The Tutu School gives children an introduction to dance that is nurturing, enchanting, and positive. Our classes start for kids as young as 18 months old. We’re often the first place these children ever have a dance class—let alone any kind of structured activity—so building relationships with their families is a big part of how we get them to feel comfortable with us. We want to create a community for these children, and we knew connecting with their parents through text messaging would be the best way to foster those relationships.
There’s a lot of creative room for using Text Request. It makes things so much easier for our staff, especially when they use features like the templates. We have templates for everything, including an automictic welcome text when people reach out, booking a trial class, and follow ups after classes. We’ll even turn on an autoresponder during recital days, so families know classes aren’t happening.
Our services used to only be based in the studio before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now we’re doing a lot of classes outside and in different locations. We text parents things like last minute weather updates, maps to new locations, and COVID-19 policies. We’ll also send links to YouTube videos of our teachers introducing themselves before every child’s first class, plus livestreams of classes so parents can watch. All of these things create an immediate connection that embeds these families into our studio.
Using Text Request is a no brainer for our studio, and I can’t imagine going back to when we weren’t using it. It cuts down on our registration time, because families get all the information they need in one message. Creating a direct line of communication through text messaging makes us less of a business and more of a community.
