How to send a win back campaign in The Studio Director

Build your win back list

Hold your list in a tag. Tags work as an email filter, so one tag reaches the whole group.

Past students

1. Open the Settings tab. Under Family / Student Administration, click Enter Tag Descriptions and save a tag such as Win Back.
2. Open Reports and run Student Drop History. Since April 2026 it shows contact details. Click a column heading to sort it, then tag the students who dropped in the last six months.
3. Run Students Not Returning to see who was enrolled last season but not this one. To tag them in bulk, run the Retention List for those two seasons and tag from its results.

If you would rather not tag, two values of the email Enrollment filter find past families directly. Dropped from current season class and not currently enrolled finds this season's drops. Family was enrolled before but not currently enrolled finds families from any earlier season.

Prospects who never enrolled

The help center treats a lead as a family with no students and a Lead tag. Find them under Reports, Family List. Clear the balance due dates and set Family Tag to Lead. No Lead tag? Use the email filter Family has never been enrolled or waitlisted. Add Family added on or after set to six months ago. Trial students appear in the Student Make Ups/Trials/Drop Ins report, and you can tag them there.

Start with the most recent

If the list is long, tag the last two months of drops first and send to them. Then add months three to six.

Send the three emails

Open the Communications tab, which some articles call the Email/Text tab. Choose An Email Note, then A group of students or families. Set Family or Student Tag to Win Back and click Run Report. Write the email and click Send Email.

• Before Days 5 and 10, find who came back. Run the same screen with Enrollment set to Family has a student currently enrolled and read the To field without sending.
• Move those families from Win Back to a Came Back tag. On their page, open the Tags list, pick Win Back under Remove Tag and click Save Changes.
• Each family gets its own copy. Nobody sees other addresses.
• Save the emails as templates under Manage E mail Templates. Click More formatting options to reach the Templates and Send Test Email icons.
• The Name in Studio Contact Info becomes the From name. The help pages do not say where replies go, so reply to a test email and check.
• Release 9.8.0 (September 2026) added a time to scheduled emails. The help articles do not show where to schedule a group email, so send each one by hand on its day.
• To see who opted out, use Advanced Search for Families with Opt Out of Emails set to Do not send emails to family. The help pages do not describe an unsubscribe link.

Send the two texts

For a US studio, The Studio Director cannot send these texts right now. Its Text Messaging article (July 2025) says the feature works only outside the US. Send both texts from the tool you already use for texting, only to families who agreed to get texts.

• Outside the US, Setup Text Messaging buys a dedicated number. Texts stop at 160 characters. The help page listed Canada at $1 a month plus 5 cents a text in October 2026.
• Families opt in by texting a code to that number. Texting STOP, END, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL or QUIT opts them out.
• There is no delivery receipt. The Text Message History report lists texts, opt in requests and replies.

Your ten day plan in The Studio Director

The five messages, ready to fill in, are on the win back email templates page. Keep each text under 160 characters once your names and link are in.

Can The Studio Director run it for you?

Only for leads. Manage Drip Email Campaigns runs four email campaigns: Prospect, New Customer, New Season and Birthday. None starts when a student drops, and none sends texts.

• The Prospect Drip emails new families with no enrollment, up to 360 days after they were added. You choose whether trial families count.
• Write each email as a Prospect template and add it with Add new email to this campaign. Set its timing, then set Campaign Active to Yes.
• The help page does not say whether existing families get the emails. Send to your current leads by hand.
• The Daily Alerts report lists students who missed consecutive classes in the last 30 days. It sends nothing.
• Every plan has every feature, priced by student count. In October 2026 the pricing page started at $65 a month for up to 100 students, or $39 with payment processing.

See who came back

• Ask the front desk to note anyone who says your code word, and tag those families Came Back too.
• An Advanced Search on the Came Back tag shows the total in the side panel. That is your count.
• Retention List counts lost, new and staying students between two seasons.
• Dashboard/Trends charts Students Enrolled and New Student Sign Ups over 13 months.
• Prospect Drip statistics show how many prospects became new customers.

Watch out for

• Do not delete old families. A deleted family cannot be emailed, and support cannot restore it.
• A bounce or spam report sets a family to Do not send emails to family on its own. Switch it back only after they fix it.
• Opens are tracked only if your signature uses the rich text editor in Edit Email Signature.
• Enrollment filters work by family. If one child dropped but a sibling still takes class, the family counts as currently enrolled. It will look like it came back, so check those families by hand.
• The currently enrolled values look at every season you have not archived. An enrollment in an old season you never archived can still count.
• Your fee follows your student count. Keep leads as families without students until they enroll.

Sources

• Sending emails (The Studio Director, July 2021)
• Email filters (The Studio Director, September 2021)
• Email templates (The Studio Director, January 2025)
• Manage tags (The Studio Director, January 2025) and adding or removing tags (The Studio Director, August 2021)
• Tracking leads (The Studio Director, January 2025)
• Student reports (The Studio Director, July 2021)
• Advanced search (The Studio Director, August 2024)
• Studio contact information (The Studio Director, October 2025)
• Text messaging (The Studio Director, July 2025)
• Other reports (The Studio Director, April 2025)
• Drip email campaigns (The Studio Director, October 2025)
• Dashboard and alerts reports (The Studio Director, July 2021)
• Email signature (The Studio Director, July 2021)
• Deleting a family (The Studio Director, August 2024)
• Release 9.8.0 (The Studio Director, September 2026) and release 9.3.0 (The Studio Director, April 2026)
• Pricing (The Studio Director, seen October 2026)