There’s a mobile app for just about any business out there nowadays. Why not have one for your program?
Jackrabbit Plus allows our clients to add a mobile app branded specifically for their youth activity center. This app can be found in the App Store and Google Play, making it easy for potential and current clients to find and download the app!
Why should you consider having a mobile app?
Having a mobile app is a great way to represent your brand and get your youth activity center into the hands of customers – literally! But, what is the hype all about?
Our clients love having a mobile app for their youth activity centers. They match the branding of their websites and are super easy for parents to use. The two most popular features for our users include:
1. Push notifications
Smartphone users are accustomed to getting push notifications from the majority of the apps they download. While email marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, push notifications are just as effective – sometimes even more effective. After all, you can easily delete an email without reading it. But a push notification is almost impossible to open without seeing the content. Even if you open it on accident.
Research shows that push notifications can cause a 150% increase in app opens in a matter of 2 days. Since push notifications are effective and easy to send, it is a no-brainer to use them to your benefit. Talk about a win-win!
2. Quick communication
Sometimes things can’t be helped. Whether it is a sudden closing of your youth activity center due to bad weather, health and safety, power outage, etc., you want to get the message out to parents quickly to keep them in the loop.
Having a mobile app allows you to do that efficiently and will have a better reach than sending out an email on such an urgent topic. Most often these situations are out of your control so you can’t plan ahead but having an avenue to effectively reach parents is what matters!
3. Punch cards
Punch cards are great for rewards programs, camps, trials, open gym, and much more! Parents can reload punches from their app and you can track the number of punches redeemed, making virtual punch cards super efficient for you, your staff, and your parents.
Parents are able to purchase punch cards directly from the app. The fee and payment will post directly to the family’s account in Jackrabbit – a seamless process that can boost punch card sales and free up your phone lines and email inbox!
There’s more to come in Jackrabbit’s 20/20 Vision so stay tuned. If you haven’t seen it yet, give it a look!
Take me to the 20/20 Vision
7 pro tips for using push notifications with Jackrabbit Class
As with anything else, you need to know the best way to maximize your investment in your mobile app and leverage push notifications. We’ve put together 7 pro tips from our friends at Mobile Inventor to help you use push notifications to connect with your customers.
1. Send at least one push notification each week
Humans – we are creatures of habit. The more your families are used to hearing from you via push notifications, the more they will take action when you send them out. And ultimately, that is exactly what you want!
At the same time, make sure the content is meaningful so you aren’t sending push notifications just to say you sent them. It is all about balance.
2. Mix up the content of your push notifications
Remember, the primary users of your mobile app are already a part of your program. Push notifications are a great way to connect with your families, in addition to promoting events to them.
Share different types of content with your users so you don’t become white noise. Again, you don’t want to overdo it with too many messages. But, if you find yourself with a week of nothing to send out, schedule a goodwill message as a way different approach to reaching out to your families.
3. Use images in your push notifications
Something about images just really grabs people’s attention. Whether they are scanning their Facebook newsfeed or receiving push notifications from a mobile app – images stick out in a good way.
Images in push notifications greatly influence app users to open the notification when it shows up on their lock screen. Use that to your advantage and add fun graphics to your notifications.
4. Give your push notifications a call to action
With the Jackrabbit Plus mobile app, you can include a call to action in your push notification. You don’t want the app users to just open and read the notification – you want them to do something. This is a great way to increase enrollments for special events like parent’s night out or a new class that you have recently added to the schedule.
You want to make registration and enrollment super easy so include the option to register straight from the push notification – you don’t want to send them on a wild goose chase!
5. Target your push notifications
Some messages are important to specific groups of people. The most important rule in marketing says you should send the right message to the right people at the right time.
You can create groups and direct messages to only the people in that group. And, if you are already in Jackrabbit you can just as easily target a specific group to send a notification to right from your application. Either way, you guaranteed to reach the right audience in a matter of a few clicks!
6. Schedule your push notifications in advance
Plan out your push notifications and schedule them in advance. It’s not something you want to do in a rush. Not sure about you, but I know my rushed work always ends up having some little errors. We want to prevent that.
Closings, holidays, and big events are things you know about well in advance. Go ahead and get those scheduled as far out as 6 months. If that feels like too much of a commitment, you can schedule one month at a time in advance of the month’s first notification going live.
7. Use push notifications regularly for special events
Push notifications are a great way to promote special events. And it is more than alright to send a notification 2 months out and then send reminders every few weeks to catch those that saw the notification and didn’t immediately take action.
Inevitably there are people who see the initial notification, mean to take action, get distracted by something else, and forget to sign up *raises both hands*. A friendly reminder is much appreciated so they don’t miss their chance to sign up!
The power of the Jackrabbit Plus mobile app doesn’t stop with push notifications or punch cards for that matter. The features of the app customized for your youth activity center are robust and user-friendly.
How can you start sending push notifications with Jackrabbit Class?
First things first – you need the industry’s leading cloud solution for class management, Jackrabbit Class. If you aren’t quite there yet, get the full experience of Jackrabbit’s most powerful features with a 30-day free trial.
Sign me up for a 30 day free trial!
If you are already enjoying all that Jackrabbit Class has to offer, you can upgrade to Jackrabbit Plus and start pushing those notifications! Our app team is ready to help you with any questions you have.
Get started with Jackrabbit Plus now!
