How Texting Helped Get This Sports Facility Back in The Game

A global pandemic can throw a wrench into any company’s plans and that’s exactly what happened to Let’s Play Soccer (LPS). 

Let’s Play Soccer is an indoor soccer facility management company. LPS manages more than 20 soccer facility’s across the United States and each facility has their own teams and members. The number of member’s per facility can vary from 500 up to over 2,000. 

Keeping in touch with it’s members was no easy task before Covid-19. So it goes without saying that once the pandemic hit the United States, their communication challenges became even steeper. 

LPS was forced to close it’s facility’s doors and was uncertain when they would be able to reopen.

Amidst this confusion, the facility’s did what they could to attempt to stay in touch with their existing members. The facility’s attempted to reach their members with emails and phone calls, however they were not receiving calls back or responses to their email campaigns. 

In addition to the very low success rate of their attempts to reach their members, it was also very costly to do so. LPS was paying a significant amount in labor hours for their staff to make phone calls and write emails to their members with little to show for it. 

LPS Challenges Breakdown

Let’s Play Soccer was facing several challenges when Cloud Contact AI was brought in to assist.

Customer Retention

Covid-19 caused LPS to close it’s 28 separate facilities. Over the course of the shut down, engaging with their members was very difficult. This led to losses in membership fees.

No Shows & Game Cancellations

One of the unfortunate issue’s LPS was facing was players forgetting their games or failing to arrive. These no-show’s would cause games to be cancelled, and left the members who had arrived unsatisfied.

Staffing Requirements

In order to communicate with all 28 facilities members, staff was attempting to email and call members. These efforts were costing LPS hefty labor costs amid a labor shortage.

Payment Collection

Collecting payment from member’s was difficult. Even with payment options on their website, many members were late on payments.

Let’s look at how CCAI helped LPS get back in the game

LPS began using CCAI’s messaging service to send out billing links to its members and immediately saw an increase in membership payments.

CCAI Solutions Breakdown

Using their existing contact list, LPS launched their initial Text Campaign.

Real Time Communication

From CCAI’s communication platform, they were able to read responses from their members and communicate with them in real time. 

Retain Current  Members

From this initial campaign, LPS saw an incredible 50% response rate from their audience.  These numbers achieved with a few clicks, were a significant increase from any previous email or phone call attempts. 

Labor Relief

This initial text campaign proved how quickly and easily SMS campaigns can be sent out. LPS was able to now reach more of it’s members, in a vastly more effective manner, with a fraction of the staffing required for phone call an email campaigns.

Payment Collection 

LPS began sending out billing links to it’s members who had a balance on their account as well as new members who needed to pay their membership fees. With these easy to use links, they were able to clear scores of unpaid fee’s and collect new payments quickly and easily.

Increase Memberships

Let’s Play Soccer then reached out to some of it’s previous member’s, who had no active membership.

In their text campaign to previous members, LPS inquired if the recipient might be interested in joining a new team for the upcoming season. 

With this simple question sent out via text, LPS managed to establish more than 200 new teams across their facility’s. These staggering number’s contributed to a huge turn around in the post covid world for LPS and their members.