8 tips for holding online yoga and Pilates classes

Yoga and Pilates class­es are grow­ing in every city, through­out the coun­try­side, and even online! For those who are pas­sion­ate about these dis­ci­plines, hold­ing online class­es can be a good spring­board for get­ting start­ed with as lit­tle risk as pos­si­ble. Here are 8 tips for set­ting up online yoga and Pilates class­es with ease.

Sum­ma­ry

1. Get start­ed with your first stu­dents
2. Use an all-in-one reg­is­tra­tion solu­tion
3. Pro­vide an infor­ma­tion form
4. Sched­ule mul­ti­ple ses­sions
5. Share prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion before each class
6. Hold your class­es with the right tool
7. Retain your pas­sion­ate stu­dents
8. Com­mu­ni­cate to attract more stu­dents

1. Get started with your first students

When start­ing a new busi­ness activ­i­ty, it can be tempt­ing to want to attract a large num­ber of poten­tial cus­tomers. But this isn’t the sim­plest route. Instead, it’s best to take it one step at a time, first giv­ing class­es to a small group of peo­ple and increas­ing the num­ber as you gain expe­ri­ence. Remem­ber to per­fect your own prac­tice to ensure your first stu­dents are sat­is­fied and spread aware­ness of your class­es by word of mouth.

To find your very first stu­dents, talk about your yoga and Pilates class­es to your friends and fam­i­ly, as well as pro­fes­sion­al acquain­tances. Dis­cuss your project to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to raise its pro­file and get peo­ple talk­ing.

2. Use an all-in-one registration solution

Are your first stu­dents ready to take your class­es? With Weezevent, man­age their reg­is­tra­tions from A to Z, includ­ing reg­is­tra­tion and pay­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and access con­trol, rev­enue gen­er­at­ed, and more. Adopt pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards from the start!

To make life eas­i­er for your­self and your stu­dents, start by cre­at­ing an event in order to add an online reg­is­tra­tion mod­ule to your web­site, your Weezevent mini-site or your Face­book page/event.

3. Provide an information form

Know­ing your stu­dents well is essen­tial when organ­is­ing yoga and Pilates class­es. A spe­cial bond must be estab­lished with each of them. This even more impor­tant if you’re hold­ing online class­es, as part of the rela­tion­ship is elim­i­nat­ed by the dis­tance. You can rem­e­dy this by per­son­al­is­ing the reg­is­tra­tion form for your yoga and Pilates class­es.

Ask each stu­dent to answer a few ques­tions when they reg­is­ter. This will help you get to know them bet­ter in order to build stronger rela­tion­ships with them, adapt your class­es to their answers and divide them into lev­els.

Here are some exam­ples of ques­tions you could ask:

• Why do you want to prac­tise yoga and Pilates?
• How long have you been prac­tis­ing this dis­ci­pline? How often?
• Do you prac­tise any oth­er phys­i­cal activ­i­ties? If so, which activ­i­ties and how often?
• Do you have any health con­cerns that could restrict your abil­i­ty to prac­tise yoga and Pilates?
• What is your age range?
• Do you have a web­cam? Your teacher may need to cor­rect your pos­tures.

4. Schedule multiple sessions

With Weezevent, you can eas­i­ly pro­pose ses­sions spread across dif­fer­ent days and times. Acti­vate the ses­sion mode for a sin­gle, unique event, apply the desired prices… and that’s it! You can then add/delete/edit ses­sions. No more repet­i­tive, time-con­sum­ing tasks – time to get cre­ative!

5. Share practical information before each class

Before each class, make sure you remind all your stu­dents of every­thing they need to know to ensure the class goes smooth­ly. With Weez­Tar­get, Weezevent’s email and CRM mar­ket­ing tool, you can con­fig­ure an auto­mat­ic sum­ma­ry email to be sent to each attendee 1 hour before each ses­sion, includ­ing the link to attend the class, length of the class, essen­tial mate­r­i­al, etc. Don’t let unfore­seen cir­cum­stances ruin your work!

6. Hold your classes with the right tool

There’s no short­age of video­con­fer­ence solu­tions for broad­cast­ing your yoga ses­sions live, whether free or requir­ing pay­ment. It’s up to you to choose the right solu­tion depend­ing on the unique aspects of your yoga and Pilates class­es. Do you want to be able to see your stu­dents in order to cor­rect their pos­tures dur­ing the ses­sion? Do you want to offer atten­dees the option to view the ses­sion when­ev­er they like? Will a chat be need­ed for dis­cus­sion after the ses­sion? Not all tools offer the same fea­tures, so this is not a choice to be tak­en light­ly. Zoom, YouTube (with a pri­vate link), Face­book (in a pri­vate group), Google Hang­outs… The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less!

7. Retain your passionate students

There’s a well-known say­ing in mar­ket­ing: it’s always eas­i­er to retain cus­tomers than to attract new ones. The same goes for stu­dents attend­ing your class­es. Rather than spend­ing hours on com­mu­ni­ca­tion to try to con­vince strangers to sign up, why not pam­per your pas­sion­ate stu­dents to encour­age them to spend more time attend­ing your class­es? Design themed class­es, pro­pose 30-day chal­lenges or organ­ise exclu­sive ses­sions for the most loy­al stu­dents. This will allow them to sat­is­fy their hunger for learn­ing, and you will be able to vary your sources of income.

With Weez­Tar­get, you can even send unique pro­mo­tion codes to each stu­dent. For instance, if you organ­ise a 30-day chal­lenge, you can offer a 50% dis­count to stu­dents who have already spent a cer­tain amount attend­ing your oth­er class­es. You could also sug­gest that they spon­sor a friend, encour­ag­ing them to attract more and more stu­dents to your class­es.

8. Communicate to attract more students

Every­thing is in place! Stu­dents are sign­ing up and attend­ing your class­es, you’re hold­ing your first ses­sions, you’ve reached cruis­ing speed… but it’s not over yet. Even if you man­age to retain most of your atten­dees, you will still need to attract new ones.

Again thanks to Weez­Tar­get, write your Insta­gram, Twit­ter or Face­book mes­sages and use link track­ing to find out how many peo­ple reg­is­ter for your class­es fol­low­ing a pub­li­ca­tion.

The same applies to your oth­er essen­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel: email! With Weez­Tar­get, cre­ate cam­paigns for your most loy­al stu­dents or get back in touch with those who might have lost inter­est. Offer them more fun ses­sions or gain their atten­tion them with more attrac­tive prices. Be inven­tive – your imag­i­na­tion and flex­i­bil­i­ty are your best allies.

Tip: Cre­ate an Insta­gram account in order to pub­lish exclu­sive, attrac­tive and infor­ma­tive con­tent that will encour­age your fol­low­ers to share your pub­li­ca­tions and reg­is­ter for your class­es.

Is your mat unrolled, your blocks or straps at hand and your web­cam turned on? All you have to do now is launch reg­is­tra­tions for your yoga and Pilates class­es. Dis­cov­er all of our solu­tions’ fea­tures by click­ing on the but­ton below:

Plan­ning class­es