MINDBODY Blog

One of the best ways to spread the word about your services and community is to send quality e-newsletters and e-blasts. What is the difference? An e-newsletter is generally longer, contains multiple messages, is sent on a set interval, and is used to create community and sell services. An e-blast is shorter in length, sent as needed, and is used to alert clients of upcoming events, classes, specials, etc..

Did you know that 94% of internet users between the ages of 18-64 send or read email? Over 147 million people across the country use email every day!

An easy way to create compelling email marketing is by using Constant Contact, one of MINDBODY’s premier technology partners. As of May 1, 2011, all MINDBODY clients receive a free Constant Contact account.

What makes an effective email marketing piece?
1. Compelling content: ensure the content you are sharing is information your audience is interested in. Share your expertise, offer discounts/promotions, use facts and client testimonials, give guidance and direction, showcase members of your community, link to articles and blogs your audience would be interested in.
2. Brand them consistently: use your logo, consistent colors, do not make drastic changes.
3. Ensure there is a clear “Call to Action”: you can’t convert a reader into a buyer unless there’s a clear path!
4. Use visuals: include photos of people engaging in your services, include videos of clients giving testimonials or staff members talking about the classes/services they provide.

This is just one online marketing strategy. Want to learn more? Join us at MINDBODY University (MBU) where we discuss these topics in great detail in lecture and hands-on workshops. At each MBU event, you will learn how to transform your business from the ground up with over 30 courses from business theory to software applications.

Visit our website to learn more about our 2012 schedule!

Nicole oversees the sales, marketing, and logistics of MINDBODY University, as well as teaches select courses at each live event. She also presents MBU Webinars on topics such as Online Marketing. Lastly, Nicole hold certifications in both Bikram and YogaWorks method, and have taught at several studios in the Bay Area, Central California, and Maui, Hawai’i.

Depending on how you use it, the MINDBODY waitlist feature can help or hurt your business model. I will run through a few scenarios of how waitlists benefit your business as well as some tips to know when setting/using this feature:

Pro: Limited Equipment = Limited Spaces

The first scenario that calls for waitlists is common to most business owners: limited number of class spaces (like an equipment class). You may have 5 Pilates Reformer machines, for example, and always want to make sure the class is at full capacity. Waitlists facilitate this.  Keeping the waitlist to a reasonable size is also important: for a small class, a cap of 3 in the waitlist is probably wise. However, the number can be adjusted at anytime, so change it according to your class and business needs.

Pro: Gauging Demand for a Class

Waitlists also help determine if expanding a class offering is a good idea. If, for example, your waitlist is nearly the size of the class you’re offering, it’s probably time to open a second class. It’s great for your rapport with clients, too: calling a client on the waitlist to let him/her know you decided to open a new section is sure to impress.

Con: Waitlist Restrictions

The downside to using a waitlist is that clients who end up there may not sign up for another class. This may detract from attendance in other classes. But on the other hand, you may need to reason that maybe this is the only time the client has to attend a class, or maybe that class is the only one the client would like to attend.

Tip: You can manually add clients from the waitlist to a class any time. For instance, if your capacity is 15 people and it is at full capacity with 2 people on the waitlist you can always manually add them if you think the room and teacher can accommodate the additions.

Con: Multi-Day Enrollments

As a trainer, I don’t recommend using waitlists for any multi-day enrollment services. This will only add a client from a waitlist if the enrollment has not already started. One day workshops/seminars are fine.

Note: In all of these scenarios above, MINDBODY has an auto-email to notify clients of their addition to the waitlist, but you would need to enable it since it is not turned on by default.

For any additional information on setting up waitlists, please refer to the Help Suite or tgive our technical support team a call at 877-755-4279.

Jason is a Implementation Coach on the Welcome Team. He grew up in Hawaii and moved to California 3 years ago  for a change. Shortly after moving, he found MINDBODY. Once a construction worker, he is now a teacher of the MINDBODY Software. When not at work, he enjoys doing building projects and enjoying wine country with his wife. He recently added a new member to his family, an adorable puppy.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between a barcode and magnetic stripe is, or why it should matter to you? Did you know that you have a choice between the two when ordering gift cards and membership cards through the MINDBODY ID Solutions Department? When deciding which option to go with, there are a few things you should know to make the best choice for you and your business. First, let’s first clarify an important detail to narrow down the possibilities—key tags, combo packs and direct mailers can only be printed with a barcode on them. Full-sized membership and gift cards can be printed with a barcode or a magnetic stripe (magstripe). For that reason, we will be referring only to gift and membership cards throughout this article. Both barcodes and magnetic stripes function to store data: barcodes store data optically in their varied width and spacing of parallel lines, while magnetic stripes store data magnetically, as their name would suggest. However, the difference between them that is most relevant to MINDBODY clients lies in how they are read and what equipment is needed to use them.  Barcodes are read by scanning them with a barcode scanner . Magstripes are read by swiping them through a magnetic card reader, such as the one you may use to read credit cards.  The main factors you will want to consider when choosing which to print on your gift and membership cards is ease of use, required hardware and overall pricing.

Let’s talk about ease of use. If you’re ordering membership cards, quickly scanning a barcode for every client that walks through the door will prove more efficient than swiping the card through a magnetic reader. To that end, if you plan to set up a self-sign-in station for your clients to utilize their membership cards without assistance from the front desk staff, then scanning a barcode will very likely be an easier action to complete autonomously than swiping a card. (We’ve all been witness to the need for multiple card swipes while in line at the grocery store.) Whatever your planned check-in method, if you’re looking to streamline the process, a barcode is the way to go. Gift cards, on the other hand, may not be run through your system quite as often as membership cards, so whether you’re scanning a barcode or swiping a magstripe, efficiency may not be an issue.

You may also choose a barcode or magstripe for your cards according to what hardware you currently have on hand. If you already have a magnetic credit card reader, you may choose to print a magnetic stripe; if you already have a scanner, you may want a barcode. Whether this is the case, or you will be buying a new piece of hardware to use with your cards, be sure to keep overall pricing in mind.

Let’s break it down. A magnetic card reader costs $100, while a barcode scanner is $275, but it’s important to consider the additional cost of 35 cents per card to print a magnetic stripe (barcodes are included in standard pricing). For an order of 500 cards, you will pay $175 more for magstripes, which makes up for the additional cost of the barcode scanner over the magnetic card reader. So, at that quantity, you’re looking at the same total price overall—you can’t lose with either choice! On the contrary, at card quantities above 500, you’re better off going with the standard barcode, as magstripes will cost above and beyond the cost difference of a barcode scanner. This will save you and your business money, and who doesn’t love that?

No matter which you choose to print on your cards, both a barcode and a magnetic stripe will do the exact same work for you. Think about how you want to run that card through your system, what hardware you already have or will need to buy, etc., to determine which solution works best for you. If you have questions about the ideal choice for your studio, give the ID Solutions Team a call and we’d be happy to help you weigh the options and direct you to the best fit for your business.

When you order any ID Solutions product—including gift cards, membership cards, key tags and more—you can start earning points through the ID Solutions Rewards Program to redeem for up to 25% off of orders down the line! For more questions on barcodes and magnetic stripes or to get an order started, get in touch with the ID Solutions team by:

1)      Visiting our site and requesting a quote here.

2)      Giving Jen, Molly or Gigi a call at 877-755-4279 or 805-465-7727.

3)      Sending an email to cards@mindbodyonline.com.

Molly McFarland has been at MINDBODY since September 2009, taking a small 8-month hiatus to teach English in France. Outside of MINDBODY, Molly enjoys yoga, cooking vegan meals, traveling and training for her first half-marathon. She also loves animals, and lives vicariously through all of her pet-owning friends.

Demandforce is now integrated with MINDBODY’s salon and spa software to automate the outreach tools you use every day, like emails, text messaging, and social media, saving you time and helping you grow your business with guaranteed results. A unique feature included is the tracking and management of online reviews: Demandforce gathers reviews of your business, certifies them by matching reviews to actual visits, and pushes them to new sites to boost your exposure.

Best of all: it’s guaranteed to generate $3 for every $1 you spend on your Demandforce subscription, or the next month is FREE! Visit demandforce.com/mindbody or call 800.210.0355 to learn more.

Karissa is a California native, who found her niche when she joined  MINDBODY marketing team. She is the Online Community and Social Media Ambassador.  You can most likely find her with adorable dog or hanging out at a local winery. She loves to travel and  she is a salsa connoisseur. Post, Tweet, Watch & Comment!

Read below for more detailed suggestions on how to use auto emails to grow your business by working smarter, not harder. All MINDBODY auto emails can be edited by going to Toolbox > Setup > Auto Emails.

Share on Facebook – Booking confirmation auto emails
Encourage clients to share reservations (classes/events) and appointment bookings via Facebook from their schedule in consumer mode.

Depending on how you use the software, there are a few varieties of booking confirmations that you can send to your clients. Specific auto emails to consider adding:

• Appointments:
  • Appointment booking confirmation (single, recurring, and manual)
  • Appointment reminder
• Enrollments/courses/workshops:
  • Enrollment confirmations (standard and payment plan)
  • Course enrollment confirmations (standard and payment plan)
• Classes:
  • Reservation confirmations (single and recurring)
  • Reservation reminder
  • Reservation added from waitlist notification

Here’s an example:
Don’t forget to share your commitment to wellness on Facebook! Do this by clicking on “My info,” then on “My schedule.”

Review on Yelp – Follow-up auto emails
Enable any of our “follow-up” auto emails and, in addition to thanking them for their visit, remind clients to review your business on your Yelp page by providing a direct link in the email body.

Auto emails to consider adding:

• Appointment follow-up
• First visit (appointment and reservation/class)
• First visit anniversary

Suggestion:
We hoped you enjoyed your service yesterday! <a href=””LINK””>Please share your experience by reviewing us on Yelp.</a>

(Replacing LINK above with your Yelp URL will hyperlink the “Please share…” text, like this.)

Invite birthday celebrations at your business – Birthday auto email
The birthday auto email is one of our most commonly used auto emails. It usually goes out 1-7 days before the client’s birthday. While we think that’s a great idea, another way to use this email is to send it out earlier (say, 30 days before their birthday), and include not only your best happy birthday wishes, but also an invite to celebrate by booking a party at your business.

Our suggestion:
We heard someone is celebrating a birthday soon and we’d love to celebrate with you! We’d love for you to spend your special day with us, either with an exclusive birthday class or by hosting your party at the studio. Contact us to learn more about celebrating with us, and see below for a special birthday promo code that can be used for 25% off any one service during your birthday month. Here’s to another fabulous year!

Invite new clients to bring a friend and save – New client welcome auto emails
Jump on this opportunity to welcome a new client to your business, as well as invite them to bring a friend along for their first visit. That way, they get to share the savings, and you get two new clients!

Auto emails to consider adding:

• New client / Welcome auto emails (consumer mode and business mode)

Suggestion:
Bring a friend to your first visit and receive an exclusive 2-for-1 discount on the same service. This offer is only valid for you and your friend’s first visit with us, so don’t miss out on this smokin’ deal!

For more resources on auto emails, check out Help Suite articles on auto emails, auto email descriptions, or a video tutorial.

Currently employee #23, Danielle began as a terrified receptionist trying to figure out how to not hang up on our clients. Since then, she’s worn a lot of hats, including tech support, marketing, and when she’s feeling particularly hip, the occasional fedora. She currently manages the new client training team at MINDBODY, and is constantly learning more about running a successful business from MINDBODY clients.

MINDBODY works with a variety of businesses. Our software serves the needs of spas, yoga studios, CrossFit boxes, and life coaches, to name a few. We understand that the service each one of our clients provides is different and unique. A jiu jitsu instructor would never dream of giving his student a pedicure. However, there is a unifying theme to every business we work with: your job is to improve your customer’s quality of life. Whether you’re helping someone get in the best shape ever or look great for a fateful first date, your work is done best when it’s paired with a positive emotional experience, and the most effective way to meet that emotional need is to interact with your customers on an emotional level.

When you ask for customer feedback, you are sending out a message that says, “We want to know what your experience with us has been.” That message, however, can do so much more: a genuine, personal undertone can instill feelings of security and comfort. It’s the difference between a casual “Hey, how are you?” in passing, and having someone look you in the eye, smile in a way that makes you want to smile back, and ask you how you are. On the other hand, a mechanical feedback loop with minimal personal interaction sends a mixed message: “We want to know what your experience with us has been, but we’re not going to do it in a personal way because it’s not that high a priority.”

How you approach your customers for feedback tacitly communicates the kind of relationship you’d like to have with them, and it sets the stage for them to reciprocate in kind. If they feel that you really care about them as an individual, they’ll be more likely to become emotionally invested in helping you and your business. An emotionally invested customer is more likely to provide thoughtful, constructive feedback, instead of a rant or a useless “You suck.” All it takes is one creative client who cares enough to give you a ground-breaking idea.

Your response to feedback is by far the most important step in the entire process. It is an opportunity to cement customer loyalty in a way that rewards programs or monthly specials can’t. What you do at this point communicates just as much, if not more, than what you say to your client. Making improvements in response to feedback is a great start. It communicates that customer feedback is heard, but only to the customers who provided feedback about improvements made, and only if they notice. It’s not a very personal process.

The best thing to do is to personally thank clients who provided meaningful feedback. It validates their investment and shows that you care about the customer, not just the feedback. Whether it means calling them to say thank you or subtly mentioning a piece of feedback at the end of a class, it lets the customer know that you associate their feedback with them as a person, and that you appreciated what they had to contribute. This is especially important when dealing with negative feedback. Allowing yourself to understand their frustration objectively and emotionally gives you the ability to meet the entire spectrum of their needs, even if it means admitting to a mistake and apologizing. Similarly, recognizing an abusive customer and dealing with him in a manner that attempts to reconcile differences and produce win-win relationships, even if it means taking a stern, level-headed tone with an unreasonably upset customer.

The worst thing you can do in response to feedback is nothing.  Direct customer feedback provides you with opportunity after opportunity to improve the way you connect with your customers. The way you choose to respond to those opportunities is up to you.

Pancho’s role as a Client Care Specialist is to foster win-win relationships with each of our clients. When he’s not at the office, you can find him climbing in the Sierras or browsing the web for cool new music.

There are two services where schedule windows would apply: Classes and Events (Workshops, Retreats, Seminars, etc.) and Appointments. For both services you have “closes” (the time after which your customers can no longer register for the service online) and “opens” (which is the day when online scheduling opens for this service).

For classes, the opens are great to have if you tend to sell a high quantity of “Unlimited” series. If I am a client that has an unlimited class pass, I will schedule myself out for a year and if I show up or not, it won’t matter. Therefore, limiting the amount of days they can schedule ahead will be important if this is your scenario. The “close” time helps to prevent a last-minute sign-up. For example, say there is no one attending your lunchtime yoga class and you plan to cancel it, and then a customer signs in online 10 minutes prior to the start time. It could catch you or your instructors off-guard if you weren’t expecting it. Click on the image below to learn more about Schedule Windows for Classes & Events:

Toolbox> Setup> Class and Event Options

For Appointments, “open” again applies the same as the classes: it allows you to control when your customers can begin booking online. For closes, I always suggest clients putting a certain time in there. This creates a buffer between when a client logs in and the next available appointment. A common “close” time practice is 12 or 24 hours. This almost guarantees no last-minute 8 am appointments will pop up on your schedule for the next day without your knowledge.  Click on the image below to learn more about Schedule Windows for Appointments:

Toolbox> Setup> Appointment Options

Jason is a Implementation Coach on the Welcome Team. He grew up in Hawaii and moved to California 3 years ago  for a change. Shortly after moving, he found MINDBODY. Once a construction worker, he is now a teacher of the MINDBODY Software. When not at work, he enjoys doing building projects and enjoying wine country with his wife. He recently added a new member to his family, an adorable puppy.

Let me take you on a tour of our Customer Service Department at MINDBODY. I’ll show you some of the hippest workspaces you’ve ever seen, we’ll celebrate some birthdays, and I’ll introduce you to some of my favorite co-workers.

Customer Service is near and dear to our hearts because they work so closely with the people we love the most: You, our clients! Our customer service reps are super knowledgeable, understanding the ins and outs of the software and how it can best be leveraged for you and your business. They work on the Customer Service floor, which is a far cry from the cubicle drudgery you’ve seen on TV. It’s intentionally designed to be ergonomically correct, LEED certified, and warmly lit.  Collaborating teammates, birthday celebrations, and bouncing yoga balls keep the floor abuzz, day in and day out.

With 120 members, Customer Service is our largest department, specializing in a range of client needs. Administrative Support Specialists schedule your training calls, answer general questions, and connect you with the right person when you call in. Implementation Coaches train newbies on the software and tailor it to best fit their business needs. Conversion Specialists help you start using the software by pulling in important data, like client lists and sales history. Tech Support Specialists are there for you when you have questions like, “Which report should I use?” or “Should I start selling gift cards online?” And finally, Client Care Specialists are here to (as the name suggests) take care of you! They listen to you and your needs, and do their best to ensure that your relationship with MINDBODY is A-okay! Since you rarely get to see the beautiful faces you’ve spent time working with, take a minute to check out the team below!

Photo taken by: Ashley Grebe

We’re continually delighted to hear that you love working with these reps. The feeling is mutual. I asked a few of them to share what they love most about working with MINDBODY clients. Here’s what they had to say:

“I love that our clients are each so different. They could be calling from California or New York or London or Australia! I love getting to chat with people from all over the world!”     – Lauren Sheehy, Administrative Coordinator

“One of my favorite things about working with our clients is all of the different people I get to talk to. Everyone is so personable and nice, and I usually have fun chatting with the clients that I train.” – Zoe Walker, Tech Support Guru

“I love the fact that what I do makes a huge difference in their lives and prosperity of their business[es].” – Thom Waldman, Client Care Specialist

Customer Service has team members in California, New York, and the United Kingdom, to ensure that someone’s there for you whenever you need help. But when you don’t have time to sit on the phone, we’ve made your life a little easier with our new “Ask Us” Feature. It allows you to quickly contact Customer Service with your questions, and we’ve got a whole team dedicated to responding! Here’s how it works:

Your question will be delivered to someone in Customer Service, and he or she will respond promptly with the info you need. Then, if you have additional questions, you can reply and continue working with the same rep until everything’s resolved! You can even create a login to view a history of questions you’ve sent in. Click here to find out how. If you’d like to find your answer even more quickly, you can try searching the Community Forum and the Help Suite. With these resources constantly being updated by our talented team, it’s very likely that the answer you need is just a few clicks away!

MINDBODY really values promoting from within, and we’re proud to say that 104 employees have been promoted from Tech and Admin Support into other positions at the company. (That’s over a quarter of the entire company!) This means that a large portion of our MINDBODY Team has worked closely with our clients and our software. These employees become valuable assets to other departments as they build on their experiences helping you out. And as a badge of honor, they wear this pin to indicate their time spent in Customer Service, something they can be very proud of.

Have you had an amazing experience with one of these teammates? If so, please respond below! I’d love to hear your story, and I’m sure they would too! And if working in Customer Service at MINDBODY sounds like an awesome career move, check out this job posting for a Technical Support Specialist position.

Beth works on the UX Team making sure that the words in the software are clear, concise, and enjoyable. She hails from the great state of Connecticut, loves singing, and recently took a liking to doing handstands.

The MINDBODY User Experience Research team has been hard at work on our latest project. In the last month we’ve visited 18 clients in California in order to observe our clients’ daily activities and ask questions. The purpose of this research is to get a clearer idea of how our clients use our software, and to find out what we can do to make their daily operations even better.

We returned to the office armed with hours of recorded conversations, notebooks full of observations, and photos of our clients and their businesses. Now we’re getting to work analyzing all of our data!

Here are posters we created with photos and observations of each client.

From this information, we created Personas. Personas represent our users based on similarities and trends in their behavior. We chart our clients’ traits based on a set of factors that are useful to our design process. We consolidate these results into a number of fictional characters based on our users. Our design team uses these Personas to help guide them when designing new features and making improvements to old ones.

The Personas we created based on client visits now adorn many of the walls in our office, so that we make sure to always keep our users in mind!

Marianne is a User Experience Researcher at MINDBODY. She has a background in software development and enjoys geeking out over great design. Recently she’s become addicted to making tasty green smoothies and hitting a spin class after work.

MINDBODY clients are loving their new key tags, gift cards and combo packs! Key tags offer clients the ease of a seamless check-in process; gift cards bring in new clients and help increase revenue (did you know: most people even spend more than the gifted amount!). Combo packs offer business owners and their clients multiple options. For more information on combo pack usage, see our February blog post.

Take a look below at some of our favorite designs from the month, as well as testimonials from a few of these business owners about their new ID Solutions items and the order experience!

“Our clients love having our logo with them on a high quality key tag! We always know what we are going to receive by being able to see a proof before receiving them” -Steve Van Diest,  Athletes Nation

“We found our experience with MINDBODY ID Solutions to be very prompt and professional. We got quick, clear answers to our questions and the information received was easy to follow. Jen was personable and helpful. We look forward to receiving the cards!” Swami Krishnadevananda, Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre

“We absolutely love love love our key tags, and we love the ease of signing clients in for class. Thank you so much!!!” – Tanya Dumaine, Divine Power Yoga

Give your competitors a run for their money by using these tools to brand your business and increase word-of-mouth marketing. And, with Mother’s Day just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to start stocking up on gift cards!

This month you can get key tags and gift cards for one low price. For April only, get 500 key tags and 250 gift cards for $495. Or, bump up to 1000 key tags and 250 gift cards for just $150 more!

Ready to get your order started, or simply have some questions? The ID Solutions Team is here to help! Here’s how to get in touch with us:

1)      Visit our site and request a quote here.

2)      Give Jen, Molly or Gigi a call at 877.755.4279 or 805.465.7727

3)      Send an email to cards@mindbodyonline.com.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

Molly McFarland has been at MINDBODY since September 2009, taking a small 8-month hiatus to teach English in France. Outside of MINDBODY, Molly enjoys yoga, cooking vegan meals, traveling and training for her first half-marathon. She also loves animals, and lives vicariously through all of her pet-owning friends.

You may think that Twitter is for a generation of multi-taskers who are logged into social media 24/7.  And you’d be partially right. But it’s also the perfect tool for people who want to create their own playlist of real-time updates from people they admire and trust.  With Twitter, you get a real-time news feed from people you have hand-chosen to follow.  This information is updated without any effort from the user, which makes it really easy to find links to articles, information, events and more.

The tricky part is getting your clients and prospects to follow you.

How do I get my current customers to value my tweets?

• Share information that your clients wouldn’t otherwise have access to. These people want the latest info about your business and your industry.
• Twitter users expect responses. Answer inquiries on the same day.
• Ask your followers about their interests and preferences. You’ll gain insight about them, and they’ll appreciate that you listened.
• Reward your clients with special offers, deals and discounts. Try Perkville to reward your clients for sharing on Facebook and Twitter.

What tools can I use to better engage on Twitter?

1. Hashtags – People use hashtags (#) before keywords in their tweet to help categorize it and help them show up in Twitter searches.  If you click on the hashtag within a tweet, you will see all other tweets that mentioned the same hashtag. It’s a handy way to foster a discussion about a topic.  Examples: #detox  #bootcamp  #CrossFit #yoga.  Many people use these searches in Twitter, so make sure you’ve got a hashtag if you’re tweeting about a relevant keyword.
2. Trending Topics - On Twitter.com, you can find the trending topics on the Discover tab.  The trends are on the left side of the page. (Note that these do not appear on the Twitter app for smartphones.) Twitter has an algorithm that determines which topics are trending in the location you have selected.  Currently, the example below is showing trends for the United States.  When I change to Los Angeles, the topics change.  To participate in trending topics, just post a tweet including the exact word or phrase as it appears in the Trending Topics list (with the hashtag, if you see one).

3.  HootSuite - This tool makes the process even easier.  It allows you to post to Facebook, Twitter and other social media at one time through their interface.  Additionally, you can schedule posts days, weeks, or even months in advance.  The paid version also pulls the reporting together in one place.

How can you engage new customers with Twitter?

Start with trying to find people that are interested in what you offer. Whether you offer personal training, Spin classes, skin care appointments or haircuts & color, people are out there looking for your services.

1.  Use Twitter’s search to help you find people talking about or looking for the types of services and products you offer.

Search examples:  Spinning, Zumba, Brazilian Wax, ManiPedi, HotYoga

2.  To localize your search, type in the service and the city you are targeting to find out what people are talking about in your area.  Then read through the tweets to find out what people in your area are talking about – and more importantly, join the conversation.

Search examples:  Santa Monica yoga, SoHo fitness, San Francisco salon, Boulder spa

3.  Find articles and blogs that match your criteria and retweet their information, comment on their blog, submit a message or email the blogger to make a new connection.

Try these techniques out and let me know how your Twitter experience is going via @BestPracticesMB.

Jill oversees our Finder and Best Practices Team at MINDBODY.  She is the recipient of the coveted “Most Woo-Hoo at MINDBODY” award,  and her favorite yoga pose is Warrior 2.

The numbers are in, and they’re impressive.  Overall revenue growth from 2010 to 2011 among our clients outperformed the big boys – like the US economy, for example.

But what really stood out is the difference in the overall revenue growth for clients who use MINDBODY’s integrated credit card processing and eCommerce capabilities above and beyond those who use neither.  Those with it saw a staggering 16% overall revenue growth!

Not too shabby. If you are currently not using MINDBODY Processing and want to learn more about the benefits, call (877) 755-4279 or apply online. Click here to learn more.

David  started his journey with MINDBODY as a sales representative in 2010 and quickly found his home with MINDBODY processing team. If you have a question about  processing, he’s your MAP man. Outside the office, you can find David enjoying his time at the beach or wine tasting with family and friends.

In my blog a few weeks ago on target marketing, I promised to go into detail about how to engage your clients in your email marketing, Facebook & Twitter campaigns.

Before you start a campaign, have a specific goal in mind.  For example, you may want to:

• Increase the number of likes on your Facebook Page
• Sell off a product that is being discontinued
• Get current customers to refer a friend
• Entice clients to switch from a 5-class pass to a membership

Whatever your goal is, typically we ultimately want two things:  We want our clients to read what we send and we want them to take action!

Let’s start with objective 1: Get clients to read your emails, tweets and Facebook posts

If we want our clients to engage with us more, it all starts with knowing them a little better.  Enlist the help of client indexes in MINDBODY to track client interests and preferences (see this recent blog post for tips on how to do this).  Begin posting messages that are specifically targeted to clients with those indexes.

For example:

• If you find that many of your clients selected “Bootcamp Interest – Yes,” send an invitation to the next bootcamp to them.
• If you find that many of your customers are women, have a girls’ night out party at your business, so they can bring their girlfriends and get a deal on referring a friend.
• If you find that most of your customers come to your business for only one specific service, invite them to try something different and give them a discount.

If you haven’t already done so, start tracking  the following:

“The best way to tell me about cool stuff is”:  Facebook, Twitter, Email. Require these client indexes in consumer mode or have an easy form they can fill out in your business.  At the end of each month take a look at how many of your clients prefer communication in each category.

“I’m interested in discounts” – Yes/No.  Facebook and twitter are great places to post last-minute deals and promotions.

Now for objective 2: Get clients to take action

“BUY Now. Try it.  Sign Up.  Contact Us.”  We’ve tried all the one-liners, why won’t clients just do it?  Usually we need to take another look at how we are presenting information.  Often when looking back at the initial goal, the call to action is buried somewhere in paragraphs of text.  Remember that customers are looking for simplicity.  Remember those goals above?  We want our clients to be able to take action without even reading the content completely.  We can do this by using imagery that is so simple that customers immediately know what to do and can click through easily.

Goal:  Increase the number of likes on your Facebook Page. Give your customers an image that encourages a click.

Goal: Sell off a product that is being discontinued. Sell your discontinued items as sale items, so your customers are enticed to buy.

Goal:  Get clients to refer a friend. Create button images that clients can click on easily to sign up.

And when you use Contact Forms, keep it simple:

Goal:  Entice clients to switch from a 5-class pass to a membership. Use images that help them understand why it will benefit them.

Try these techniques and let me know if you see an improvement in your open rates and better click-through rates on your calls to action.

What about Twitter, you say?  Stay tuned for Part 2 to find out more on following, followers, lists, favorites, hashtags, and using trends to encourage conversation and engage your customers.

Jill oversees our Finder and Best Practices Team at MINDBODY.  She is the recipient of the coveted “Most Woo-Hoo at MINDBODY” award,  and her favorite yoga pose is Warrior 2.

Our goal is to create simple, intuitive software to help you run your business, but at MINDBODY we’re equally passionate about giving you the support you need. This past winter we opened our support lines to cover all time zones worldwide, and now we’re rolling out a brand new site that will revolutionize the way you communicate with us for help.

Introducing: the new Help Suite! Aside from housing all of the articles and videos you loved from the old Help Suite, here’s what it does:

• Lets you submit a support ticket with questions or issues. When you’re writing a new ticket, our site will try to suggest articles related to the topic you’re writing about to help solve the problem as quickly as possible.
• Keeps a record of all emails, tickets, and calls from you. Your primary business email is connected to your login to the Help Suite, and you’ll have access to an archive of the support we’ve provided your business: a record of what you called for, who you spoke with, and the resolution (in case you need help with a similar issue in the future).
• Lets you share useful content that you’ve found with your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn networks.

Everything in the new help content, training movie, and ticket system is powered by an amazing search algorithm that’s very Google-esque.

You can get there a number of ways:

• Choose an item from the Help Menu inside your MINDBODY Site.
• Type “support.mindbodyonline.com” into your browser.
• Click on the information or movie reel icons at the top of many screens in your software. While the movie reels will still take you directly to training movies, the information icons will produce a list of search results based on your current screen.
• Visit the Support tab on our website.

We want you to know that we’re listening, and that we’ll get back to you soon. Each and every time you submit a support inquiry — be it a phone call, email, or ticket — we’ll follow up with an email response.

Even though you don’t have to log in to ask a question, you already have a login to the new Help Suite. To log in:

1. Locate and click the “Log in” link at the top-right corner of the screen.
2. Select “Help! I don’t know what to enter here!”
3. Enter the email address that we have on file for your business, then click “Submit.”

To read more about using the ticketing system and accessing your account within our new Help Suite, read our FAQs!

Valorie develops content to introduce the benefits and functionality of new features to MINDBODY users, and manages the growth of the online users guide. Originally from sunny San Diego, Valorie enjoys hiking, practicing yoga, listening to talk radio, and traveling.

With the advent of Facebook Timeline for Brands coming into full effect on March 30, it’s a great time to reassess your current social media strategy, refine it, and use it as a vehicle to better connect with your clientele.

What’s most important about the page itself?

Avoid falling into the Field of Dreams mentality: you built it, but that doesn’t mean they will come. Clients need to be nudged into interacting with you. No one thing is going to be compelling to every client, but the more you share, the more you like, the more you keep it going, the more you’ll see in response. If you just leave it be, no one will ever see it.

New cover images for Facebook pages!

What’s changing with the Timeline?

The most immediately obvious change is the cover photo, a chance to creatively display your brand front-and-center. Others are more subtle:

• Company milestones – Like any timeline, Facebook’s allows you to chronicle the important moments in your company’s history. Feel free to have fun with it: Coca-Cola chose to include a letter they received in 1961 asking for the rights to an exclusive franchise on the moon.

Create your company milestones!

• Real-time analytics – Facebook will soon be revamping its Pages Insights system, giving administrators a peek into who they’re reaching, what’s most engaging and what’s performing poorly.
• Direct messaging – Because Facebook interactions sometimes transition from marketing to customer service, the new Timeline allows administrators to have 1-on-1 conversations with users who have posted something.

Pages can now send direct messages!

• No more fan gates – Users are still free to “Like” your page, but they will no longer be prevented from seeing something until they do.

What should you be doing to drive people to it?

Socializing via Facebook calls for the same mindset as socializing anywhere else: first, remember your audience. Beyond that, here are a few guidelines:

• Plan ahead. Know what you’ll post days in advance, and use an automated tool like HootSuite to schedule them.
• Do some research about timing. Business owners, for example, are likely to check their Facebook in the morning. Make sure you’re posting when your clients are likely to be active, so it won’t be buried on their news feed.
• Mix it up: include articles, polls, questions, etc., so there’s something for everyone.
• Run promotions and special offers exclusively on your page. If you’re in a generous mood, a Facebook sweepstakes is a surefire way to drum up excitement and garner new fans. Just be sure to comply with Facebook’s official rules.

How do you decide what posts are worth responding to?

Know the tone and voice of your business. It’s important to remember that social media is sometimes a readily available outlet for a displeased customer, and that written communication can often be more frank or biting than spoken conversation.

If it is appropriate to respond, make your answers more general, because others are reading it. Be proactive and attentive by responding, but it’s better to take the conversation offline or use direct messaging to avoid possible confusion and the prospect of an escalated argument going public.

Are there any privacy settings I should use?

Consider screening profanity by default, so that when a new wall post comes in, ones containing flagged words and phrases (like expletives, hateful words, etc.) are immediately hidden. Also, if multiple people manage your Facebook page, consider designating them all as Administrators to eliminate the need for logging in and out all the time.

Above all, as you’re rethinking your social media efforts, remember this: be remarkable. That doesn’t mean every post has to be excellent; it means it should spur a conversation, beg to be shared, or clamor for commentary.

Doug is the resident copywriter for the MINDBODY Marketing department. As you might have guessed, he loves words. He also loves the color orange.

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It comes as no surprise that finding a healthy work/life balance is tough— finding time to work out, take care of the kids, eat your greens…oh yeah, and put in a full day’s work at the office! I’m sure we can all relate at some level. Which is why our friends at Subaru are hitting the road this spring, heading across the country to celebrate businesses that encourage their employees to embrace a more balanced work/play lifestyle.

The Subaru “Work Play Love” Tour is visiting 50 businesses in the U.S., including Zappos, REI, LIVESTRONG, Google, and MINDBODY.  Their visit last week to our San Luis Obispo office was full of games, prizes, yummy trail mix, and a belly-achingly hilarious photo booth! Subaru even raffled off three vacation days! Thank you, Subaru, for bringing some “fresh air therapy” our way!

Our co-founder and CEO, Rick Stollmeyer, has promoted a work/life balance for everyone at MINDBODY since the company began in 2001. “We’re committed to wellness – in mind, body and spirit. Only by taking care of ourselves can we take the best care of our clients.”

We know your commitment to promoting work/life balance is just as strong. After all, you promote health and wellness to your clients every day. But what about your employees? How do you encourage them to lead healthy, balanced lives?

Share with us by leaving your tips in the comments below. And don’t forget to take a little time out for yourself today!

Karissa is a California native, who found her career passion when she joined  MINDBODY marketing team. She is the Online Community and Social Media Ambassador.  You can most likely find her with adorable dog or hanging out at a local winery. She loves to travel and  she is a salsa connoisseur. Post, Tweet, Watch & Comment!

One of the best places to work in the U.S.A. just got a little bit better. MINDBODY’s Development Team recently moved into a new, state-of-the art workspace, complete with work pods, flat-screen TVs, and walls covered in whiteboard IdeaPaint. Oh, and there’s also a foosball table, a slot car raceway, and an arcade system. We’re excited to show you our hot new pad, so read on to learn more about our ever-evolving workspace.

At MINDBODY, we put a great deal of consideration into the construction of new workspaces because we understand their ability to encourage innovative and market-altering ideas. These six work pods were built to support “SCRUM teams,” which are an integral part of a revolutionary development process we adopted last January. Within these pods, Development (the people that code your software), Quality Assurance (the people that test your software), and Design/UX (the people that make your software easy-to-use and good lookin’) can easily collaborate to produce the highest quality business management software out there.
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Google, Amazon, and MINDBODY all understand how productive (and fun!) whiteboards in the workplace are. With a little whiteboard paint, we were able to transform the walls themselves into a creative canvas of ideas. Whether they’re filled with doodles, feature ideas, or words of encouragement from our CEO, we have no doubt that they’ll continue to spur new ideas that will strengthen our development process well into the future.

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MINDBODYians work hard and play hard. And by “play hard,” we mean “play foosball.” When the lunch bell rings, teammates head to the table on a quest for foosball bragging rights. And for those of us who don’t play, there’s always a homemade arcade system complete with video game classics, such as Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Bros. (We recently moved the arcade system into a dining area so that everyone at MINDBODY could enjoy it!)

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With multiple teams working on multiple projects, it’s exciting to catch a glimpse of what’s being developed across the room. To help keep everyone in the loop, we’ve built a new meeting space where teams mull over new feature ideas while sitting on swanky couches. We’ve also mounted flat-screen TVs that display an array of recent projects, burn-down charts, and exciting new mockups from the Design Team.

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So at this point you might be asking yourself, “How can I get a job at MINDBODY?”  Well, if you’ve got the skills, we’ve got the answer. Check out this page for the most recent MINDBODY career opportunities, and stay tuned! We’re bringing you more blog posts about our office and culture in the upcoming months.

Beth works on the UX Team making sure that the words in the software are clear, concise, and enjoyable. She hails from the great state of Connecticut, loves singing, and recently took a liking to doing handstands.

In 2004, my husband Robb Wolf and I opened the fourth CrossFit affiliate, CrossFit NorCal, in Chico, CA.  Our business has evolved over the past eight years; NorCal Strength & Conditioning has even been named one of the “Top 30 Gyms in America” by Men’s Health.  In the course of growing our gym, I’ve experienced first-hand the profound effect that technology can have on the bottom line.

We implemented MINDBODY in 2007 after three painful years of operating with handwritten class sign-in sheets, and a standalone credit card processing machine.  We had no ability to do recurring billing.  We manually calculated payroll, the number of personal training sessions serviced, and revenue.  We had no integrated reports, no way to easily view client visits or client purchases, and no simple way to calculate trainer pay.  Needless to say, MINDBODY eliminated a number of headaches and improved our bottom line.

In the summer of 2011, Robb and I reconnected with Jon Zimmerman, who we first met in 2003 as the first CrossFit affiliate was forming in Seattle.  Jon (an early Expedia employee and minority owner of CrossFit Seattle) and I recognized we were in a unique position to put together a team that shared a common interest in fitness and a diverse set of backgrounds in small business management, startups, mobile and web technologies, usability and design, and analytics.  We asked Steve Brewer and Travis Isaacs to join us, and formed Skilled Athlete Inc.

We explored a number of concepts including building Facebook for Fitness, but were continually intrigued by the looming impact of social and mobile on small independent businesses like gyms and fitness studios, spas and salons.  We realized that smartphones and tablets could transform these businesses by freeing staff members from the front desk, streamlining day-to-day tasks, and improving customer acquisition and retention.  Suddenly, key tags and bar scanners seemed as antiquated as 8-tracks and VCRs.

We also concluded that partnering with a company like MINDBODY that had a core competency in merchant processing and scheduling tools would allow us to focus on innovation.

Based on our original vision, we are releasing our first mobile tools, one for business owners and their staff, and one for their clients.

The first release of our staff app is focused on areas where mobile tools can have the biggest impact, including attendance tracking, photo capture, e-signatures, and retention management.

• Attendance Tracking.  Ensuring that clients pay for their visits and monitoring attendance for retention management are critical to the success of gyms and similar businesses.  Online registration, key tags, card readers, sign-in sheets, class rosters, and to some extent the front desk itself, were all part of addressing this challenge.   None of them completely solves the problem.  At the end of the day, it still requires a staff member to verify attendance and it is a time-consuming and error-fraught process.  However, a mobile app changes this.  A staff member can easily validate attendance, sign in a 20-person class in under 60 seconds, and address payment issues when they occur.

• Photo Capture. As businesses scale, it becomes increasingly challenging for every staff member to know every client by name.  When you have 25 clients named “Mark” or “Kelly,” sign-in errors and point-of-sale errors become increasingly likely.  Client photos help solve this problem.  The Skilled Athlete staff mobile app takes advantage of the smartphone camera and makes storing client photos simple.  A staff member can take a photo of a client from their phone, and it is automatically synchronized with the client’s MINDBODY profile.

Take a photo and update profiles instantly!

• Electronic Waivers and Contracts. All fitness businesses are faced with the problem of storing waivers.  Clients sign them, a staff member manually enters the pertinent emergency contact information in their MINDBODY profile, and then the waiver is filed.  After a few years in business you have file drawers and file boxes overflowing with waivers. We’ve tackled this problem by partnering with DocuSign to create a seamless, paper-free solution. Simply upload your waiver and contracts and clients can sign with their finger!

  Sign a contract on your iPhone!

• Automated Retention Management. Minimizing attrition is a key challenge in any membership-based business.  Knowing when a client hasn’t been into your gym or studio is easy when your business is small but as membership grows the ability to maintain and preserve client relationships becomes ever more important.  Until now, the best tool available was a last visit report and email campaign.  Our goal with the Skilled Athlete app was to provide a more effective solution, and to make it ridiculously simple for a studio to manage retention.  Using push notification technology we notify staff when a client hasn’t visited your business and make it easy for you to communicate with them directly from your iPhone.

Receive push notifications right to your phone!

What’s Next? We think we’ve just scratched the surface of bringing mobile technology to gyms, studios, salons, and spas.  Our Staff mobile iPhone app is awaiting approval in the App Store, and we plan to follow up with Android later this year.   We are putting the finishing touches on our Client mobile app which will allow clients to book appointments, enroll in classes, track their visit and purchase history, and purchase series and memberships from any smartphone device.

We also have several additional features that we will be rolling out in the upcoming months, including the ability to track skills and skill levels and the ability to push client achievements and personal records to Facebook.

Skilled Athlete is thoroughly excited to partner with MINDBODY and help business owners take advantage of the power of mobile technology.

Nicki is a co-founder and VP of Customer Relations at Skilled Athlete.  She is also the co-owner of NorCal Strength & Conditioning in Chico, CA, which Men’s Health named one of the Top 30 Gyms in America. Nicki is a sought-after fitness business consultant and writes a popular blog at nickivioletti.com.  She resides in Reno, Nevada, with her husband Robb and her infamous cat, Keystone.  Post and Tweet!

As a business owner client retention is a fundamental key to success.  Retention is the percentage of clients who return to your business after their first visit.  At MINDBODY University, we focus a lot on how to retain clients once they walk through your doors and keep them coming back for more. A first time client is worth a lot of  marketing money: how they experience your business for the first time determines whether they will come back and  whether they will refer people to you.

Beverley Murphy, MINDBODY University Marketing Consultant, offered these five great retention strategies:

1. Great pricing

• Create an irresistible Intro Offer
• Upsell clients to an AutoPay/membership arrangement
• Price your services intelligently

2. Offer great customer service and connect with your community
3. Implement an effective and simple sales process
4. Give your clients a great product and a great brand, and watch the results
5. Keep clients motivated, coming back, and referring their friends

What are good retention numbers?

• For class-based businesses, a good target is 30% or higher
• For one-on-one businesses, such as Pilates or personal training, aim for 50% or higher

Want to learn more about retention reporting and strategies? Join us at MINDBODY University (MBU), where we discuss these topics in great detail in lectures and hands-on workshops. At each MBU event, you will learn how to transform your business from the ground up, with over 30 courses covering everything from business theory to software applications.
Visit us online to learn more about our 2012 schedule!

Nicole oversees the sales, marketing, and logistics of MINDBODY University, as well as teaches select courses at each live event. She also presents MBU Webinars on topics such as Online Marketing. Lastly, Nicole hold certifications in both Bikram and YogaWorks method, and have taught at several studios in the Bay Area, Central California, and Maui, Hawai’i.

SpaFinder’s 2012 Wellness Week, set for March 19-25, 2012, promises a great opportunity to get your name out, in a big way. SpaFinder will be driving consumers to participating businesses throughout the week and offering deals designed to bring them right to your door.

Wellness Week motivates people across the country to lead a healthier, happier life by showing them what local fitness, spa and wellness options they have. Signing up puts the power of the campaign—the largest of its kind—behind you.

Once you sign up, add Wellness Week offers to your MINDBODY site by following this step-by-step guide. The goal of Wellness Week echoes our mission at MINDBODY; that’s why we hope you’ll consider participating.

As a MINDBODY client, you’re already listed on SpaFinder, and your services can be booked there, too. But to fully take advantage of all SpaFinder has to offer, consider upgrading your listing. Priority search placement and eligibility to accept SpaFinder gift cards as payment is available, starting at just $10 per month.

Learn more about our partnership, visit our website.  

Jill oversees our Finder and Best Practices Team at MINDBODY.  She is the recipient of the coveted “Most Woo-Hoo at MINDBODY” award,  and her favorite yoga pose is Warrior 2.