5 More Must-Have Features Your Registration Software Should Have (Part 2)

24 min · Olivier Rousseau & William Rochford · Apr 14, 2026

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

YouTube

Amazon Music

About this episode

Choosing the right registration software is critical for any sports organization. In Part 2, Olivier Rousseau and William Rochford go deeper into the features every registration platform should include, whether you're switching systems or choosing your first one. They cover automated waitlists, customer feedback surveys, staff management, makeup classes, and skill tracking with evaluations and certificates. These are practical tools that save time, protect revenue, and keep your programs running smoothly.

What we discuss

Automated waitlists, and why the notification should come from your own email domain so it doesn't land in spam Collecting customer feedback with surveys, and turning good answers into testimonials Staff management, from schedules to access to attendance lists Makeup classes that parents can book themselves Skill tracking, evaluations, and certificates for each participant Final thoughts on what to ask during sales calls Resources mentioned Best Class Management Software? 6 Must-Have Features Before You Buy (Part 1) Level Up Your Registration System with These 5 Advanced Features (Part 3) Activity Messenger surveys Activity Messenger staff onboarding Activity Messenger certificates Activity Messenger automations Book a free demo of Activity Messenger Follow Olivier on LinkedIn 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] Welcome to part two of our series of episodes where we want to help you ask the right question when it comes time for maybe switching your registration platform or maybe you're shopping for a registration platform for the first time and you haven't thought about everything. So, we're going to try and help you think about everything that you need to ask in a sales call because there's nothing worse than signing a deal and being dissatisfied with your decision after the fact because you forgot to think of one or two things. So, let's get to it.[0:40] Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm your host Will and I'm here with Oli today. Hey Will. as usual. Start laughing about ourselves now because we start every episode the same way. Um, all right. So, today we're talking about extra things to think about when you are shopping for a registration platform. So, pull out your notes from the first episode if you've got them. And, uh, we're going to continue down the list right here. And you know, one thing maybe to mention right here off the get-go is, you know,[1:14] oftentimes when we think about a registration platform, we're thinking about, all right, how does how do they handle registrations? How do they handle payments? Can they handle my special rules uh in the way that I want to run my organization, but maybe some things that we think about a bit less is how does it handle all of the stuff after the initial registration. So um we hope to bring a few points regarding that and uh yeah so let's go. We start with waitlists. SoWaitlists[1:45] once we've filled out our class uh it can be very very helpful to have waitlist because sometimes people will you know back out of a class close to the beginning of the class and um if we have waitlist and especially automated waitlist it becomes very easy to fill up those spots. So Oli talk to us about that. Yeah, I think when you're when you're looking for software, I think nowadays, I mean, if if your software doesn't have a waitlist, like kind of run, you know what I mean? Like you're supposed to have a waitlist. It's it's one of those big things where you[2:15] can lose a lot of money if you don't have it. Uh but a lot of times, you know, you'll be on a sales calls and it's not necessarily a question I get. I I do a lot of sales calls like, "Oh, you got waitlist." And they they kind of check, you know, it's kind of a check. Yeah. I would go and ask a few more questions. So, one of them is, "Okay, cool. So, how is the waitlist automated? And how is it sent out to the person on the waitlist? Is it a notification by email? And if so, does it come from your domain? So, info@, you know, gym[2:43] gymnastics club.com or does it come the notification from the software's domain? Right? So, notification at softwareabc.com. And there's a big difference there because that notification means all the communications that are coming out of that software regardless of which org is is using it will be coming from that domain. So if another org does spam using that software, your notification for waitlist is more likely to end up in spam and therefore lose a client, right? So are you able to configure your own domain email address? Super[3:14] important to ask for. Yeah. And we really don't want that email to go in spam because a waitlist is such a time-sensitive thing. Exactly. And then next thing is okay, is email the correct way of sending it out? Why not text? Right. So are you able to automate a text? So, let's say you have a, you know, there's 12 spots in your camp. Somebody last minute 5 days before unregisters. Now, you have an open spot, right? Chances are somebody comes from marketing really low, but you got three people on your wait list. So, you automate the waitlist. First person[3:42] gets a text. First of all, by getting the text, they're going to see it much quicker than than the email or maybe they're going to miss the email. They won't miss the text. Yeah. And then, does it have the option to unsubscribe or not unsubscribe, but say, "I don't want that spot." Right. To refuse a spot. Yeah. If you refuse a spot, then the next person gets the text and the next person gets a text. So, it's crazy because if you use text and you can refuse a spot within maybe a very short amount of time, you[4:05] might have went through three people where on an email in spam would take 24 hours before even getting to the second person by email and maybe in spam again, right? And you only have 5 days to get that spot. So, I think it's such an important kind of those are two questions really important. I would really encourage say put on text because if I'm on a wait list, I got three young boys. If I'm on a wait list, just text me. I want to know if there's a spot. You know, that's not it's not spam. It's not marketing. It's just I asked for that notification.[4:31] And the reality is probably if I've signed up for a wait list, I'm waiting for that notification. You know what I mean? Exactly. 100%. You know, it's and and I've had it in the past where somebody's waiting for that notification, but it ended up in their spam. So, they missed the 24-hour window. They find it a few days later and then somebody else took their spot and they're disappointed, frustrated. Emotions you do not want to[4:52] Exactly. So, you're dealing with a frustrated client. So, the whole experience of the client is much better with the text. But also, the text will help you get more clients in. And I always I love to give the example if you have if you're selling $200 programs and you only get one per month that you don't lose because you send it by text and you automated all of that, that's 200 bucks a month pure profit. You know, 25,500 bucks at the end of the year. Yeah. In your pockets just because you got that simple[5:18] because you set it up once and then you're good to So I mean that pays for a huge part of your software when you think about it. So I think that that one little question can go a long way when you're deciding which software to pick. Very very good points and um I think it's also good for uh customer satisfaction you know uh because the person receives well we we mentioned it with the email if they miss it they're frustrated. We don't want to generate negative emotions in our clients. So customer satisfaction wow gets us it. And even if they refuse[5:49] it, they're like, "Wow, cool." You know, like they actually wrote to me with the the waitlist. So in line with that,Customer feedback[5:55] another thing that is super important uh in the business world, people call it NPS, but um we can call it just customer feedback. Um so the ability to connect and send automated surveys based on the activities we're doing. Yes. Uh super important for a lot of different reasons. So talk to us about that. Yeah, I think you want to know how things are going. Um, I think the challenge in the sports and leisure industry is you'll hear the angry parents a lot and you might not hear the[6:23] happy parents as much. I think that's a that's a society thing. Yeah, possibly. Um, so we tend to sometimes disregard, you know, at one point just disregard surveys totally because it's like, well, you know, they they don't have the context and all that all that kind of reasons. And a lot of times your registration software, which has all the context of all your clients, is unable to create a survey, which for me is crazy. It's like no, you're taking registration. You should able be able to survey your your your clients at the same time, right? Um so[6:50] and then being able to automate it. So for example, you know, I used to when we when I started off 13 years ago in the operations and sports and leisure, you know, we my partner and I were giving classes and eventually we got more and more people uh coaches and then I'm like, I need to survey. I need to understand how they're doing. I'm not there with them, right? So we started doing surveys at the end of the session. It was on SurveyMonkey. We would send an email. People would not read it. Long story short, we stopped doing it for a while because I would forget about it.[7:14] As we grew, it just became too much work. So, I stopped doing surveys. But, right, if you have a software that can automate it, let's say 5 days before the end of class to send it to all the parents or 2 days after, whichever you want, so that regularly, regardless of the activity they took, they always get the survey at the same time, you can then accumulate responses. And yeah, sure, you can still ignore that angry parent that you know doesn't like the class for whatever reason. and you know that all 10 other like it.[7:41] Yeah. If it's an outlier. Exactly. But you'll see trends coming out. Right. Right. And I think you can then take s, oh, this class is harder to give or this coach is not doing that good of a of a of a job getting kids in. Right. There's all these little things that you'll be able to see if you get enough data. But if you have to do it manually, you'll forget. If you don't send it if you send it sometimes 3 weeks after or two weeks before, whatever. If you don't send it regularly at the right time, you[8:05] won't get the the correct data. Right. But you will not if you don't automate it, right? So by automating it, you know that the system goes like that. Your your only job is to go in and look at the analytics and then figure out how you can improve uh and then you know obviously discern what's good feedback, what's bad feedback um and even take it to another level. Reach out to the parents who gave you really good feedback for testimonials. Bring it as a marketing tool. Turn it into a marketing tool. Exactly.[8:31] So that's really really important and next level tip right there. So think about how does that software deal with surveys? Can it do it? Do you have to integrate something else like SurveyMonkey or not? We'd say ideally keep it in the same place because now you have all of your subscriber data, all of your uh you know your participant data and that's really precious when it comes to uh to analyzing data like that. This episode is sponsored by Activity Messenger, an online registration software I helped build after spending[9:01] 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. So, we talk a lot about uh,Staff management[9:34] you know, registrations for participants, but there's also the whole staff management part of it, too. So, can the software deal with staff management? Can we have instructors connected to the um you know the different um participant lists and things like that? So what are what are some of the good things to think about here? Yeah, I think I think one thing you want to do is you want to involve your staff in the software, right? You don't want to be you want the your software to be just this closed box that your staff has[10:04] no idea what's going on. But at the same time, you probably don't want like your 17-year-old camp counselor to have access to your reporting, your financial reports, right? So you want level of of permissions that are that are there where you can give your staff access to only their attendance list, right? Only their private lessons, whatever it is. And you can maybe even like more senior staff give them the ability to communicate with parents saying, "Hey, I'm going to be late or don't forget to bring this next class," right? So you can eliminate some of the admin stuff on[10:30] you if you have a software that gives you the attendance list and the ability to communicate with parents. I think that's a that's a big one. Um, and then other stuff that are important like what's your onboarding process, right? So, you're hiring 30 people, 40, 100 people every summer for your summer camp. How are you getting people to, you know, um your your staff to onboard, sign documents, sign contracts, ask for time off, uh sign confidentiality agreement, see your video trainings, can you have a hub where they can sign those track information, time track, worked[11:02] hours. Exactly. So, all those things like does that is that included as well? Because your registration software hopefully it can do more than just take registration right it can actually become a whole ecosystem for your business but if your staff is still going on other softwares and especially with part-time staff like I used to have staff working three hours four hours a week and then it's like you need three softwares one for attendance the other one for your staff management the other one for onboarding documents it's like[11:28] really like that's just going to that's just going to overwhelm your staff and they're not going to do it but if you can bundle everything into one place they only have to go to one place for their time off request or it just makes everything easier and they're actually going to do it instead of not doing it because it's all over the place. Correct. And maybe one thing I could say that's sort of semi-related to this is I see more and more organizations coming into coming to us for internal communication. So the ability to uh[11:54] communicate easily between staff, you know, so but you send a a text message and you know in the context of instructors or even part-time instructors, this could be really important too. You know, you schedule uh an SMS to go out not to your participants. Well, you could do that too, but to to a special message that goes out to your staff. Yeah. People like, "Hey, Saturday morning, you know, here's the things to remember." And I think anybody listening could relate to this. You do a training 3 4[12:21] weeks before your start of session. You say, "Guys, we cannot forget these four points when we start the session and then you go and watch your coach and they completely forget all of them." Of course, it makes sense. People are busy. A lot of part-time staff has school, they're studying, they're doing all that stuff. Imagine if you just automate, schedule a text that morning and saying, "Hey, just as we spoke at training, don't forget these four points when you start your session." Yeah.[12:44] How many more of your staff are going to do that? Like it's it's going to be a completely different thing. And then you start the session on the right foot. Better quality classes. So it can go a really really long way. Yeah. And in that text message, you can say, "Hey, have a great day." And so you're doing you're doing, you know, employee morale at the same time. 100%. Surveys a bunch of stuff you can do as well. There's a lot of things. Yeah. But surveys. Yeah. We were talking about[13:06] surveys earlier. You can do staff surveys. How is it to work? How am I as an employer? You know, 100%. Um, so yeah. And and especially in sports and leisure. We've mentioned this before in another episode, but especially in sports and leisure, a happy instructor usually means happy clients. Yeah. Your product is your instructor. Exactly. Exactly. Like you're So you got to take care of them.[13:27] Yeah. It's a very good point. Um All right. SoMakeup classes[13:32] I think this might be you could tell me if I'm right or wrong, but this might be um sort of a a sticking point for a lot of organizations. Makeup classes. Yes, they can be a hassle. They can be hard to manage. So, if our software can handle makeup classes in a way that makes sense, we'd love that. Have we lost hope on makeup classes or can we make it happen? No, I had lost hope in the past. I remember, you know, we I would give a lot of programs during the summer. Uh,[14:02] and people would sign up for a weekly program and they would come in and be like, "Well, I'm leaving this summer. I'll be gone three weeks. Yeah. What's the point?" So, I'm signing up for 10 week program, but I know right away that I won't be there. And you know there's always another class that you miss cuz your child is sick. So just like I can't do you guys offer makeup classes but you know we grew to like thousands of of people. So I was like how do you manage makeup classes when they emailing hey can I come on this Saturday instead of[14:26] that Sunday? And it just so we just said no we don't offer makeup classes. I've lost clients because of that. But I was like I need to operate a system to make it efficient. At one point what we did is we switched and we said hey let's we do free trials before a session. So, let's offer all our our summer clients, if you want to do a makeup, come to a free trial for the fall session where I'm getting all these new clients to come for a free trial session and then all these clients are coming to do a makeup class. It worked out decently. Uh, but still,[14:53] it wasn't kind of optimal, right? Right. Um, and nowadays, if you look at your software, ask that question. If you're if you have a lot of people asking for makeup classes, it's worth asking the question. And the reason is if we can automate that. Can we can we create an ecosystem where the client comes in, signs up for a 10-week program and then can go in and remove themselves from classes that they know they're going to be on vacation and select another date where there's a spot. So if there's a 12 kids in your program and two parents remove themselves on these two Thursdays[15:23] and two other parents can make a do a makeup class at that session, right? Obviously same class like four to six or three year olds whatever age group you have but it's just makes it that people can remove themselves from classes and then add themselves in other classes if there's availability based on your max for them to do all these makeup classes but it becomes you know an ecosystem where people just do it and it just works out where people can pick another date and when that person removes themselves from a class they get a coupon which is[15:51] basically it gives them like a free a free account to go back to another class um and that That whole thing has massive advantages. First of all, you're not managing that anymore, right? They are. They are. But then there's such value in the client being like, "Oh, I'm going to miss three weeks." Well, actually, yeah, you'll be able to remove yourself and then find other weeks where you can you can maybe go twice a week. So, you'll[16:12] end up doing those 10 classes, you know, and you're not going to miss anything. So, they're they're more likely to register. Yeah. Um, but you need to create a good system. So, you need to be able to say you're only able to cancel a class x number of hours or a day before the class so that it opens it up early enough so somebody else can come do a makeup class. Sure. Because if everybody cancels an hour before class, the whole system breaks. Those are empty. You got to block it there[16:35] and and then teach your clients, hey, you're allowed to, but we need to know in advance so we can open up for somebody else. So, the sooner you do it, the better the system works. Everybody wins. Yeah. And you just see this kind of happening in real time and it just works really well. they're added to the attendance list so your staff knows that Johnny will be there that mo that Tuesday even though they're never there. Um so it just it just makes us the system needs to work and you can't you can't have parts of this. You need everything to[17:00] work or else the system or else it breaks. Of course and if you've done a good job of communicating how the system works to your clients then hopefully you're just managing exceptions. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But and the other thing too is this becomes a marketing tool. So once you have it in place Yeah. Exactly. I come in and I'm like I was saying I'm going to miss 3 weeks. No worries, you can make it up. So right[17:22] there I get the client to sign up. But there's also the client at the end of the session who's going to sign up again because he was able to remove himself when he was in vacation and he ended up saying, "Hey, I paid 200 bucks for for 10 classes. I went to 9 or 10. That's amazing. Let me sign up for the fall." They gave me the flexibility. Or at the end of the session, you're like, "Hey, I paid 200 bucks and I ended up going to five classes cuz I was on vacation for three. My kid was sick for two other weeks. Yeah, those were expensive classes.[17:48] Yeah, those were expensive. Let me not sign up next session. Right. So, it gives you a competitive advantage and it just gives you this the parent goes out there and he's like, I feel like I got my money's worth. Even if you give the best classes, if I only show up to 40% of the classes, I'm not coming back. I don't care how good the experience was. Right? So, you need to kind of combine a great experience, but also give the the parent the ability toSkill tracking, evaluations, and certificates[18:08] be present on their timeline. I think that that has massive value. So the last thing we wanted to talk about today was uh something that a lot of different types of sports need to do um you know which is basically skill tracking. So how do you allow a participant to move on to the next level in a certain discipline? I think a lot of uh sports organizations need to do this kind of thing and well it's really useful to be able to automate it. Yeah. um to be able to have the uh instructors actually fill out evaluation forms, things like that. Um[18:42] so what kind of things should we think about in advance for for this topic? I think a lot of the things we hear on on our sales calls when we're talking about skill tracking is like can I h can I have this student and kind of make the track them in time right over years over multiple sessions. So let's say a child starts at level one can at the end of the session my instructor easily go into their attendance list and fill an evaluation form that's automatically sent to the parent and then say well child A is now in level two and then because they're in level two they are[19:13] now able to go and register for next session and be allowed to sign up for level two because they completed level one. So everything has to work where it's automated, but the instructor is the one who's personalizing the evaluation, making that call and then based on that call, just toggling on the right thing and then they're able to go into the next session. Yeah. So if they try to sign up for level two, they won't actually be able to because that skill is not assigned to them. Exactly.[19:39] And related to skill tracking, there's the idea of graduation or, you know, things like that. So the ability to send certificates and I think you have a story about certificates about volume at some point becoming you know and and I think like this is especially true I think in the rec recreational where you know child signs up for a program just for fun you know and then at the end there's a little ceremony you get a coupon you get a little medal or ribbon whatever it is uh when I started my operations 13 years ago we did that you know we we[20:08] but then at some point we grew and we grew and we grew multi location and I was just like my gosh like giving ribbons to my staff that not seeing it just and then you forget. So then they go go to a class the ribbons are not there and it's disappointing because the session before they had it just became kind of a operational nightmare and we stopped it. We just said okay. But but the problem with that was that a we still we would get dozens of parents at the end of the session saying ah you know what I wish I would have had like something at the end hey you completed[20:34] their first uh you know program or they they completed this level like just giving a little something right uh cuz they got something at gymnastics right that smaller. So how do we give that without you know burdening our whole staff or making it a whole thing that's really hard to make heavy thing to maintain. Now, can we automate that again with the software? Are we able to create a certificate like a nice certificate with Canva, then come into the software, add placeholders with the child's first name, the level, the name of the instructor,[21:03] date, graduation? Yeah. And then take that and then send it to hundreds of people at the same time via email, right? Or print it out, make it nice and have your instructor write at the back something really nice about the child or comments, right? So, you can still get the personal touch if you want it. But the ability to massively do that, it gives so much value. says, "Hey, you know, they finish, they get a nice certificate, and then if you want to go even further, why not take that certificate, make it a contest, 500 kids[21:31] finish your winter session, send it to everybody, and say, "Hey, if you go share that on social media and tag our business, you'll you'll enter a draw to win your next session for free." So, all these people are going to go in, give a testimonial. Hey, Caroline loved her program. You know, you guys should sign up. Here's our certificate. They're at level two now. and it just other parents will be seeing that or maybe they'll print it out and hang it on the fridge and then when friends come over they'll see that right so it becomes a marketing tool put your logo there make it look[21:59] really nice and then make sure everybody gets a certificate at the end so again a lot of times skill tracking evaluations is for advanced athletes right but I would say that's really important you want to see the progress but then when you have your your more recreational programs maybe you don't need an evaluation you know because they're starting off but give them something at the end that they can share and they can help you grow your business. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I don't think I'm teaching anybody listening[22:23] here anything when I say this, but you know, part of the reason why, you know, kids especially, but even adults do sports is, you know, really to to feel a sense of gratification, a sense of uh, you know, I'm I'm growing, I'm getting better at something. There's something satisfying in that. And when that is recognized, you know, there's a such a value to that. And I think that especially, you know, parents who see their children kind of shining with that that recognition, really happy, really proud of their certificate or whatever it is,[22:52] you know, there's a really really good chance that those families are going to stay with you. So, it's really really powerful for client retention as well. 100%. Great. So, uh, that covers it for thisFinal thoughts[23:03] episode. I hope you found some of these points useful. If you, uh, have thought of anything, have any ideas that we haven't thought of, please, we'd love to hear them. put it in the the comments below or wherever you can communicate with us based on the I don't know all there's a lot of platforms this podcast is on but you can also write to us by email. We love to hear your feedback. Um and stay tuned because we have five more points that we want to talk about on the next episode and I'm certain there's at least one or two you haven't thought of. So uh that's going to be great. So stay[23:35] tuned and uh we'll see you next time. Take care everybody. Bye all. See you. for that.

Keep listening

Birthday Parties Might Be the Best Marketing Strategy for Sports Clubs

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

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

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!