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Getting Started with Marketing Automation Livestream Manager
Getting Started with Marketing Automation Livestream Manager
Daniel Freire avatar
Written by Daniel Freire
Updated over 2 years ago

With the ever-changing fitness landscape and growing presence of virtual offerings in mind, Marketing Automation Livestream Manager was designed to make your life easier! This feature enables you to automatically send registration confirmations and reminders for your classes, including the essential virtual links your clients need to access your amazing classes.

  • Marketing Automation's powerful integration with your booking software will automatically sync in your class schedule week to week. Marketing Automation receives the roster for each class to know exactly who to send to.

  • Your class schedule will show both virtual and in-person classes. Livestream Manager was originally designed to support virtual classes, but many studios utilize this feature for in-person offerings.

  • Only classes that are live/bookable in your booking software will pull into your class schedule in Marketing Automation.

  • The class schedule will give you two weeks of visibility, the current week and the following week's classes.

  • The class schedule refreshes each weekend, shifting "Next Week" to "This Week" and bringing in a brand new schedule of classes for "Next Week."

  • Marketing Automation is not integrated with Zoom, so the system is not able to automatically generate or fill in links for your classes.

Ready to get Livestream Manager set up for your business? Navigate to Apps in the top-navigation bar > Marketing Automation Livestream Manager to get started.

Class Schedule

The first step in setting up Livestream Manager will be managing your class schedule. You will have two weeks of visibility on the schedule: This Week and Next Week.

Toggling Classes: Virtual vs. Exclude

Any classes that are live and bookable in your booking software will pull into the schedule, which includes both virtual and in-person classes. Each class will have to be set up individually to send (Virtual) or do not send (Exclude), class reminders.

Next to each class, you will see a toggle button to the far left. This button determines whether a class will have reminders sent for it, or not. Each instance of a class will have to be individually toggled off, even if the class repeats every day. Excluding Monday's instance of a class will not automatically exclude Tuesday's class, as well.

  • Virtual, blue: Reminders will be sent for this class.

  • Exclude, red: Reminders will not be sent for this class.

If most of your classes are in-person and you are having to individually exclude the majority of them from sending reminders, check out this article to learn more about the Exclude All Classes button.

Adding your Virtual Links

Once you've toggled on/off all of your classes accordingly, you'll now need to add in your virtual links for each virtual class. If you are using Livestream Manager, you can skip this part and head to Setting Up your Reminders.

Marketing Automation is not currently integrated with Zoom, so you will need to paste in each link for each class individually. This means that even if a class is recurring, you will need to paste in the link for each instance of the class. If all of your classes use the same virtual link, you will still need to paste this same link into each class.

To get started, navigate to your Class Schedule and locate a virtual class. Click View to the far right of the class.

Once you are in the class view, you'll want to paste your virtual link into the Virtual Link space. Please ensure you are including the full link!

The Playlist Link space can be used to include the link to a special playlist for class. If you aren't providing a playlist for class, you can use this space instead to provide information about the props needed for the class - or you can leave it blank!

Once you've pasted your information, please be sure to click Save Changes at the bottom. Once you've set up each of your classes with their respective links, it's time to set up the reminders that will be sent for these classes.

Setting Up your Reminders

This is the fun part! While you will need to hop into Marketing Automation week to week to paste in your link for your classes and toggle them accordingly, you will only have to set up your reminders one time. The reminders you set up will apply to any classes you toggle on as Virtual going forward.

To get started, navigate to the Set Up tab in the left-hand menu of Livestream Manager.

Reminders Options

On the Reminder Settings screen, you'll see a few different options for when you want to send reminders: Registration, 1 hour before class, 15 minutes before class, and 5 minutes before class. You can choose to have all of these options turned on, just one option, or whatever combination makes the most sense for your business and clientele!

The registration reminder will send whenever a client registers for a class, whether 1 week before or 1 minute before class starts. The time-based reminders, however, will only send if the client registers ahead of that benchmark. For example, if you only have the 1-hour reminder turned on, and a client registers for class 20 minutes before class, they will not receive the 1-hour reminder message due to already being past this benchmark.

Messaging Options

You will also have the option of choosing what type of message you want to send for each reminder: an email, a text message, or both.

Let's say you want to set up a Registration confirmation with both an email and a text message. You'll want to make sure you are first checking off the Send on Registration option. This lets Marketing Automation know it needs to send a reminder for this option. You'll then check off the Send an Email and Send a text message options to let Marketing Automation know which type(s) of the message(s) you want to send for this option.

Email Reminders

Once you check off that you'd like to send an email, you'll see a template selection option appear below. This setting determines what email template Marketing Automation will use for this particular reminder. You can only have one email template per reminder; you will not be able to have a certain registration template sent for your virtual flow classes and a different registration template sent for your virtual stretch classes.

You will have the option of choosing from Marketing Automation Templates or your account Saved Templates:

  • Marketing Automation Templates: These are pre-built, no-fuss templates that follow your logo and branding settings. If you're curious about what they look like, check out this article.

  • Saved Templates: These are emails you have customized and saved as templates in your Marketing Automation account. If you'd like to have more custom language and include additional information outside of what is being included in the Marketing Automation Templates, you will likely want to build your own templates for your reminders.

Text Reminders

Once you check off that you'd like to send an email, you'll see a blank text box appear below - this is where you'll write out your text message! Below the text box, you'll see Available Personalization. You can use these to personalize your message to the recipient, as well as include important information about the class the client has signed up for class name, date, instructor, etc. If you want to include the virtual link in your text message, make sure you include the Virtual Link URL personalization! Simply click Copy next to the personalization you'd like to use and paste it into your text message.

For example:

"Hey [%first_name | there%]! Just a reminder that [%class_name%] with [%class_instructor%] starts in about an hour at [%class_time%]. Please use this Zoom link! [%virtual_link%]."

Once you are satisfied with your setup, check the box where it says "I acknowledge that the messages we are sending are not commercial/marketing in nature"* > click Save Changes.

*In all other areas of the platform, Marketing Automation bases subscription statuses on the client's subscription preference for marketing/promotional sends in your booking software. Livestream Manager sends, however, are not marketing/promotional in nature and provide important information to clients about classes they are opting in to register for. For this reason, Livestream Manager sends overrides the client's preference.

Testing

Once you are done setting up all of your reminders, you may want to test these sends to see what the user experience will be before turning on Livestream Manager:

  • Navigate to your Class Schedule > locate a class that is toggled on as Virtual.

  • Click View in the far-right of the class.

  • Click Options in the top-right corner > select the reminder you'd like to test. If you select an email option, you will enter the email address you'd like to test. If you select an SMS option, you will enter the phone number you'd like to test.

Please note, that you can only test the reminders you have turned on in your Set Up. For instance, if you do not have a 15-minute reminder email turned on in your Set Up and you attempt to test this reminder to yourself, you will never receive the test!

Turning on Livestream Manager

Once you've established your Reminder Settings, you'll need to turn the Livestream Manager feature on. Navigate back to Class Schedule in the left-hand menu.

Here, you'll see a red bar across the top that reads, "This account WILL NOT be sending automated reminders." This means that Livestream Manager is currently not automating any sends for your classes.

When you are ready to turn this feature on, click Turn On for My Account. Once active, the red banner at the top will turn white and will read, "This account will be sending automated reminders." This feature can be turned back off at any time by clicking Turn Off for My Account.

Congratulations on setting up Marketing Automation Livestream Manager! Have questions or running into an issue? Please make sure to check out our Livestream Manager FAQs.

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