Intro Offer (Credit)

The most common type of introductory offer is either unlimited (1 week, 2 week, 1 month) or credit based (first class free, 3 class pack etc). In this tutorial we’ll focus on the credit based options. If you’re interested in learning more about how to build an intro offer sequence for an unlimited package, please refer to: Intro Offer - Unlimited

Sequence Goal

There are a few goals we should consider when designing a good Intro Offer sequence:

1. Set expectations: Your initial communication, triggered upon Intro Offer purchase, should clearly define everything that will help your new client maximize their Intro Offer. A few examples:

• What and how many: Urge clients to use all of their credits in a specific time period (if there’s an expiration date, make that clear), try out different class types, different instructors etc. This will help your client understand what works best for them, what their schedule can accommodate, and what instructor they click with.
• Conversion incentive: If you offer any incentives for converting to membership, outline this from the beginning! Common incentives include % discount on first month of a membership if purchased before intro offer expires, % discount on membership if client attends a specific amount of classes during the intro offer etc. These incentives are an easy strategy to ensure clients are fully using their intro offer, and steering the conversation toward membership conversion from the very start.
• Studio Policies: Outline any important studio policy such as etiquette, when to arrive, cancelation policies, how to contact your studio, where to find parking etc.

2. Convert to membership: The most important goal of a well designed Intro Offer sequence is converting your new client into a long term member. Your classes, instructors, culture and community will be the driving force of membership conversion; however, the automations we’ll discuss in this article will ensure your new clients are maximizing their exposure to the incredible benefits your studio provides.

Where Intro Offer sequence fits in your client journey

Until this point, your client journey has ignored any specific package, contract, or event names. To keep things simple, it’s important to avoid different automation flows based on packages purchased until this point. For example, there’s no need to have a “First Visit Follow Up” automation trigger after someone uses their Intro Offer for the first time, as you should already have a “First Visit Follow Up” automation that triggers regardless of pricing option used.

For clients that purchase your Intro Offer as their first package, the Intro Offer sequence will run in parallel with: First Visit - Confirmation , First Event Missed and First Visit Follow Up

• Prospect Sequence - Prospect creates an account on booking software -> Triggers your prospect sequence of automations based on how many days after creating their account, and no events attended or scheduled for the future. If you’d like your prospect sequence to end when someone purchases your Intro Offer, add the following automation from our catalog to your account and activate it: Add Tag - Prospect: Opt-Out. To learn more about Stop Tags, refer to the this help article: Stop Tags.
• Intro Offer Sequence - This will likely be running in parallel with your First Visit - Confirmation , First Event Missed and First Visit Follow Up sequences. For this reason, there’s no need to create a specific follow up after a client visits for the first time using your Intro Offer. We do, however, want to send an email upon Intro Offer purchase, which we’ll cover in this article.
• Membership - Membership automations may encompass a few different categories, but will all focus around touch points to keep members happy for a long time. These automations will include celebrating someone for becoming a member for the first time, their birthdays/anniversaries/milestone visits. Automations to touch base throughout the first few months of a new membership, prevent active members from becoming lapsing, and get them to renew memberships as they approach expiration.

Intro Offer “Trigger Points”

Before we dive into creating your Intro Offer sequence, we’ll discuss the “trigger points” (ie - data used to trigger these automations on specific dates) and “conditional rules,” rules we’ll apply to ensure specific clients either do or do not receive communications based on what they’ve attended, and what they have or have not purchased.

These “trigger points” and “conditional rules” will be slightly different from the ones discussed in the setup for Intro Offer - Unlimited, so make sure you familiarize yourself with both.

Let’s start with the main “trigger point” that we’ll reference in Intro Offer automations:

Purchase Date

Rule (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package purchase date = [select how long after purchase this automation should trigger]

Rule described: Filter audience based on the date they purchased my selected packages.

For the first automation which triggers the day of Intro Offer purchase, the rule above is all you’ll need in addition to a client rule (which will house your “stop tag” as a best practice).

Expiration Date (Future)

Rule (contains 3 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package expiration date = [select how many days before the active intro offer expires]
• Package status = active

Rule described: Filter audience based on having an active intro offer that expires exactly X days from now

Notice again we added the extra filter package status = active. For the same reason above, we want to make sure these automations do NOT trigger for clients that cancel their Intro Offer after activation.

This rule will only be relevant if you strictly enforce an expiration date for your credit based Intro Offer. Most of the time, we’ll focus on credits used to attend classes and appointments.

Expiration Date (Past)

Rule (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package inactive date = [select how many days after the intro offer expires]

Notice in this rule, there is NOT a filter for package status as we saw above. Package status is not required (and if you added this filter as active) would never trigger, as a package cannot be active and have already expired.

The filter Package Inactive Date will calculate the date when a package became inactive either due to expiration OR last credit was used. We may choose to trigger post-expiration follow ups based on the inactive date instead of the package expiration date, so automations are based on a more accurate timeframe of when your client has finished their final credit, or their package truly expired from timeframe.

Rule described: Filter audience based on having an intro offer that became inactive exactly X days ago

Intro Offer “Conditional Rules”

Think of “conditional rules” as either:

• Things a client must have done to trigger the automation (such as number of attendances during their Intro Offer), or
• Things a client has done that would prevent them from triggering an automation (already converted to a membership, purchased a Class Pack etc).

Similar to the “trigger points” listed above, there are a few common rules we’ll want to apply to our Intro Offer automations to ensure we exclude members from specific automations (eg - prevent expiration automations from triggering for people that have already converted), or target the right message to the right people (based on number of attendances during the Intro Offer).

Stop Tag

As we’ve mentioned in all other automated sequences, adding a Stop Tag to all of your automations will allow you to prevent a specific client from triggering the remainder of your Intro Offer automations.

For all automations created by LoopSpark, both during onboarding and through our automation catalog we use the stop tag Intro Offer: Opt-Out

A client might respond to say “I am not interested in joining following my intro offer.” In this event, we’d need to make sure that client doesn’t trigger any more automations related to conversion.

You can also use this stop tag to automatically remove anyone that has already converted to a membership or class pack! We’ll discuss how to do the same below with package and contract rules; however, if your automations have the following rule below, you can add and activate the following automation from our automation catalog: Add Tag - Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Rule (contains 1 filter):

• Client tag does NOT have = “Intro Offer: Opt-Out”

Rule described: Remove anyone with the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” from this segment.

Number of attendances

For each sub-sequence of the Intro Offer, we’ll want to either:

• Validate the package was never used to attend,
• Validate the package WAS used to attend,
• Target specific communications based on the number of attendances during the intro offer, or
• Target an automation for clients that have attended, but not frequently enough, and have nothing scheduled in the future.

Purchased Not Active

Validate the client has never attended using the package, and has no upcoming visits booked. Yes, we could add one small filter to our package rule package used count = 0 which you certainly can! However, a client might miss their first visit, and your staff might forget to refund the credit. For this reason we suggest using booking data as a more accurate validation of use.

This would require 2 rules:

Rule 1 (contains 3 filters):

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = attended
• Booking using package = [select intro offer name(s)]

Rule 1 described: person has never used an intro offer to attend an event.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = upcoming

Rule 2 described: Person has no upcoming events scheduled. Putting this together with rule 1 we have an audience of people that have not used your intro offer to attend and have nothing scheduled, meaning they have yet to truly activate their Intro Offer. Again, you can accomplish something similar by adding the filter package used count = 0 to your package rule, but this might result in clients that miss their first class not triggering your automations, depending on whether or not your staff remembers to credit back for the missed class.

Purchased and Active

The most accurate way to ensure a client actually activated the intro offer based on attending, and also the best way to trigger specific messages based on number of visits is also accomplished with a booking rule. The first rule illustrated below is recommended for all automations that trigger following the activation of your Intro Offer.

Rule (contains 3 filters):

• Booking Count = exactly [number of bookings]
• Booking status = attended
• Booking using package = [select intro offer name(s)]

Rule described: Person has used the intro offer to attend exactly x events.

For credit based Intro Offers, the most accurate way to trigger automations is based on the number of attendances using that package. If your studio credits back Intro Offers for missed classes, we want to avoid triggering automations based on package used count or package remaining count and only focus on number of attended visits using the package.

In this reference guide we’ll use a 3 Credit Intro Offer as an example to trigger automations after the second and third use. Again, if you already have automations setup to trigger after a client’s first visit, there’s no need to add a touch point after the first visit using your credit based Intro Offer.

If you do want to send specific follow ups after the first visit based on which package was used, we’ll discuss how to do that in the article First Visit - Follow Up.

Converted to Membership

We don’t want to send communications to a member informing them of membership options if we have already converted them! The last conditional rules we’ll discuss will remove clients that have already converted by purchasing any contract, or purchased a class pack.

If your Intro Offer automations contain a stop tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” which is a best practice, you can take a short cut by adding and activating the following automation from our automation catalog: Add Tag - Intro Offer: Opt-Out. This automation will add the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to a client’s LoopSpark profile whenever they purchase a contract or class pack. Again, this will only work if your Intro Offer automations all have the filter client tag = does NOT have ““Intro Offer: Opt-Out””

Let’s discuss how to omit already converted members from Intro Offer automations without a stop tag.

Has NOT purchased membership/contract

Rule (contains 1 filter):

• Contract purchased = no contracts

Rule described: Only target clients that have not purchased any contract. If someone has purchased a contract, they will not enter this segment (ie - they will not trigger this automation).

Has NOT purchased a class pack

If your studio sells class packs (5 class pack, 10 class pack etc), you may also want to remove people that didn’t convert to a contract, but already purchased a class pack. To do so, you’d add the following rule:

Rule (contains 2 filters):

• Package count = 0
• Package purchased = [select all class pack names]

Rule described: Only target clients that have not purchased a class pack. If someone has purchased a class pack, they will not enter this segment.

If your studio offers many class pack options, or you routinely change the names, you can also use the contains operator and add a common word or phrase, such as:

Rule (contains 2 filters):

• Package count = 0
• Package purchased contains = pack or classpack or classes

In this way, your segment would remove anyone that has purchased a package that contains any of those words or phrases.

Designing a good Intro Offer (Credit) sequence

Below we’ll outline the major types of automations you’ll want to have in a good Intro Offer (unlimited) sequence. Before getting started, a few questions to ask yourself:

1. Should my “Prospect” sequence end if someone purchases an Intro Offer? If yes, add the following automation from our catalog to your account and activate it: Add Tag - Prospect: Opt-Out
2. Will I be following best practices and add the filter Client tag does NOT have = “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to all of my Intro Offer automations? If yes, add and activate the following automation from our automation catalog: Add Tag - Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Below is an outline of a good Intro Offer (Credit) sequence. We’ll use a 3 credit Intro Offer in this example:

Intro Offer - Purchased Today

These automations would be used if your Intro Offer package is set to activate upon first use. We recommend 2-3 automations per week following package purchase date, where the ONLY filter (“trigger point”) you’ll change between each automation is Package Purchase Date.

The Call-To-Action (CTA) for all of these automations should guide the client to book their first class, and by doing so, activate their Intro Offer. Include a good mix of email, SMS and To-Do automations, and link your client to your booking schedule, which can be done by inserting the merge tag {{STUDIO_BOOK_CLASS_URL}}

Rule 1 (contains 2 filters):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Person has an active profile on booking software, and has not been excluded from these automations by adding the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to their LoopSpark profile.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package purchase date = [select how long after purchase this automation should trigger] . This is the ONLY filter that needs to be changed between automations in the sub-sequence of “Intro Offer - Purchased Not Active “

Rule 2 described: Person purchased an intro offer package X days ago.

Rule 3 (contains 3 filters):

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = attended
• Booking using package = [select intro offer name(s)]

Rule 3 described: person has never used an intro offer to attend an event.

Rule 4 (contains 2 filters):

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = upcoming

Rule 4 described: Person has no upcoming events scheduled. Putting this together with rule 3 we have an audience of people that have not used your intro offer to attend and have nothing scheduled, meaning they have yet to truly activate their Intro Offer.

The segment above explained: Trigger this automation for someone that purchased an Intro offer x days ago, but has not yet activated the package by attending, and has no upcoming events scheduled.

Example Intro Offer - Purchased Not Active automation screen shot

Intro Offer - Purchased and Active

Automations for credit based Intro Offers are much more streamlined than Unlimited options, as we really only need to focus on a few things:

• How many times the package has been used to attend
• Possibly the last attendance date, if we want to urge a client to use remaining credits, and
• The fact that a client has NOT already converted to a membership, so we can trigger automations to steer a client toward long term commitment.

Below is the outline of a “Intro Offer - Purchase and Active” segment, where we’ll trigger an automation after the second use of our “Intro Offer - 3 Classes” package, we’ll remove anyone that has already converted to a membership, and we’ll validate that the package has not expired in the past.

Rule 1 (contains 2 filters):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Person has an active profile on booking software, and has not been excluded from these automations by adding the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to their LoopSpark profile.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package expiration = in the future

Rule 2 described: Person has an intro offer that expires in the future.

Rule 3 (contains 3 filters):

• Booking count = exactly 2 (this will be the only filter you need to change for credit based intro offer sequences, where count = after which attendance you’d like to trigger your automation)
• Booking status = attended
• Booking using package = [select intro offer name(s)]

Rule 3 described: person has attended exactly 2 events using the intro offer.

Rule 4: (contains 3 filters):

• Booking status = attended
• Booking using package = [Select Intro Offer package]
• Booking event start date = today

Rule 4 described: Rule 4 is here pretty much to ensure that when you activate your automation, it won’t trigger for people that met this criteria a long time ago. If we add the logic of rule 3 and rule 4 above, we get “this person attended X times using the intro offer, and that X attendance was today”

If you intend on stopping these automations when a client purchases a class pack or contract, you can either:

1. Add and activate the following automation from our automation catalog: Add Tag - Intro Offer: Opt-Out or,

2. Add the following 2 rules below to your automation(s):

Optional Rule 5 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract purchased = no contracts

Optional Rule 5 described: person has not purchased a contract.

Optional Rule 6 (contains 2 filters):

• Package count = 0
• Package purchased = [select all class pack names]

Optional Rule 6 described: Remove anyone that has already purchased a class pack.

Rules 5 and 6 above would be added to any automation where the content drives the client to convert to a membership or class pack following Intro Offer expiration.

The segment above explained: Trigger this automation for clients that attended for the X time using their Intro Offer today, and (if adding optional rules 5 and 6), have not converted to a contract or class pack.

Example Intro Offer - Purchased Not Active automation screen shot

Intro Offer - Alert to use more

Unlike alerts for an unlimited intro offer, we don’t need to focus on having a client attend a specific number of events in a week; however, we do want to make sure we are guiding these clients to use all Intro Offer credits so we can convert them to a membership.

Similar to to alerts we discussed for unlimited intro offers, we will discuss 2 approaches that can be used for your Intro Offer (credit) automations.

Option 1: Set time after purchase

This option would be best if you want to setup a specific alert sequence if a client hasn’t fully used their credits in a duration of time. This option will used a fixed date following package purchase, and an attendance threshold that you deem as “under performing.”

The Call To Action (CTA) for this type of automation would urge the client to book their next class, and remind them they still have credits remaining on their Intro Offer. To streamline things, you might want to include a link to book their next class directly in your email or SMS using the merge tag {{STUDIO_BOOK_CLASS_URL}}.

We’ll use a 3 Credit Intro Offer package in this example, and say that our goal is having a client fully use all 3 credits within the first week following purchase. If a client hasn’t attended 3 classes in the first week, and has no upcoming event scheduled, let’s trigger an automation to make sure the client attends more during the second week.

Rule 1 (contains 2 filters):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Person has an active profile on booking software, and has not been excluded from these automations by adding the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to their LoopSpark profile.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package purchase date = Exactly 7 days ago. You can change this to be whatever you want.

Rule 2 described: Person purchased their intro offer exactly 7 days ago

Rule 3 (contains 3 filters):

• Booking count = less than 3
• Booking status = attended (if your studio does NOT credit back for missed classes, you can delete this filter)
• Booking using package = [select intro offer name]

Rule 3 described: Person has fewer than 3 events using the intro offer (ie - has credits remaining on this example 3 class pack)

Rule 4 (contains 2 filters)

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = upcoming

Rule 4 described: Person has no upcoming events scheduled.

The segment above explained: “Trigger this automation for anyone that has not used all 3 credits of their “Intro Offer - 3 Classes” within the first 7 days following purchase, and has no upcoming visits scheduled”

Example Intro Offer - Alert Option 1

Option 2: Has not attended in at least X days

Another option is to trigger an automation every X days that a person has not attended, so long as their Intro Offer has remaining credits and expires in the future. Before setting up this automation, consider how frequently you’d want this automation to trigger.

In this example we’ll say we want to trigger this automation every 4 days a client does not attend, only trigger if the package has not expired by date, and if you want, you could add additional rules to prevent triggering if a client has already purchased a contract or another class pack (see “conditional rules” section above if interested).

We’d recommend setting up this kind of automation as a “To-Do,” alerting a staff member to personally reach out so your clients don’t receive the same message content more than one time.

Rule 1 (contains 2 filters):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Person has an active profile on booking software, and has not been excluded from these automations by adding the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to their LoopSpark profile.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package expiration date = in the future.

Rule 2 described: Person has an Intro Offer that expires in the future.

Rule 3 (contains 4 filters):

• Booking count = more than 0
• Booking count = less than 3 (total number of credits on our example package is 3)
• Booking status = attended (if your studio does NOT credit back for missed classes, you can delete this filter)
• Booking using package = [Select Intro Offer package]

Rule 3 described: Person has attended at least 1 event using the intro offer, but fewer than 3 events (our example package has 3 credits).

Rule 4 (contains 3 filters):

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = attended (if your studio does NOT credit back for missed classes, you can delete this filter)
• Booking event start date = in the last 4 days (this is the filter you’d change based on how frequently you want this automation to trigger for the same person).

Rule 4 described: Person has not attended any events in the past 4 days.

Rule 5 (contains 2 filters):

• Booking count = 0
• Booking status = upcoming

Rule 5 described: Person has no upcoming events scheduled.

The segment above explained: Trigger an automation every 4 days a client has not visited during their Intro Offer, only if they have attended at least 1 event, fewer than 3 events (ie - have credits remaining), and have no upcoming events scheduled.

You may also consider adding rules to prevent this automation from triggering if a client has already converted to a membership (purchased a contract) or purchased a class pack.

Example Intro Offer - Alert_Option_2

Expiration Date (Past)

Automations that trigger for non-conversions following Intro Offer expiration are a suggested best practice. The Call To Action will be the same as automations that lead up to expiration (convert to membership); however, your verbiage, cadence and automation type might differ.

We suggest at least 3 automations that trigger for non-converters following expiration of their Intro Offer, starting with an email or text “We’d love to keep you as part of our community” then following up with a To-Do alerting staff to reach out personally.

Slightly different from our Unlimited Intro Offer automations which we’d trigger using the filter package expiration date , we’ll use the filter package inactive date for credit based Intro Offers, as this will calculate if the package became inactive due to date, or credits fully used.

In this example, we’ll trigger an automation 3 days after our Intro Offer package becomes inactive for clients that have not converted.

Rule 1 (contains 2 filters):

• Client profile status = active
• Client tag does NOT have = Intro Offer: Opt-Out

Rule 1 described: Person has an active profile on booking software, and has not been excluded from these automations by adding the tag “Intro Offer: Opt-Out” to their LoopSpark profile.

Rule 2 (contains 2 filters):

• Package purchased = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]
• Package inactive date = exactly X days ago

Rule 2 described: Person had an Intro Offer that became inactive exactly 3 days ago.

Rule 3 (contains 2 filters):

• Booking status = attended
• Booking using package = [Select Intro Offer package(s)]

You can add booking count to this rule above if you intend on only sending this to people that attended using all available credits on their Intro Offer package, in this example we’d used booking count = exactly 3

Rule 3 described: Person used the Intro Offer at least 1 time (ie - it was activated because of attendance, not because of an early/late cancel).

Rule 4 (contains 1 filter):

• Contract purchased = no contracts

Rule 4 described: person has not purchased a contract.

Rule 5 (contains 2 filters):

• Package count = 0
• Package purchased = [select all class pack names]

Rule 5 described: Remove anyone that has already purchased a class pack.

The segment above explained: Trigger this automation for clients that had an intro offer which expired exactly 3 days ago, only if they have used it to attend at least 1 event, have not already purchased a contract or a package

Example Intro Offer - Expiration (Past)

Automation Catalog

Need help building your Intro Offer automations, or want to add a few more touch points? We have plenty of templates in our automation catalog to get you started:

1. Click on Automations -> Catalog
2. Locate the category aligning with your Intro Offer credits
3. Select the automations you’d like to add to your account.