All the dance and gymnastics studios are taking on-line enrollment, right? You hear it all the time. But those can be pretty scary words!
Are you considering it anyway? Wondering if it will help you manage your time or gain you anything? There are two benefits to taking on-line enrollment.
The first benefit is also the most obvious. Families will be able to enroll in classes on-line freeing up the time you spend enrolling them at the studio. It’s just a fact of today’s world that more and more customers are finding classes simply by “surfing the internet” to see which dance or gymnastics studio is offering classes close by. Having software that gives you the ability to enroll on-line captures those customers that want to join right then.
The second benefit may not be so obvious. It’s that you can allow families access to their information on-line. Our software allows you to give them access to things like their ledger so that they can easily see how much they owe and what the charges are for. Your families can do things like enter address changes, update student information, and change phone numbers. They can even pay on-line if you want. This can help with a lot of the pure administrative things that you need to do for the family.
I can hear some of your objections already – What if my families pick wrong classes? What if there is a class that I want to restrict? But this might not be as bad as you think.
Ooops! Will there be enrollment in a wrong class? Probably. Let’s face it, someone at some point in time will enroll in a wrong class. However, The Studio Director sends you an e-mail for every on-line enrollment that you receive. If a mistake has been made, you can contact the customer to get them into the right class. Additionally, you can make it so that The Studio Director only shows age appropriate classes to your students. That way, you don’t have someone who is 5 enrolling in a class meant for 8 year old students.
Do Not Enter! Restricted classes? No problem. There are a few ways that you can control enrollment:
- You can define certain classes so that on-line enrollment is not allowed. You can choose to either display or not display the class on-line, but this makes it so that students would need to come into the studio to enroll.
- You can password protect a class so that only students with the password can enroll. This allows you to control enrollment for classes that require an audition by only giving the password to the students who qualify.
- You could set up your classes so students are pre-approved for the class. This way, you set some or all of the enrollment ahead of time. After you have pre-approved the student, you simply send them an e-mail informing the student which classes they can enroll in.
If you are not ready to take on-line enrollment for all your classes, you might try it with your summer classes when enrollment is not as extensive as it is for the rest of the year. Or try it for your holiday camps or workshops. After you see how on-line enrollment goes for these classes, you can open it up for your entire dance/gymnastics schedule.
Adding a link for on-line enrollment is easy and simple with The Studio Director. Give us a call and we can tell you how to access the on-line registration link within the software.
