Welcome to Playground CRM and Marketing Automation. With this new feature you can capture new leads, send automated emails, manage tour bookings, and more. CRM has the power to increase your center's revenue by scaling your lead list and ensuring that open seats are ready to be filled with new students.
This article shows you how to set up your CRM for success.
💡 CRM is an added feature. Please reach out to your dedicated account manager to purchase the CRM subscription. To contact your account manager, navigate to the Support button in the top right corner of your screen and click the Send Email button in the account manager section.
CRM Dictionary
Here are some CRM terms that may be new to you! These terms are used throughout Playground CRM.
CRM | CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a system or strategy designed to manage interactions with customers and prospects, streamline processes, and increase revenue. |
CCMS | CCMS, or Child Care Management Software, is the Playground dashboard that you know and love. You can toggle between your Playground CRM and your Playground CCMS. |
Properties | Properties are data fields that store important information about your leads such as birthday or desired start date. |
Leads | A lead is a potential customer who has expressed interest in your school. |
Stages | Stages are the key phases of family's journey through your sales/enrollment process. Stages help you track lead progress and manage relationships. |
Automations | Automations are workflow that streamline repetitive tasks such as sending emails. |
Custom Properties
Properties are the information you would like to collect from your leads. Properties can be associated with the lead, guardian, or student. Properties can also be linked to fields in your CCMS. When you graduate a student to your CCMS, any fields mapped to the CCMS will be carried over on the student and guardian profiles.
Create a Custom Property
Playground provides several default properties. You can add additional properties to collect the information that is most important to your business.
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Settings on the left sidebar, and then click the Properties tab at the top of the screen.
Click the white + Add Property button in the top right corner of your screen.
The Add Property sidebar will open.
Enter the Property Label. The label should define the information you are requesting.
Select who the information should be associated with (lead, student, or guardian).
Select the Field Type. The field type defines the type of information that will be entered in this field (text, phone, email, date, dropdown, number, etc)
Click the blue Save button. Your custom property is now saved. You can edit or delete the property by clicking the three dots to the right of the property.
Map a Custom Property to CCMS
Custom properties can map to custom fields on student and guardian fields.
🚨 Before mapping the custom property, be sure that you have a matching custom field on the student or guardian profile.
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Settings on the left sidebar, and then click the Properties tab at the top of the screen.
Click the three dots next to the custom property you want to map to your CCMS. Then click Edit.
The Edit Property sidebar will open. At the bottom of the sidebar select a CCMS custom field to map to.
Click the blue Save button. The custom property will now show the CCMS field that it maps to.
Stages
Stages are the key phases of family's journey through your sales/enrollment process. Playground CRM comes preloaded with seven stages. You can choose to use these stages, or you can completely customize your stages.
Add a Stage
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Settings on the left sidebar, and then click the Stages tab at the top of the screen.
Click the white Add Stage button at the bottom of the screen.
Add a name for the stage.
Designate if the stage is a Terminal Stage. A terminal stage marks the end of a customer's journey in CRM. A terminal stage can be closed won (the student enrolls in your school) or closed lost (the student is no longer interested or is not eligible to enroll).
Click the check icon to save your changes.
💡 Stages can be reordered by dragging and dropping them to a different place in the list.
Add Existing Leads to Playground
You may have a set of existing families that are interested in your school. You can add these families to your Playground CRM as leads. Once in the system, you can enjoy the benefits of centralized tour booking, emailing, texting, and automations.
💡 If you are coming from another CRM provider, Playground may be able to upload your leads for you! Please contact your account manager to request to have your leads imported.
Manually Add Leads
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Leads on the left sidebar.
Click the blue Add Lead button in the top right corner of your screen.
Add the Lead Details.
Select the stage that this lead is in. If you created custom stages, they will appear in this list.
Optionally, add who at your school is the owner of this lead.
Add the Guardian and Student Details. If you added any custom properties, they will appear here.
Click the blue + Add button next to Guardians and Students to add multiple guardians and students.
When you have entered all details, click the blue Save button to save your lead. Your lead will now appear in the lead table.
Connect your Phone Number and Email
With connected phone numbers and emails, admins can text, call, and email through CRM.
💡 Only one phone number and email can be connected to Playground.
Texting
Texting can be purchased for an additional $20/month/1000 message segments. Texting is purchased separately to account for ongoing monthly fees required to register your business with mobile carriers.
Multiple texting subscriptions can be purchased if you anticipate sending more than 1000 message segments per month. A message segment consists of 160 characters. If one message is 180 characters, it would count as two message segments. For example, this paragraph is 344 characters, and if sent as a text message would count as three segments.
If you have multiple sites, you only need to purchase one texting subscription. However, you may choose to purchase multiple if you anticipate sending more than 1000 message segments per month.
If you are interested in purchasing texting, please reach out to your account manager.
Activate Texting
Businesses must complete a verification process to text their customers. This process is a US government regulation that was put in place to protect consumers against scammers. Your account manager will reach out with a form that you must complete to initiate this process.
🚨 Texting approval can take 2-3 weeks to process.
Calling
Calls can be placed directly from Playground CRM using your CRM phone number. You can set up call forwarding so that any calls made to your CRM phone number will ring on your preferred device.
Create a CRM Phone Number
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Settings on the left sidebar, and then click the Connections tab at the top of the screen.
Click Add Phone Number.
Type in your local area code.
A set of phone numbers will be generated. Choose your preferred number and then click Select & Finish.
Set Up Call Forwarding
If you would like calls forwarded to another number, add that number here.
Emailing
Emails can be sent through Playground CRM. Follow the instructions below to connect your email:
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Settings on the left sidebar, and then click the Connections tab at the top of the screen.
Click the blue Add Email button.
A new browser window will open with a screen to log into your email provider.
Once this process is completed, your email address will be listed on the Connections page.
💡 Regardless of which user is signed in to Playground CRM, all emails will be sent from the same email address.
Forms
Forms are used to collect information from leads. Forms can be shared on your website and/or social media to gather new leads.
Create a Form
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Forms on the left sidebar.
Click the blue New Form button.
Enter a name for your form.
Click the grey + Add Field button.
Select whether the field will be a student or guardian property.
Name the question and choose a CRM field to map it to. If you added custom properties, they will appear here.
Adjust the settings for your form and designate the default stage for new leads.
Click Save and Exit to save your form. Your form will now appear in the form list.
🚨 All forms must include student name, guardian name, guardian phone, and guardian email.
Share Your Form
Click the three dots next to your form and then click Copy Link.
Meeting Types
Meetings allow your leads to book tours and/or meetings with you.
🚨 Meeting types must have a connected form and availability.
Add Availability
Meeting types are associated with an availability. Availabilities are used to designate when meetings can be booked. If your school is closed for certain holidays, you can add date overrides to prevent bookings on those days.
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Meetings on the left sidebar and then click Availability.
Click the blue + Add New Availability button. Enter a name for the availability and then select the time zone in which you are located. Then click the blue Save button.
Enter the times you are available for tours and add date overrides if needed.
Click the blue Save button. Your new availability will now show in your availability tab.
Add a Meeting Type
You can create one or multiple meeting types depending on the types of tours or meetings you offer.
From your CRM Dashboard, navigate to Meetings on the left sidebar and then click Meeting Types.
Click the blue + New Meeting Type button.
Add the name of your meeting type, a description, a meeting duration, and a location. The location can be the name of your school. It does not have to be your school's address. Click the blue Save button.
The Edit Event page will open. Click the Scheduling tab on the left side bar and then click the Availability that you want to associate with this meeting. A preview of your availability will appear.
Add a minimum notice to control how soon before an available time a lead can book. Add a maximum notice to control how far in the future a lead can book.
Select the Booking Page Options from the left side bar. Select the form that you want leads to complete when booking the tour. Then select the stage that leads should be moved to once they have booked.
Click the Follow-up tab from the left side bar. Add a notification email for the person at your school who should be notified when a new tour is booked. This notification will allow the staff member to add the event to their google calendar.
Click the blue Save button. Your new meeting type will now appear in your Meeting Type tab.
Share Your Meeting Type
You can share your meeting type by clicking the copy link icon to the right of the meeting type.