Your best future-customers are your current and past customers! These folks already know the great programming you offer; getting them to return for more is almost always going to be easier than finding new families (which is also necessary of course!)
Here are some examples of ways that you might want to re-engage with folks who are already familiar with your amazing offerings:
- Send everyone with an upcoming birthday a special discount coupon
- Remind everyone who signed up for your fall semester to sign up for spring
- Encourage everyone who signed up for a free trial to register for the full program (Sawyer actually does this one automatically when you use the free-trial feature!)
And there are an infinite amount of other excuses you can also use to re-engage with families. Get creative!
Remember: it’s not spammy if you’re sending customers information that they might actually want to have. That’s why it’s important to start by defining your audience. (In contrast, you don’t need to message folks who already signed up for spring to tell them to sign up for spring.)
This post will help you identify and message these audiences and others through Sawyer.
Note: Any features marked with an asterisk (*) in this article are only available with a Scale plan subscription. Learn more about our pricing plans.
How to send messages to various audiences
You can message your customers directly through your Sawyer for Business portal, export them into your preferred mail service, or set up an integration that sends new clients to your mail service automatically!
Message clients directly through Sawyer
- Message a specific roster (or waitlist.) You can use this feature to do things like open up additional spots on a waitlist, remind enrolled students to register for next season, etc.
- Build a custom audience and send a message through Custom Reports.* You can use this feature to message everyone who’s ever booked a particular activity, or who’s ever booked summer camp, etc.
Export contacts into your preferred mail service
- Manually
- Export your entire client list from your Sawyer for Business portal and upload it into your mail service (e.g. Mailchimp, Gmail, etc)
- Export some specific segment of your list (e.g. one roster, one semester, or a more specific segment, like summer camp families, via Custom Reports*)
- Automatically
How to identify various audiences through Sawyer
It's important to send the right messages to the right customers. By tailoring your communication to a specific audience, you'll increase your credibility and increase the odds that they'll continue to listen! Here are several examples of different audiences and how to find them in your Sawyer for Business portal.
Currently enrolled customers
You may want to message your current customers about your upcoming offerings so they remember to register (and continue to be your current customers!)
- To find your currently enrolled customers by schedule,
- Go to Schedules
- Find your active schedule(s)
- Click the down arrow next to a schedule name
- Click Semester (or Camp) Actions
- Click Download Report
- Note: This will give you a list of everyone who is registered in the semester; if you sell drop-ins and/or you have folks who have canceled, they will still be included in this report even if the only dates they were booked for are now in the past (if you want to exclude them, you may want to find enrolled customers by future bookings, below)
- To find your currently enrolled customers by future bookings,
- Go to Reports
- Click Custom*
- Click “New Report”
- Say you want a list of bookings (scroll down!)
- Click “Get My Report”
- Edit the datepicker to include only the future
- Note: Each “booking” is one date so children booked for multiple days will appear multiple times–you may want to remove duplicates in an export–but using the “Message” button (top right) will not send multiple emails to the same person through your Sawyer for Business portal
Previously registered customers
You may want to remind previous customers that you still offer great programming!
- First, download all bookings with past dates
- Go to Reports
- Click Custom*
- Click “New Report”
- Say you want a list of bookings (scroll down!)
- Click “Get My Report”
- Edit the datepicker to include only the past
- Click “Export” (top right)
- Then paste the data into a new spreadsheet (using something like Excel or Google Sheets)
- Open the downloaded spreadsheet
- Copy the data from the Member Email column
- Paste the data into a new spreadsheet
- Remove duplicates
- Select the entire column
- Click remove duplicates (under Data in Excel
- Pick “Continue with the current selection” in the popup if applicable
- This will leave you with a list of everyone who has ever booked in the past
- Next, download bookings with future dates
- Repeat the steps you used to download all bookings with past dates above except use the datepicker to only include future bookings
- Now, identify which clients have bookings in the past but not in the future using Vlookup
- Finally, copy or upload that list into your mail service of choice
Anyone who’s booked a certain type of offering
You may want to follow up with customers who have had a specific experience and encourage them to register again for the same type of programming or to try something new!
- Summer Camp
- Go to Reports
- Click Custom*
- Click “New Report”
- Say you want a list of “Members”
- “Who have attended these Schedules” (Note: "Attended" means booked here, whether or not the student was marked present)
- Select all of the relevant schedules
- Click “Get My Report”
- A specific Activity
- Go to Reports
- Click Custom*
- Click “New Report”
- Say you want a list of “Members”
- “Who have attended these Activities” (Note: "Attended" means booked here, whether or not the student was marked present)
- Select the activity
- Click “Get My Report”
- Free trial
Prospects/ new users
You may want to identify contacts who are in your system but who have not yet placed an order (and encourage them to do so!)
- Download your Client List
- Download an Orders Report
- Use Vlookup to compare the lists and identify anyone in your client list who has never placed an order
Customers by child age, upcoming birthday, or any other Form Field response
You may want to promote your parties, offer discounts, or segment an audience based on answers to custom Form Field questions (like "How did you hear about us?")
- You can find child birthdays and form field responses in the following reports:
*only included in scale and legacy plans