Pilates Studio FAQ
SMS marketing for Pilates studios
Yes. StudioGrowth handles SMS marketing for Pilates studios, and most of it happens without you lifting a finger. Waitlist offers and cancellations send themselves. Your clients can text you back. You can message everyone in a class at once, and you pay no markup on any of it.
The texts that send themselves
Most of your texting should not be a job you do. It should be something that just happens.
The important ones are the messages a client needs straight away. A spot opens up in a class they were waiting for. A class gets cancelled. Those go out the moment it happens, whether you are teaching, driving or asleep.
You decide which ones are switched on. Every message the system can send has a switch, and you choose what your studio uses. If you do not want something going out, turn it off and it stops.
A spot opening at seven in the morning for a nine o'clock class is worth almost nothing in an email. Nobody reads it until lunchtime, by which point the class has run with an empty reformer in it.
Your clients can text you back
When a client gets a text from you, they can just reply to it. That reply comes back into StudioGrowth, into one shared inbox.
This sounds small and it really is not. Plenty of studio software can send a text but cannot receive one. A client replies, and the message goes nowhere at all.
It also means your client conversations are not living on your personal phone. Anyone on your team can see a message and answer it. Nothing disappears when a staff member leaves.
Message a whole class at once
You or one of your instructors can text everyone booked into a class in one go. The same works for appointments.
You will use this more than you expect, usually when something changes at short notice. It takes a few seconds and everybody gets it.
Text the right people, not everybody
You can also send to a group you pick, rather than a class.
You build that group from what you already know about your clients. How long since they last came in. Whether their class pack is nearly used up. Whether they came in on an intro offer and never bought anything after it.
A text that clearly applies to the person reading it gets a reply. A text sent to everybody gets ignored by most of them.
Let your follow up run without you
SMS for Pilates studios is not only for one-off messages. It is also one of the ways StudioGrowth follows up with people for you.
You can build a sequence, which is just a set of messages that go out over time. Each step can be a text, an email, or a notification on their phone. You pick which one fits each step.
Most steps do not need to be a text. The one that really has to get read usually does.
There is more on this in marketing and automations built in. AI in studio management covers what can be decided for you.
What SMS costs you
SMS is not free to send. That is true on every platform, and it is worth understanding how yours gets charged.
Your messages go out through a company called Twilio. Twilio is what most software uses behind the scenes to actually send texts, and you have almost certainly received one without knowing.
The part that matters is whose account it is. With us, the Twilio account belongs to you. You set it up, we connect to it, and Twilio bills you directly at their normal rate.
We add nothing on top. Some platforms buy texts in bulk and sell them on to you at a markup. That markup never appears on a pricing page, and it grows the more you use the thing you are paying for.
We do the same with card payments, which run through your own Stripe account. Your money and your messages stay yours.
When to text, and when to leave it alone
Texting for Pilates studios works best alongside the other two channels, not instead of them. Having texts, emails and phone notifications only helps if you use them differently.
- Text when it cannot wait. A spot opening for tonight, or a class cancelled an hour before.
- Text when you want an answer. Nothing else gets replied to as quickly.
- Use phone notifications for the routine. Class reminders show up on their phone and cost you nothing.
- Use email for anything long. Receipts, newsletters, anything a client might want to find later.
The mistake is texting everything because texts get read. They get read because they are rare. Send too many and clients either stop reading them or opt out entirely.
What to ask any other platform
Three questions will tell you what a platform's SMS actually does.
Whose account do my texts go through? If it is theirs, ask what they add per message and whether you are allowed to see it.
Can my clients reply, and where does that reply land? If they cannot, it is a notification system rather than a way of talking to people.
Can I switch individual messages off? If it is all or nothing, you end up choosing between too many texts and none.
Keeping client records in one place covers what you know about each client. How platforms handle class packs covers what many of these messages are about.
Where this leaves you
SMS is the most direct way you have of reaching a client, and the only one that costs you money each time. Both of those point the same way. Own the account, pay the real price, and be choosy about what goes out.
Our Pilates studio management software is built that way throughout. Come and see what your studio would actually be sending.