by Maia Vassileva, Master Franchisee, KindyROO Europe

KindyROO is science based, fun educational program, aimed at supporting the natural development of the baby, toddler and preschooler, preparing them for school years and life.
Over the last 35 years our curriculum has been constantly tested and updated to ensure we incorporate latest scientific research and educational guidelines like Early Years Learning Framework. We focus on:

• Whole child development and boost of school readiness skills
• Development of confidence, self-esteem, sense of achievement and feel-good factor
• Incorporation of soft skills – team work, concentration and listening skills
• Creating secure and mutually respectful relations between the child, the parent and the teacher, a partnership approach to deliver ongoing learning outcomes

We are an international franchise with multiple centres across Luxembourg, Cyprus and Bulgaria.

We needed a platform that was flexible enough to support our franchise hierarchy – from head office to our franchisees (who often manage multiple centres), and teachers. And of course, our customers who are the parents and their children that attend our classes. Booking Autopilot had the flexibility to be configured exactly how we needed, while also catering for different languages, time zones and other settings for each country KindyROO operates in.

The ability to see live sales and booking data across all of our centres was something we needed to effectively manage the franchise. And key for us was the integrated marketing – this meant we only needed one platform for bookings, marketing and management of the platform.

The idea of switching to a new platform for our large network was initially daunting, however we were surprised with how easy the process was. The team at BA were extremely helpful and responsive. There is also an online knowledge base with articles and videos which the team can use if they ever have any questions about the platform, which we love!

Our customers find the booking process very simple and quick. Once they register, they can go to their own parent portal to see all upcoming classes, and also see weekly class information and any homework. It’s really easy to use, and has all of our customised KindyROO branding, which is important to us.

The real time data lets us track sales and customer numbers across all centres, and then drill down at a detailed level if we need to analyse performance, and understand exactly how to support specific franchisees. The charts can highlight trends so we can address them early on. The team at BA have also offered advice on what marketing activities can help address particular KPIs, which has been useful. For example, how to set up an automated retention campaign for customers that haven’t rebooked for the next term of classes.

The integrated marketing has been a game changer for us. We set up automated marketing that goes out to our customers at the right time on their journey with KindyROO. Over time we’ve refined our marketing approach, and understand when we need to engage or re-engage our customers. And also when extra incentives, like discounts are needed. Booking Autopilot lets us do all of this, and for most of our marketing, it’s all automated based on the rules we’ve set.

Since 2020 we’ve seen consistent sales volumes increases each year (approximately 50% year on year) largely supported by the Booking Autopilot infrastructure. The team at BA have been really helpful in supporting us to set up these campaigns, and making a lot of useful suggestions along the way.

Yes, absolutely!

We are continually growing, so we are using the platform to support expansion of existing centres with more customers, as well as finding new franchisees to start more centres. And we’ll use the integrated marketing suite to help us achieve this.

From our experience, it was a very easy decision to switch in the end. We saved on platform fees because we didn’t need a separate CRM system, or a separate marketing system. Booking Autopilot had everything we needed in a single package. The team at BA also aren’t your typical suppliers; they’re experienced in working with franchises (especially children’s franchises) and their experience has helped us configure the platform to help us grow – which is what we wanted!

It’s an extremely flexible platform with more features than anything else we could find on the market, and it opened our eyes as to how integrated marketing could help us grow the KindyROO network.