Strategic Partnerships

Strategic partnerships are alliances formed with “like-minded” organizations that have assets that mutually benefit one another. Organizations can be educational facilities or businesses. There are numerous categories of organizations we feel are well suited to support our vision of bringing yoga to the world and numerous types of partner relationships that can be formed.

Host an Info Session at a Like Minded Organization

A great way to extend reach to other students beyond your studio is to team up with an organization in your community that is interested in teacher trainings. In some markets, this may be another yoga studio that doesn’t have their own training. It could be a massage school or chiropractic school that wants to offer a dual certification*.  Or an organization that is not ready to offer a dual certification but recognizes the value of its students/clients taking the training. Talk to this partner about the possibility of them hosting a “Meet the Trainer” session.

  • *Dual Certification or becoming a Dual Practitioner – Dual certification is a long-term strategy and one worth researching. For example, there may be a massage school that wishes to offer a massage & yoga certification program for a value-based price to do the programs simultaneously. There is notable research available supporting how being a practitioner of more than one healing modality supports clients tremendously. If the organization is not ready for a dual certification program, they can still offer our training to their students. Look for articles that support the relationship you are hoping to build and use the “Top Ten” lists (below) as additional support when meeting with an organization to show them the value of this relationship. If they host an info session, we can offer a contest to those attendees who express interest for one 50% discount.
  • CE Credits – YogaWorks has also applied with the Board of Nursing for example to get our YogaWorks Teacher Training accepted so that Nurses can take a yoga teacher training as Continuing Education and satisfy their annual credits requirement.

Host Our Marketing Collateral in Exchange for a Free Week of Yoga

Often times our partnerships involve asking local businesses to host marketing collateral so we can promote to their clientele. In exchange, you would offer their employees a free week of yoga to get familiar with your offerings and your community.

These relationships are generally part of what we call “grassroots efforts” and are managed by the ITA.  The ITA calls local businesses who have clientele that are more inclined toward teacher training to set these partnerships up.

Some examples include: acupuncturists, chiropractors, dance instructors, doulas, educators, fitness professionals, massage therapists, nurses, physical therapists, physicians, Pilates instructors and psychologists.

Host Our Marketing Collateral in Exchange for a 50% Scholarship Contest for Company Employees or University Students

To engage our partners and generate more exposure for our training, we have developed a fun and valuable idea – a contest for one 50% scholarship to our training program! The applicants enter by writing an essay in under 250 words, “Why they want to take a yoga teacher training”. The best essay wins. This successfully gets employees engaged, considering a training by virtue of writing the essay. Even if they don’t win, the training seed has been planted. It also gets the HR Department or Manager excited about supporting employees with a wellness benefit that he/she knows is beneficial for employee health and productivity. It could also lead to other partner events.

You can download a sample letter here:

EmployeePerkProgram50Scholarship.docx-2

University Student Scholarship Program -Template

One of our studio partners recently teamed up with a Massage School with the 50% contest and offered the students the following questions to answer on their essays:

  • Why you want to deepen your yoga practice through a teacher training?
  • Why you want to teach yoga to others?
  • How would teacher training help you in your massage career?

Here is the flyer that YOGA THAT in Miami designed and handed out at the Massage School.

educating hands flyer(1)

As a Strategic Corporate Partner, Host Our Marketing Collateral in Exchange for a 20% Discount on the full price of Teacher Trainings

Another category of partnership is businesses that host our marketing collateral in exchange for a 20% discount off the full price of our teacher trainings for their employees.

We don’t want to offer this discount to just any wellness business because we need full paying people in our trainings too. We only offer this to select businesses that we feel are highly targeted knowing that this discount program will give just enough of a push to see real translatable sales.

These relationships are best developed and managed by either the studio owner, teacher training marketing manager at YogaWorks or the program advisor since often times these relationships result in sales and conversations with higher level executives.

Examples of businesses we extended this offer to are usually companies we have Corporate Memberships with who already get discounts for our classes, such as:

Athleta, Crunch Fitness, lululemon athletica, Lucy, Manduka, REI, Spectrum Gyms, Sports Authority and Whole Foods

A highly successful example is lululemon athletica. Many employees of lululemon work there because of their affinity toward yoga and running. Outside of retail, they participate in these activities regularly and get free yoga as an employee perk, so we know they take regular yoga classes.  As a result of their 30% discount, over a 12-month period in the Los Angeles market alone, we had more than 6 lululemon employees enroll in our teacher trainings.

Sample Letter

Strategic partnerships are generally most successful when you have a direct relationship with someone within the company or can tap your own personal network for leads. We suggest you sit down with your ITA, open your contact list, make a community outreach game plan and start making phone calls.

Many types of relationships can develop out of this, so be creative! Our conversations have resulted in hosting events, email trades, sponsoring meetings and offering yoga classes as part of an event.

You can download this template and customize it for your relationships.

NEW YW_Parnter_CorpPartnerLtr_061313

Crunch Gym Emplyees

Already certified with a different 200-Hour training? Receive 50% OFF

First time taking a training?  Receive 30% OFF

MENTION PROMO CODE: CRUNCH

Leave a Reply