business goal. Because e-newsletters have the unique ability to engage an active and focused group of contacts, this audience is likely to be your most eager to complete the action you’re asking for. But, you have to ask!

Whether you drive traffic to sign up for a complimentary coaching session, learn more about services offered, attend a special event, or download additional content to help inform their journey toward coaching, you can feel confident that the most viable candidates for service will click and take the action offered within the body of the email.

Although any link-click holds value, you’ll get the most from your calls to action when you’ve put careful thought into offering something of genuine value to your specific, targeted audience.

Focus your Efforts on Effective Communication, NOT Constant Communication

If you walk away from this article taking only one point with you, let it be this: the highest quality communication that you can have with a potential or current coaching client is one that resonates with their personal needs. Rather than focus your efforts on disseminating constant and generalized updates with everyone on your outreach list, use your time to carefully curate content as if it were being sent as a one-off email to each individual recipient. This not only guarantees that your e-newsletter is of value to the individual, but ensures that communication from your business never becomes an inconvenience and continues to be perceived as useful information that can effectively guide one’s decision to begin, or continue, their coaching journey.

A successful coach will inevitably rely on a number of tools for reaching their clients. Incorporating an e-newsletter into the roster can be of such great benefit to both the coach and client (or prospective client) that it’s a business no-brainer.