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6 Best Practices to Gain Summer Childcare Enrollments - Without Lifting a Finger

Summer is coming up quickly. If you haven’t already started promoting your summer programs and camps, now is the time. 

Don’t get caught off guard and let families slip through the cracks. Read on to see how you can capture more leads and follow-up with prospective families – without lifting a finger. 

The Importance of Automation Software in the Childcare Industry

63% of companies that use automation software outperform their competitors.  

Parents have an overwhelming number of summer camp or childcare options – which makes promoting your summer programs essential for success. Then, once a family inquires for care, you and your teams must act quickly to keep them engaged and excited about enrollment. 

Workflow automation allows your teams to automatically send and schedule your initial follow-up communications, post-tour messages, summer waitlist engagements, and other marketing emails or texts.

Enroll More Families, Faster with Automation

In the realm of marketing, there’s an age-old communication guideline called ‘The Rule of 7’. The Rule of 7 tells us that a prospective family needs to hear, see, or read about your childcare program an average of seven times to become most likely to enroll their child for care. 

LineLeader by ChildcareCRM found that 5-10 workflow automations is the ideal range to engage and properly guide families through summer enrollment, saving staff more than 40 hours of work every month. Reduce costs and boost summer camp enrollments by automating your advertising and communications. Minimize the number of manual tasks you or your staff need to complete daily. In addition, workflow automation standardizes enrollment, ensuring all families receive the same high-quality experience. 

Don't waste time with manual Excel spreadsheets. Implement a marketing automation CRM and check out how to reduce time-consuming tasks in the Ultimate Guide to Childcare Marketing Automation

automation best practices - guide

Childcare Marketing Automation Guide 

Workflow Automation Best Practices: Gain Summer Childcare Enrollments 

Get more from your marketing with LineLeader’s award-winning CRM marketing automation software. Grow your waitlists and boost enrollment while saving directors up to 10 hours every week. Join more than 4,000 childcare centers that capture more leads, automate marketing, standardize the enrollment journey, digitize the parent experience, and get real-time reporting. 

1. Build Landing Pages Specifically for Your Summer Camp Programs

Prospective families are often discouraged by confusing information. Get your point across clearly with landing pages – a single web page designed for a specific marketing goal. With the right childcare solution to run automation software – you're able to easily build landing pages that encourage summer camp and program enrollment.  

Automatically collect parent contact information from landing pages with web forms for personalized follow-up. 

contact form for summer enrollment - automated

Example: Amazing Kids web form 

2. Launch a Referral Campaign with Currently Enrolled Families. 

It’s tough to fill a new program entirely from scratch, especially when you need to quickly boost summer enrollment. Use workflow automations to launch a referral campaign with your currently enrolled families – to work smarter, not harder. Send enrolled families an automated email or text with a link to your landing page about the program or summer camp that they can share with friends and family.  

Word of mouth marketing is powerful in childcare. Use it to your advantage by automating a referral campaign, so your happily enrolled families can share all the great things about your centers with other parents searching for care.

3. Promote Your Summer Camp Program on Your Facebook Page.  

On average, Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly active users. If you’re not advertising and then quickly following up with your Facebook leads, you’ll miss potential summer enrollments. To combat this and meet parents where they’re at – place the link to your summer camp landing pages on your Facebook page. Create childcare ads about your summer programs. Then, automate follow-up after families inquire through Lead Ads and Facebook Messenger.  

  • Facebook Lead Ads are a targeted way to ensure your marketing message reaches the right parent audience. They include an Instant Form (just like the web form on your landing page!) where parents can submit an initial inquiry about your summer camps or programs, so you can collect their information and reply faster. 

  • Facebook Messenger is a separate app used to communicate directly with families via Facebook. The right childcare automation software integrates with Facebook, so you can easily respond to Facebook Messenger conversations and automate initial follow-up confirmations from Lead Ads – all in one place. Use Facebook to advertise your summer camp, generate more leads, and ultimately, grow your childcare business. 

Childcare Facebook Lead Ad
Example: Conway Childcare Lead Ad 

4.Automate and Organize Follow-Up with a Childcare CRM Solution

Use a combination of email, text, and phone calls when following up with parents. Don’t wait to respond or you may lose out on valuable leads. Take advantage of a childcare CRM that offers two-way communications and telephony so you can keep an automatic record of all your interactions with interested families. Whether it’s an initial inquiry confirmation or a summer camp payment reminder – automate communications and lead organization with a childcare solution to maximize enrollment.

5.Create Drip Campaigns to Keep Parents Engaged Until the Summer Program Start Date

You need to create captivating marketing content so parents don’t disengage with your center before summer comes. Do so with drip campaigns - a series of behavior-based workflows that personalize the enrollment journey for families. They’re unique and based on how parents interact with the content you share. Build drip campaigns with your childcare automation software to consistently engage with families until they start your summer program.  

For example, send summer camp checklists, what to expect, and summer pick up/drop off protocols – practically hands-free. 

email drip campaign

Example drip campaign 

6.Regularly Monitor Your Summer Marketing Campaigns 

If you’re not tracking your marketing campaigns, your efforts will be wasted. Use software that allows you to build a marketing campaign specifically focused on your summer camp enrollment goal. With a childcare-specific CRM, optimize your marketing campaigns and easily report on the ROI (return on investment) of each email, text, or advertising initiative. See where families hear about your childcare business the most. 

Source of families

Source of Families Report 


LineLeader Helps You Boost Summer Camp Enrollment With Marketing Automation

Design beautiful marketing campaigns hands-free to increase summer camp program enrollments. Get more from your marketing while saving directors and teams 10 hours every week with LineLeader. This summer, automate everything from lead capture to reporting—all from one place. 

Interested in Using LineLeader?  

Schedule a quick demo to see how LineLeader works in real-time. Discover how LineLeader saves time with marketing automation.

Schedule a Demo

Currently Using LineLeader? 

See how to boost enrollment in the Ultimate Guide to Childcare Marketing Automation. 

Check Out the Guide

 

Meet The Author

Hope Dasher is a marketing professional with years of SEO content writing and social media strategy experience. Hope had a Bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Dallas in Psychology and Child Development and an emphasis on language. She has extensive knowledge of the childcare system, effective marketing strategies, and copywriting. Hope serves as a Content Specialist for the Marketing team at LineLeader by ChildcareCRM.

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