Summer Retention
Great Customer Service = Great Summer Retention
Here are some important steps to insure that your students stay active in their training over the summer months.
1. Track Attendance - Never has attendance been so easy for us to track than with the software from StudioPro that allows our students to simply scan their membership cards and lets us print a non-attendance report complete with all the contact information. So, make sure that you are making those missing in action calls (MIAs) on Wednesday nights for the students that have not yet been there for the week. This will let them know that they are not being overlooked, that their attendance is important, you notice when they are not there, and you care.
2. Apply our attendance letter systems or have StudioPro automatically send a “We miss you” post card for every student that misses 7 days in a row. This a great way to ensure that a student does not fall through the crack of the back door. So if my instructors can not reach a student by phone, they will automatically receive a reminder in the mail. The best thing is I did not even have to think of it! You want to talk about putting easy, efficient systems in your business, there you go!
3. Have social function that brings your students together like a big family. Students stay longer if they have a social network to be a part of. Some ideas for the summer would be a pool party or a school picnic.
4. Have guest instructors’ visit to teach your students. This makes the students feel part of something bigger than just your school.
5. Have special seminars that bring excitement to your school. Offer competition forms or weapons, sparring clinics, self defense, ground fighting, a kid smart seminar or a gun defense seminar for adults. We want to continually remind our students and build a reputation in the community that our school is the place to be!
6. For the summer, let the students wear PMA shorts and t-shirt. Not only will this increase sale, but will be different and exciting for the students.
7. Keep a vacation log of all your families and the dates that they are traveling for vacations this summer. Make sure that when they get back, they receive a welcome back call, and find out when the next day is that they plan to attend. It does not take but a couple of missed weeks for a student to lose interest.
8. Make sure that all students get the opportunity to make up missed stripe tests. Again, when a student misses a stripe test they may feel that they are behind the other students and become disinterested in continuing.
9. Renew all your students whose memberships end in the months of June, July, and August ASAP. We do not want to take a chance that they will want a summer break do we?
10. Have a killer VIP referral contest to build excitement for your students and bring in some new ones!
11. Understand that your classes have to be the most exciting part of a student’s day. That is not too difficult when they are sitting in a class room all day. But now you are competing with all kinds of fun summer activities. So, get creative and have some fun!
12. Schedule morning classes for the summer. I always held classes on Mondays and Thursday for 5-7 year olds at 10:00 am and 10:30 am for 8 to 12 year olds.