In today’s competitive and online review-driven market, it’s important for child care and preschool owners to stay current on how what they’re doing to drive enrollments compares to industry enrollment trends. Whether your school is prospering or is struggling to fill empty spaces, forfeiting on keeping tabs on what enrollment tools your competition is using can be a significant determinant in whether or not your school will persevere and be victorious amongst the rest.
As a courtesy to child care business owners and their customers, each year ChildCareCRM releases their annual Building Blocks for Success report, which provides data that is intended to give insights into industry trends (specifically CRM usage trends) and help owners compare how their business is performing against those trends.
Last year’s stats are in, and ChildCareCRM is happy to share their 2020 report and provide insights that will help owners drive growth in their schools. This report contains data from their system across hundreds of organizations, thousands of locations, and five countries. In particular, it’s data from users like you and your peers who are working on best practices and embracing technology to create and maintain efficient and effective operations.
Let’s explore a few of the statistically significant enrollment success that our report reveled so that you can focus on growing your child care center…
Maintaining a Strong Online Presence
A strong online presence is essential for generating new leads and opportunities for your childcare center. Now more than ever before, today’s parents are looking to platforms like Google, Facebook, and child care listing sites for information about child care providers near them. Over the past year, ChildcareCRM’s users received 53% of their leads from web sources. This number continues to increase year over year while phone leads and walk-ins steadily decline.
If you’re interested in building up your own online presence, consider focusing on a website where parents can see your classroom availability, hours of operation, and information regarding your center’s programs. If you haven’t already, take advantage of Google’s free business listing where you can create a simple profile that helps you appear more often in search results and on maps. Finally, make sure your center has a profile on today’s leading child care listing platforms such as Winnie.
Completing Tours Promptly
Complete tours promptly to keep your prospective families engaged and excited about enrollment. When parents are seeking care providers and they contact you, it is very likely that your organization is among the lucky few being strongly considered for their child(ren)’s care.
According to ChildcareCRM’s 2020 Building Blocks for Success report, top performing lead converters schedule 50% more tours within 24 hours after a parent/guardian shows an initial interest. This indicates that the faster you can complete a tour with prospective families, the better the chance of registering or waitlisting that family.
Using Texting to Your Advantage
It’s estimated that 60% of millennials prefer to communicate with businesses via text messaging. Millennials feel text messaging is less invasive than phone calls and provides a more personal touch than other forms of communication, such as email. Childcare centers that use text to communicate see higher and faster response rates. Compared to email, open rates for texts are as high as 98%, and on average it only takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text.
Another important part of text messaging’s appeal to the Millennial audience is largely based on convenience, speed and flexibility. Text messages such as tour scheduling reminders and payment reminders are a great example of this. Almost half of the millennials surveyed by Chief Marketer —48%—said they prefer to receive notices about payment information through text, while more than half preferred to receive appointment reminders through their mobile device.
Integrating Your Tech Stack
Another important part of text messaging’s appeal to the Millennial audience is largely based on convenience, speed and flexibility. Text messages such as tour scheduling reminders and payment reminders are a great example of this. Almost half of the millennials surveyed by Chief Marketer —48%—said they prefer to receive notices about payment information through text, while more than half preferred to receive appointment reminders through their mobile device.
For more information about current child care industry trends or to see how you compare to leading child care centers, download the full 2020 Building Blocks for Success report.
