We all know the yoga industry is competitive, and the struggle is real when you’re a small studio– especially first starting out. There are a million little things to do as a yoga studio owner and not enough hours in the day to do all the things yourself– teaching classes, engaging students so they’ll keep returning to class, following up with new students, marketing to potential students, and putting out fires all along the way. 

You simply don’t have the resources that a bigger studio may have, so it’s difficult to outsource some of these tasks or hire more staff. And even afford it, you’ll find that there are still a million little things on your plate every day because working in your business is different than working on your business. There’s always more to do to build your small studio.

So what’s the solution to managing your studio and keeping your sanity?

Simple– it’s software.

When you employ the use of yoga studio software, you’re able to stop focusing on all the day-to-day tasks that keep your business going and start focusing on how to grow it long term.

Here are a few benefits small yoga studios can gain from using studio software:

Centralized, Cloud-Based Administrative Operations

No more downloads, installations, cluttered computer file systems, and struggling to access files. Studio software is all web-based that enables you to manage your yoga studio in a centralized place that you can access from anywhere with an internet connection.

Plus, when you use multiple software, you have to take extra time to ensure they work together and keep your studio operations consistent. A singular software solution that’s tailor-made for yoga studios will give you that time back because all of your data and information is centralized.

Automation, Automation, Automation

Nothing saves you time like automating something you’ve been doing manually. The menial tasks involved in managing students, teachers, schedules, sales, payroll, inventory, etc. add up when you have manual processes to execute all the to-dos. Think about your end goal: to fill classes and have regular attendance. Automation takes those menial tasks off your plate, saving you (and your staff) so much time that you’ll wonder how you managed without automation in the first place. 

Online Class Scheduling

This feature of studio software makes scheduling easier for both you and your students. The following are functions of top studio software:

• Student Self Check-in– So your students can just use a kiosk app when they arrive to check-in and remove your burden of taking attendance
• Wait-lists– So students can put themselves on a waitlist and you don’t have to lift a finger
• Recurring Bookings– So students can book multiple classes and commit to your class at the click of a button
• Class Attendance Stats– So you can measure how well your studio is doing with ready-made reports at your fingertips
• Multiple Schedule Views– So you can see schedules by day, week, month, class name, teacher, and more
• Drag and Drop Functionality– So you can easily make adjustments to your schedule‍
  

Payment Processing

This part of business can be a real time-suck if you don’t have a centralized system in place to manage payments. These features of studio software help you with payment processing:

• Credit card integration– Cloud-based software allows you to process payments on the cloud without the need for any external hardware to process payments
• Link Payments and Services– You can produce financial statements with the click of a button and see the balance of your finances

Automated and Strategic Email Marketing

Email for most businesses is key to revenue, and the yoga industry is not any different. It’s a pain in the asana to have two separate databases– one for your studio contact database and one for your email marketing. One database is better than two! 

You can use studio software to segment and target your database not only to get new students and encourage regular attendance but also to send out class reminders, nurture referrals, sell products and yoga packages, promote sales and events, and more. You can automate campaigns for specific things to specific audiences in your database. 

Not only will this save you time from doing it manually, but empowers you to do way more with your database!

Reporting Capability

You won’t be able to make business decisions for the future without being able to measure where your business is at now. Even when you’re on top of manually tracking income, cash flow, and your balance sheet, that doesn’t mean you can easily and quickly interpret that data to make decisions.

Studio software provides in-depth analysis for statistics such as:

• Class attendance
• Class demographics
• Payroll costs
• Student retention rates
• Drop rates
• Sales figures 

Scalability

While you may be content with the size of your studio and may not want to grow out of the space you’re in, you still want to have software that meets and matches you where your business is right now. Why pay for a software solution that has way more features than you would use?

The best studio software out there is priced to fit your size and needs so it has the capability to both maintain your studio as is and accommodate your growth.

Conclusion

Not all yoga studio owners want big studio businesses, but all studio owners want to be able to manage their studios more efficiently. Consider these benefits to studio software to offload much of the stress of running your studio and free up more of your time so you can do what you enjoy in business.

For an affordable, intuitive, and cloud-based software solution, check out fitDEGREE!