Text Request Talks

4 Fitness and Wellness Franchise Tips with WellBiz Brands’ Kelli Schroeder

Business texting can attract more clients to your fitness and wellness franchise, you just need the right tactics in place.

Here’s how business texting can help you cut out unnecessary phone calls, book more services and classes, and stay in better contact with your team, so you can save time and increase revenue.

This article takes insights from our Text Request Talks podcast with Kelli Schroeder and further distills it into advice specific to texting for fitness and wellness franchises. Schroeder is the VP of Franchise Development for WellBiz Brands.

Watch the full interview on YouTube.

1. Augment human interactions through text.

Schroeder says that while your fitness and wellness franchise can’t replace human interactions (AKA phone calls and standing in line), your goal should be to make those interactions more efficient. Text messaging is a great way to give clients the power to reach an actual person.

So how do you let clients know that they can text your franchise?

Advertise the call-to-action “Text us!” in places like your:

Website (both corporate and individual locations)
Social media
Digital and physical ads
Brick-and-mortar locations

For your website in particular, SMS Chat is a widget clients can use to start text conversations with you directly from your homepage. This gives clients the power to immediately reach an actual human being, and improves your overall customer experience. The widget can even be customized to route to all your different locations, so clients can reach the one that is closest to them.

Schroeder argues that while you don’t want to completely replace human interactions, you do want to augment them. Business texting is the perfect way to speed up your communications.

2. Remove barriers to scheduling with texts.

Schroeder believes that your clients’ experience should be at the center of all your strategies. Your ultimate goal is to make things seamless for them, so they keep coming back and refer their friends to you. Part of providing seamless experiences is making sure it’s as easy as possible for clients to schedule with you—and texting can help.

77% of consumers want to initiate texts to businesses about scheduling, and 87% of consumers want to receive SMS scheduling notifications from businesses. It’s what’s easiest for you and them.

All you have to do is text clients a link to book their class or service, and let them choose the slot themselves. It saves your staff the hassle of making the client pick something over the phone or at a front desk, plus the client can take the time to make sure the slot works for them. Then you just text the link again when it’s time for the client to reschedule.

SMS appointment confirmation texts have been shown to cut no-show rates by 50%, because people are more likely to follow through on something they directly commit to. That’s why a good confirmation text will ask the client to say, “yes,” like.

“Text YES to confirm your appointment slot on June 10th at 11:00 am.”

Keywords can help move this process along. For example, the keyword “YES” could trigger a response with everything the client needs to know about the appointment, while the keyword “NO” could help you track the clients who didn’t reschedule so you can personally follow up with them.

The easier it is for clients to book services and classes with you, the more likely they are to keep doing business with you and refer their friends. Our ultimate guide to appointment scheduling by text can help you get started.

3. Text instant updates and resources to your franchisees.

Schroeder says that leadership is how you show up when important things need to be communicated—which is ideally fast and thorough. While there’s a massive amount of people working together to keep your wellness and fitness franchise running smoothly, mass texts give you the power to reach all of them at once.

Like BCC email, any replies to mass texts become one-on-one conversations that can be used to further develop your franchisees or answer questions. This is useful for:

Sharing updates that affect your entire franchise
Linking to training and developmental opportunities
Highlighting locations that are performing well
Requesting numbers and reports
Exchanging marketing resources that may help locations attract more clients

In addition to keeping your entire brand on the same page, Schroeder stresses that it’s also crucial to keep them learning as well. Mass texts are the perfect way to get valuable resources and training opportunities to your franchisees.

4. Keep your marketing centralized with SMS promotions.

Schroeder emphasizes that centralized marketing keeps your branding consistent and helps your franchisees stay focused on selling. SMS promotions can become a part of your franchise’s corporate marketing to:

Reach your entire customer base instantly to save more time
Create a more engaged audience
Drive sales, or whatever other actions you want customers to take

More people see and respond to text messages faster than any other channel. That means SMS promotions and marketing is the #1 way to get your audience's attention right now.

An SMS service like Text Request can help you manage your contacts and send text marketing messages, especially when you:

Compile a list of op-ins, or contacts who want to be messaged
Determine what types of messages you want to send (example in the image below)
Create a schedule or game plan for when to send them
Send your SMS campaigns
Implement ways to track performance

Our complete SMS marketing guide covers all this and more.

How Else Can Text Messaging Help Your Wellness and Fitness Franchise Grow?

The above are just a few quick tips—but we have an entire in-depth fitness text messaging playbook for those who want to build their SMS strategies from the ground up.

Our business texting software has helped hundreds of fitness and wellness businesses, and we’re ready to help yours next!