Jackrabbit Tips & Tricks

Get Communications Ready For Emergency Closures

How do you communicate with your parents when the studio has to close from something unexpected – like snow? The winter season is just around the corner, so it’s a great time to set your business up for success. However, it is important to have a communication plan ready at all times of the year. You never know what could happen.

When you have some time to set aside, there are a few things we’d recommend you do to prepare for this emergency communication. By setting these things up now, you will be ready to hit send whenever you need to and not have to scramble.

1. Set up an email template. Saving a template will make it easy for you to send an email to all of your customers and staff anytime – and you can be anywhere! Make a few different templates depending on what type of closure you may want to announce. Check out the preloaded templates you have in Jackrabbit – you can customize these and save them with your own text and information.

Also, make sure your customers have entered their correct email addresses in Jackrabbit. They can check their addresses in the Parent Portal and you can allow them to edit the email address too. You can also run a report to see who doesn’t have an email on file – you’ll go to Families > Advanced Search > No email on file.

2. Set up texting. Send a text to a group of customers or staff with our new mass texting feature. It works similarly to emailing families, but you’ll want to set your account up and get familiar with the process before you have an emergency to text folks about. Learn more about texting here.

While you’re asking parents to confirm their email address is correct, have them double check their phone number as well. Make sure you get their cell phone numbers and that they’re entered in the correct format.  Run the Telephone Listing Report to see who does not have a cell phone number listed in their account. Sort on the Cell Phone column to bring the empty fields to the top

3. Write up a ‘Closure Policy’ and share it on your website. Some verbiage like this will be helpful for your customers to know what to do when your business is closed: Studio closings will be posted on our website, Facebook and when possible, you will receive a text or email.

Example from Kathy Blake Dance Studios:

kathy blake

 

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