Coaching to success - tips from a Media Pioneer
Rugby coaching newsletter
Green Star Media has built a substantial international business around providing coaching tips for rugby and soccer coaches. The majority of the coaches are amateurs, and coach for a few years while their own children are playing, although there are some professionals as well.
The business started in 2006 providing sports coaching resources as e-books and in hard copy, with content provided by freelance coaching experts. It now turns over £1.2m, of which 50% is UK, 25% North America, and the balance other English-language territories.
The content from the ebooks is repurposed into free email newsletters, and also has built up into an archive on the main sites www.betterrugbycoaching.com and www.bettersoccercoaching.com. This archive of relevant content attracts an audience via search. The whole purpose of these sites is to collect email addresses for the free newsletter. They now have 250,000 soccer coaches and 80,000 rugby coaches on their email database.
The email list receives frequent marketing emails promoting a range of subscription packages, from £27 for 6 months to £87pa. Green Star test multiple different packages for different segments of their list, and offer some low-cost free trials. They offer some lower priced packages to people who don’t respond to the core subscription marketing. All their marketing emails are long copy, and often contain useful content. Email newsletter recipients can opt out of marketing emails.
Green Star’s conversion rate to paid subs is an impressive 8% - they now have 10,000 active subs. They also sell 10,000 copies one-off books and DVDs every year.
The business is entirely subs driven, with minimal advertising revenue. The rugby business has grown entirely organically, but last year Green Star acquired another football coaching site, applied their subs marketing techniques, and paid back the cost in 6 months.
Andrew Griffiths, MD, is keen to cross-promote with other football and rugby sites through list swaps and affiliate deals. Green Star are currently redesigning their sites to present coaching information in a more bite-size format.
Keys to their success are:
• Repurposing content to build online archive for search
• Providing quality content via newsletters
• Testing multiple subs price points through long copy landing pages
• Marketing one-off books and DVDs to subscribers
Contact: www.greenstarmedia.net
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