Birthday Parties Might Be the Best Marketing Strategy for Sports Clubs

24 min · Olivier Rousseau & William Rochford · Jun 9, 2026

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

YouTube

Amazon Music

About this episode

Birthday parties are one of the most overlooked growth opportunities for sports clubs. In this episode of AMplify, Olivier Rousseau and William Rochford break down how gymnastics clubs, dance studios, swim schools, karate schools, and youth sports centers can turn birthday parties into an engine for revenue, marketing, and long-term growth. If you run a youth sports business, this episode may change the way you think about birthday parties.

What we discuss

Why a birthday party works like a paid trial: a dozen kids try your programs in one afternoon, and the host parent pays $250 or more How parties fill the Saturday and Sunday afternoons that are hard to fill with classes Sending an automated email eight weeks before each child's birthday, so you reach parents before they Google party ideas Letting parents book online from their phone: pick a date, choose add-ons, pay a deposit, and sign the contract An invitation the host parent forwards to guests, who RSVP and sign the waiver in one step Checking kids in from a digital attendance list, with a QR code for parents who haven't signed the waiver yet Following up two to three days after the party with a birthday discount and your regular programs Why steady bookings let you build a team of birthday specialists Resources mentioned 10 Kids Birthday Party Marketing Ideas to Boost Bookings Activity Messenger vs. iClassPro for Birthday Parties Birthday Parties Made Easy: Promote, Plan, Automate, Celebrate Canva (to design the party invitation template) Book a free demo of Activity Messenger About the hosts Olivier Rousseau co-founded Activity Messenger after spending 13 years running a kids' sports program that served 4,000 families. William Rochford is Activity Messenger's product expert. Want to share your story or ask a question? Email olivier@activitymessenger.com.

Full episode transcript

Read the full transcript

Intro[0:00] If you're a sports club owner, you've probably heard that offering birthday parties is a great way to add extra revenue to your club, but let's be honest, they may seem like a total headache. From the outside, it looks like you have to onboard a dozen new kids to your club for each party. You have to collect payment and contact details. You have to get waivers signed, organize staffing, and come up with new activities. So, you might be thinking, why should I bother? Why are other clubs even offering birthdays? Well, before we share the best ways to make birthday[0:31] parties work, let me offer you a different way to think about birthday parties. You can't think of them as one-off transactions. Instead, think of them as trials. Except there's one big difference. A lot of clubs offer free trials to get new students into their systems, but they may only get three free trials in a month. Well, how about getting 12 free trials in a single day? Only they're not free trials. They're actually paid trials because the birthday parents pay you $250 or more for the party. And if you have two birthday party openings each Saturday,[1:03] then you're really getting 24 paid trials every single Saturday. That's 24 kids getting comfortable in your space trying some of your programming and having a blast with their friends. I hope you can see just how powerful birthday parties can be as a marketing tool for your business. That's what we're going to talk about in this episode. So stay tuned. So, you know, um, first things first,Why Birthday Parties Matter[1:34] why are birthday parties so important for sports centers, running sports related programs, classes, things like that? I think the main reasons is that usually you have underutilized or empty space every Saturday and Sunday uh afternoon, right? Because those are times where young families are not looking for programs the same way. You know, I ran I ran programs for years and you know 1 to 4 Saturday, Sunday afternoon was not a great time to fill classes and to and to give classes. So, I think that those are[2:11] moments where it's actually great to have these one-off events for parents to be like, "Hey, I can book my child's birthday." A lot of times, those are in the afternoon. So, you have an empty space, you have very qualified staff that, you know, probably want to make a few extra bucks because they're still in school and, you know, they can make you can pay them even more during those for those birthdays. So, you can bring in a lot of revenue on those on those time. Uh but then the other thing is you can use the birthdays to introduce new families to your center, to your[2:39] programs, to the quality of your coaches, right? So I think that if you're running a center, a gymnastics club, a dance studio, a sports center, birthday parties are extremely important and can be a really really good way to market your your center. Right. So that's a really good point that you're bringing up. You know, in terms of marketing, this this type of marketing is the best kind. It's it's word of mouth. It's it's you know, you have one kid and and I experienced it as as a parent, too. Like my kid was was invited to a center for a birthday party[3:11] and he loved it. I mean, the whole group absolutely loved it. And ever since then, there's been at least two or three more birthday parties at the same place because the kids just wanted to go back and I hear them sometimes they're speaking with each other and they're talking about this place, right? So really really powerful impression that we can leave on families like that. Yeah. And and it the the interesting part there is it could bring you more birthday parties, right? If you go with your child, wow, that was so much fun. That's what I the child's like, I want[3:41] that on my birthday. That's a really important aspect. But I think the bigger aspect is that most of the revenue for organizations that we help and that we're we're talking about like dance studios and gymnastics and swim schools, most of the revenue is not birthday parties, right? This is like an added revenue, but it's added marketing, too. So, these people that are going to be coming in, they might not come back for their child's birthday party, right? But they saw the quality of coaches. And then they're like, "Oh, what are we doing on the fall session?" Well, I[4:08] really, really enjoyed that birthday party. Let's go do a 10-week session of gymnastics, right? And maybe it's the first time they do that sport and they never even thought their child would like that sport. Like, as a parent, they're like, "Eh, I don't like that sport. I don't think my kid's going to like it." Right? A lot of times we put them in stuff that we like and then they go and they just have a blast and it's like well yeah let's send sign them up you know Saturday mornings in the fall for a rec class so they can develop move and and all that. So you're going[4:32] to bring all these new families to your existing programming which is you know the bread and butter of your business. So the birthday is like great revenue but also introducing families to trickle into your other programs. Right. Right. Right. And even like I'm just thinking now even like a karate club. How cool would that be? like you get a birthday party, introduction to karate, some sort of fun way to bring it to to all the kids and they're having fun together, you know? I mean, how cool would that be? And then, oh yeah, well, okay, my kid really liked it. Well,[5:01] that's encouraging. I think I'm going to try and, you know, sign it up sign him up for a season. See how it goes. So, it's it's a big opportunity no matter which way you look at it. Um, but it has to be said, right? So, aMarketing at the Right Time[5:12] lot of people are probably listening to us maybe thinking of tuning out because they're like, "Oh, yeah, okay." But birthday parties are such a hassle. Like I don't want to have to deal with all of the the kids being invited and and having to sign these waiver forms and it's just I'm shuffling a bunch of papers and I'm trying, you know, it's it's just it's a bit of a nightmare. It can be anyway. So today we're going to talk a lot about that. how we can put in place systems to[5:42] make it not so much of a nightmare because today the reality is that tech can handle a lot of so we're going to be talking about that and by the way if you're interested in everything that we're going to talk about in the coming minutes we do have some show notes right underneath link to YouTube videos where we go really in depth to show you how to build these workflows and how to make it so that the whole you know marketing and automation and and and dealing with um you attendance lists is a lot easier to do now with the tech. So, let's start with[6:14] the the marketing aspect. Um, one really cool thing that we can do is we can market now at the right time to the right person. So, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so as you're running your your sports center, people are registering to your programs. I would argue I know when I used to run birthday parties, most of the birthday parties we did were coming from existing clients, right? they love our program, they love their coach, and then said, "Hey, I want to do a birthday uh with that with that person or or at your center." So, you have the data, you[6:45] have the parents email, and you also have the child's birthday. And the idea about a birthday is you want you can you have like one opportunity, right? You can't if you email me in November, and my child's birthday's in dece in January, my child's birthday is in December. Like, you just missed me for 11 months, I'm not going to remember in 11 months to sign up for the birthday, right? So whatever marketing you do is not well timed. There's one automation you can do. Timing is everything in this in this sense, right? So one automation you would want to do is send an email[7:15] eight weeks before the child's birthday telling the parent, hey Jonathan's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and have you prepared the birthday or do you want to do something for the birthday? We throw amazing birthday parties. Now you're entering the parents mind exactly at the time that they're either thinking about it or should be thinking about it. And that's going to end up with a lot more sales on your side and a lot more birthday parties. Absolutely. And what should be, you know, what should be included in that in that initial email.[7:43] Yeah, I think I think the timing is super important. I think a link to book online is really important as well. It's like not a contact us. Oh gosh. Okay, now I got to call. What are the availability? An email call. No. So the whole workflow we're talking about today is it has to work from a from the start to the beginning. from the start to the end, right? You got to go right in. Hopefully the beginning and the start work together. Yeah. Get the marketing email at the right[8:08] time, but then it brings you into a flow, which we'll talk about that kind of simplifies everything, every other step for the parent, right? Yeah. 100%. And and this, you know, one of the benefits of this is now you're you're reducing manual follow-up uh and your better timing naturally leads to better conversion because you're catching the parent at the moment where they're thinking about it or they should be thinking about it. So even better, you're reminding them about, hey, your kid has a birthday coming. I hope you're going to think of something special to[8:36] do. And there's a concept in marketing I heard recently which I love and it says be there before Google, right? And the idea is like you probably rank pretty well for birthday parties in your area, right? So the parents like, "Oh, my child's birthday is coming up. Let me Google what are the options, right? And then all your competitors are out there." You want to be there before they Google. So before they even think about it, you want to get, "Oh yeah, he likes his gymnastics club there. He did a program in spring. He really enjoyed it.[9:02] Let me let me go look at what they're offering." And then you have a really simple way to register online. Good stuff. And then you get them there before they even get a chance to Google and or go on ChatGPT and find what your competitors are offering. 100%. So we talked about that, you know,Online Booking Benefits[9:17] so that that that that initial email leads to basically a booking form, right? A res, you know, you go to see what dates are available and you book for the birthday. So that also is fully online. And so what are the what are the benefits here of having all of that whole process from invitation to reservation be fully online? I think the first thing is there's no more phone calls and and email chains of back and forth. Are you available on this date on this date? Is your gym ready? Is your coach available? And just what are your rates? It's just it's just[9:50] a mess of back and forth, right? So, what you want to do is like streamline that into a very complete and customizable form where the parent comes in, they see the availability. So, it's a nice calendar. It says every Saturday, you know, at 1:00 p.m., 3 p.m. If somebody booked at 3 p.m., not available anymore, right? There's only one spot if you if you only have one spot. And then you follow up later with the child's age, child's, you know, name. What are the add-ons that you want? How many children would you have? You know, if there's below 20, it's like, you know,[10:17] included in the price. 21 to 30, there's a $50 extra, whatever it is, because you need a second coach. Um, and are you going to be taking a room, right, an hour in a room in a party room? Are you going to want a cake? Whatever you're offering at your center, you want to like really build that out through the whole form. So, it's very simple within a few clicks for the parent to design their own birthday flow at the right date that they want. And then as they fill it out and make payment or put the deposit in, you get a notification saying, "Oh, I know exactly what they're[10:44] coming from. I know what type of cake they want. I know what room they're going to need." And it's fully, you know, um, fully customizable for your path. So, the parent just goes through it and you get the reservation right right there and then. 100%. And, you know, one of the things is if the parent can easily book the birthday party in their bed on their phone at 9:30 at night, that's going to that's going to lead to a lot more conversion. Oh, yeah. And if if I mean if you have[11:13] to remember the next day to call the center for the birthday maybe like there's so many things that can happen and and especially birthday parties we're talking about age groups from like probably 4 to 9 10 years old like that's kind of the age group like those parents are overwhelmed tired I mean we're we're in that age range and like you know it's just it's a busy period of your life so if you got to make it as easy as possible for the parent absolutely so it's got to be you know friction-free for the parent so there's[11:40] no account creation before filling a form. They just simply fill a form and the invoice is generated. Maybe there's a deposit uh that you've taken upon registration, maybe not, but that invoice is generated. So now you can add elements, remove elements, all that whole aspect of things is also um automated and and dealt with from on the platform side and the contract is signed. So right away during that time, forgot about that part. Contract is signed at at deposit at payment. Yeah, exactly. So, you're kind of stealing my[12:10] fire now, but that's sort of where I wanted to take it about automating the invitations and the waivers. So, theAutomate the Process[12:16] contracts, all that stuff, right? So, now that we have that parent email, great. Now, we can send a follow-up and we can automate all the rest all all the other communications that we need to do. So, the RSVPs, talk to us about that part of the workflow. Yeah. And I think just the first part actually remove contract signing with the parent who's organizing the birthday payments, all that stuff is all set up. So your your your employee, all they have to do is get a notification. Say, "Hey, you know, Will booked a birthday on June 13 for his birth for his child." You say, "Hey,[12:48] we just saw you booked. This is awesome. Here's an email to send to everybody you want to invite to the party, right?" And what it does is you can create a nice Canva invitation where placeholder is going to pop up with the child's name, the date of the party, the location, and then it the parent has this kind of template. All they have to do is forward it to the 20 25 kids they want to invite to the birthday. Right? So if I'm on the receiving end of you inviting me to one of your child's birthday, I get a nice email, beautiful, you know, Canva template with the organization's logo.[13:18] So you're doing some marketing already there. And then it says, are you going to be coming to the birthday? So you would click the parent says yes, I'm coming to the birthday. That would automatically bring them to a form where they're going to confirm the participation, but when they do that, they're going to sign the waiver. So you're going to have all these waivers signed and they will once they sign the waiver, they're automatically added to an attendance list. So it makes it a lot easier for your staff to know how many kids are coming, who has signed the[13:43] waiver, who has yet to sign the waiver on the day of. And it just kind of streams streamlines that that whole process. Absolutely. And so I think it's it's important to paint that picture. So at the front desk now you're eliminating all that chaos. You know exactly who has and who has not signed the waiver. We have backup systems for those parents who inevitably will not comply with the initial instructions because that's going to happen. Let's be real. Um and so what we can have is we can have that that contract that waiver available as a[14:14] QR code. So the parent pulls out the smartphone and because all the forms are mobile first, boom, the for the for the the contract is right there on the phone. They fill it out on location and then we have no problems. The other great thing about that too is you mentioned attendance lists. So now we don't have to check off kids from a paper. We have a digital attendance list that we can check as kids are getting there. And that's a great opportunity as well to learn those kids' names. Yeah. because you're reading them, you're checking with them. Um, so it's[14:45] even there's even benefits here for the staff members. Yeah. And and if you don't have that, like you're just you have your staff member being at the front, you know, of your gym at 1 p.m. just saying, "Hey, there's 22 kids coming." That's all you know. And the birthday that you know, then one name, right? And then you just have these kids coming in from all over the place and it's like, "Whoa, it chaotic." Like I run 22 kids coming, but oh, wait a minute. I'm counting them. There's 26. Yeah. and figure out which ones haven't[15:11] paid. Figure out which ones haven't signed, which you know. Exactly. So, having that waiver uh pre-signed and then having the people who don't come, who are not there, have a QR code signing. It's super simple. You're at the front desk, you have an in attendance list. You just check people in, check people out, send them to the right place. I think larger centers will run multiple birthday parties. really interesting too cuz then what birthday you're coming from where you going to you have two separate attendance list two separate you know, uh, fields or or[15:38] courts or or gymnasiums that you're that you're using. So I think it just streamlines also for those larger organizations that will be running multiple birthdays on the same at the same time. Yeah, that's something we can add too is that if you have different rooms for your birthdays, let's say you're a larger center, you have I don't know two two lunch rooms and two gymnasiums. Well, each of those can be assigned as resources to each each party, right? Yeah, you know exactly where everyone is. Uh,[16:03] and on your on your booking side of things, you know exactly what's available at all times. When somebody reserves, automatically the right resource gets booked. So, it's just so many headaches are avoided this way. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, not only is it rewarding to run birthday parties in your center, but it's also fun because you feel like you're in control, right? So, I think that's huge. This episode is sponsored by Activity Messenger, an online registration[16:35] software I helped build after spending more than a decade managing kids sports programs and dealing with outdated, disconnected tools that slow everything down. I know the frustration of using a bunch of old tools that don't sync, don't scale, and definitely don't make life easier. Activity Messenger is built to fix that. Our goal is to be your all-in-one operating system. modern, mobile first, and to simplify your entire workflow. Want to check it out? Visit activitymessenger.com to book your free demo. Now, let's get back to the show.Post-Party Follow-Up[17:09] Um, yeah. So, we we talked about attendance tracking. Uh, maybe we can go straight to all the post-party follow-up stuff, right? Now we're back into that that opportunity, that marketing opportunity, ability to start a conversation with those parents and those families who might not have been to your center if it wasn't for that birthday party. So tell us a little bit about that. We can send an email saying thank you. And what else can we put in there? Yeah, I think again birthday parties, if we go back to the start of the episode, we[17:43] said are are great great marketing opportunity to bring in families who don't know about your programs into your programs for them to try it out while getting paid, right? Sounds really good. So that that's amazing. But if they leave your center and forget about it, well, you might have lost some opportunities there because not everybody's be like, "Wow, this is awesome. Let me open up my phone and sign up right away for the spring session." Right? So, by collecting their emails when they sign that waiver, what you want to do, what a lot of our[18:11] clients that have this automation do is they set up an automation that will send out an email 2 to 3 days post after the birthday saying, "Hey, Will, hope you love the birthday with your with your child. Uh, we loved having you over because you came to a birthday. Here's a 15% discount on your child's birthday when they come in next time." So, you're kind of promoting the birthdays coming up. So then you can fill out those Saturday and Sunday afternoons because the for the workflow to work, you need a lot of birthdays going in. So you can have the staff dedicated to that, right?[18:41] So you make it easier on your staff. They're going to want to do birthdays and then you can have a specialist just doing Saturday and Sunday's afternoon giving the best birthdays. So that's like the birthday workflow if we stay at the level of the birthday. But what I see a lot of clubs doing is go to the next level. Where's your bread and butter? It's on those rec programs that you're running year long. They came in and they did a birthday party. Now it's like, okay, they might not want to come back to your birthday party. They loved it, but then they're[19:07] like, oh, my kid likes gymnastics. My kid loves this dance coach or dance instructor. What are we doing in the fall session? Maybe I could come back to this instead of just looking at all these other programs like, oh, we we know we like it. We've tried it already. We loved it. So, you can also give it a coupon saying, hey, we offer a lot more than birthday parties. We offer all these programs. So automating that email to everybody who came in is going to drive a lot more revenue than than just that birthday party. Exactly. And it's really just realizing[19:34] that that birthday party guest list is it contains a lot of future clients. You know, all those kids who loved it and and you know, the person who came to your birthday party is already a client. So maybe that child is going to want to come and experience a gymnastic class, experience a karate class with their friend, right? So, a and to go further on the marketing side, let's compare it. Like, this is an interesting one. Let's say you you you make $400 on a birthday party, right? And if you're listening to this and you're trying to grow your club, you're[20:06] probably running Meta ads, right? So, you maybe have a budget of 400, 500 bucks a week or a month, right? And you're running that. So, you're paying that amount of money to get people who do not know you, who have no clue if your programs are good, who've never heard of you to come in, right? It's a hard sell. It's going to work. I truly believe in Meta ads, Instagram ads, but like flip it the other side. If you're like, "Ah, should I really do birthdays?" Here's the encouraging part. Why? Why not get paid $400 to get 20, 25 families coming in? You giving the best program ever and[20:38] then them coming back and being like, "Oh, it's a no-brainer to sign up for next session, right?" So, you're getting paid to to market instead of spending dollars to bring people to your center. You're getting paid for it. So again, I stopped giving birthday parties when I was running when I was in operations because it was a headache. But nowadays, the tech is there. And the marketing that comes around the tech is not only going to simplify your life, but it's going to help you grow. And you know, it could be one of the best marketing moves you can do just bumping with selling[21:04] more birthdays or starting birthday parties at your center. Absolutely. So, you know, the the the end result of this is if you can get all of this in place, all of the automation in terms of scheduling, in terms of organization of that guest list, the end result is you're going to create better birthday parties, better weekends, you're going to create better memories for all the people who come. And that's just going to along with that that marketing workflow is just going to create more and more interest in your activities.[21:41] So we have a a really great uh workflow here. And like I said again, if you're interested in diving deeper in this and how it actually works, uh go check out that YouTube video where we really present the whole workflow. Uh today we just wanted to give you ideas and and sort of motivate you to think about birthday parties again. Let's say, you know, maybe you tried before and you kind of got discouraged. Uh we just want to sort of encourage you to say it's worth it. It's worth it. And now there are tools that exist that can really make it easy to run.[22:12] And the importance also of like getting regular birthday parties at your center, right? Because if you're just running one or two per month, it's like it it doesn't it doesn't have the same effect, right? Because then your your staff is like, "Oh, how do I do a birthday party again? Oh, those are those are hard. Those are heavy. you know, I don't I don't really want to come in on a Saturday afternoon, random Saturday afternoon, right? But if you put in all the marketing effort that we kind of talked about and more, then when you get regular, then you have these specialists[22:37] that you can pay quite a lot to to stay on a Saturday afternoon because you're, you know, you're charging a certain amount and you can pay them a lot more than their hourly rate and get these specialists to be there and then they they get better at giving birthdays. So, your birthday's offer gets better and better. So it fills out even more and then again it's just this kind of cycle of all these new families you know 20 hundreds of families probably hundreds of new families per month coming into your center trying your program like that that has incredible ripple effect[23:05] to to the rest of your programming. Yeah and huge benefit. So the idea hereOutro[23:10] again if we recap is you know market before the birthday let parents self-book those reservations um and then go ahead and automate those invitations automate the waivers the parent sends the RSVP invitation to their guest list. So much of this is just taken off your shoulders as the admin. Uh make attendance simpler and then there's that opportunity for follow-up after the event. And this whole workflow that we've described here is uh that just that marketing engine that has so much value.[23:43] Anything you want to add before we uh we close off? No, I think that that was good. All right. Awesome. Well, thanks everyone. I hope this episode gave you some good ideas, gave you some good encouragement. As always, let us know what you think in the comments here below the video. And if you have any questions on on how to set this up, you know, you just reach out. You can get on a call with us, and we'd love to present it to you in person as well. So, we're always available to help you out. Hope you enjoyed, and we'll see you on[24:10] the next one. Bye, everyone. I will.

Keep listening

The Real Problem With Mailchimp for Sports & Leisure

21 min · Olivier Rousseau & William Rochford · May 26, 2026

Why Google Forms Doesn’t Work for Sports Registrations

25 min · Olivier Rousseau & William Rochford · May 12, 2026

Level Up Your Registration System with These 5 Advanced Features (Part 3)

20 min · Olivier Rousseau & William Rochford · Apr 28, 2026

See what we're working on at Activity Messenger

Get our product newsletter to see our latest features and learn how they can help your sports club, camp, or leisure organization!