Every spring, studio owners face the challenge of re-enrolling dancers for the next season. If you are like most, you either rely on the hope that students come back, or you attempt an entirely new enrollment plan. Neither is a reliable strategy!
There’s a more effective way to approach your enrollment process. Let me help you reimagine a more successful system, one that’s easier for your clientele and better for your business.
- Evaluate your existing process
Ask yourself what is and isn’t working about the way you conducted re-enrollment this season. Document the steps of your process if you haven’t already, and evaluate each one. What were the obstacles, for your clients or staff? Is there part of the system that needs to be scrapped entirely, or does it just need a tune up? Perhaps there was an obstacle with class recommendations. How can you remove that obstacle this time around?
- Set realistic goals
Improving the enrollment process starts with setting an achievable goal. Start by looking back on the past three seasons of enrollment. Look at the number of students who re-enrolled year over year; do you notice a pattern of specific dance styles or age groups? Which of these areas need attention? A reasonable benchmark in the industry is to strive for a 10 to 20 percent increase in re-enrollment over last year. For instance, if 40 percent of your preschool students re-enrolled from last year to this year, it would be reasonable to strive for an increase to 50 or 60 percent from this year to next year.
- Make it easy—for you and them
One of the best ways to improve your re-enrollment process is to make it easier for your staff to implement and for your clients to complete. Consider adopting a continuous enrollment model where dancers are automatically re-enrolled each season unless the parent opts out.
Take time to set up tools like Google sheets to organize class recommendations, and mail merge to create streamlined personalization via email. There will likely be a learning curve for your staff at first, but once they become comfortable with the process it will work as a reliable system. Personalization, in any form, lets parents know that their child is seen and valued.
Offer a way for clients to “just say yes” to re-enrollment without having to fill out forms from scratch. See if there are features in your software that may smooth out this piece of the process, or invest in extra payroll hours for your team to help manually migrate client information from this season to next.
- Create a strategic timeline
Parkinson’s Law is the suggestion that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The same principle holds true for your enrollment process! Decision-fatigued consumers will drag their feet if they are given a wide window of time to re-enroll. Think about limiting re-enrollment to a brief period, maybe just a few weeks.
Consider what time in the dance year works best for your dance parents. Will customers commit earlier to secure their preferred class time or an early registration bonus? Does your studio gain the most momentum just before or after the recital when everyone is excited about the amazing show? Do your clients like to keep their options open and prefer to wait until closer to the start date of classes? Anytime can be the “right” time!
Once you’ve decided on the timeline, build hype leading up to the launch. Incentivize re-enrollment with a free giveaway, a raffle entry, or a limited-time discount. Spread the word about the schedule and process so that people are both educated and excited about what’s next. For maximum success, remind your staff of the goals you set in Step 2—help them get excited too!
- Communicate effectively
Studio owners and managers often spend so much time creating the “perfect” plan that we forget the most important part: communication. Communicate the process to your staff well in advance, allowing them to train and prepare. They need the confidence to support what you have reimagined, and to understand the why, the how, and the goals.
Create a communication plan for your clients, too, with a clear vision in look, tone, and feel. Reach them in multiple ways with consistent branding, including email, paper flyers or booklets, texts, signage at the studio, and social media posts and ads. Of course it would be great if clients communicated in our preferred way, but it’s our job to meet them where they are—and remind them to re-enroll until they say no!
These steps will help you take a thoughtful, customer-focused approach to re-enrollment. Remember that enrollment success is an ongoing process, ever-evolving. Once you have a reliable system, continue to make small adjustments each year to improve it, rather than reinventing it! Long-term growth and success is within reach because of this intentional work.
