Athletic Leagues and Payment Collection: How Text To Pay Solutions Can Help
If you operate an athletic league, you’ll know that it’s not all about play. Athletic leagues take a huge amount of organization and coordination of members, and between last-minute changes to venues and locations, scheduling staff and team members, and keeping track of payments, running the administrative side of your athletic league or sports teams can be a full-time job in itself.
And all of these things come at a cost to your business – which is why, when your customers don’t pay on time, it can be a huge obstruction to your functionality. Athletic leagues run like any other business, with overheads and expenditures – yet sometimes, due to the sporting and activity-based nature of your company, your members can forget that their cold hard cash is the thing that makes all the play happen, and can treat payment with a fairly casual air.
Luckily, there are solutions available that can help you to keep a tighter grip on your payments – and text to pay solutions could be one of the most valuable for your business. With text to pay for athletic leagues, you’re able to invoice your customers directly to their mobile phones, allowing you to bypass frequently-missed emails or clunky cash payments and allowing your members to pay in a few simple taps. You’re also able to prompt outstanding payments from overdue customers with reminder texts, as well as wield text technology for a host of benefits to your league.
So, let’s take a look at how text to pay could help your athletic league keep on top of payment collection.
Faster, Quicker Payments
With text to pay for athletic leagues, your members can pay for their membership via an SMS (or text) message sent straight to their cell phone from your SMS Virtual Terminal. By accessing the link or invoice attached in the text, your member can pay via ACH or credit card quickly and easily.
For athletic leagues, this means that you’re able to bypass unwieldy and outdated cash payments for your services, which are not only labor-intensive to process but can frequently be lost, wrong, or else incorrectly documented. Furthermore, in a world where contact-free payment has not only become more convenient, but desirable to keep the risk of infection down. Instead, payments made via mobile phone can be documented instantly, giving your customer peace of mind that they’re all paid up, and allowing you to keep track of payments.
Also, integrating text to pay services is a huge save on labor resources and cost. Think about it: with equipment, space rentals, advertising, and the myriad other costs that your organization has to account for, is it feasible to devote a member of staff to spend hours on the phone chasing up payments from members? With text to pay, you’re able to simply schedule payment reminder texts from your SMS Virtual Terminal, to send at a pre-determined time; and for late payments, you’re also able to schedule reminder texts to prompt your members to get their money to you.
Improved Communication With Members
Enabling text to pay for athletic leagues doesn’t only streamline your payment processes – it also opens up a host of benefits through the integration of a new channel of communication with your customers.
For example, if you have to make a last-minute change to your game schedule or the location of a game being played, it can be a nightmare to get in touch with your members directly and quickly to let them know about alterations. With text to pay services, however, you’re able to utilize text to pay technology to notify your members of the change by sending an SMS straight to their phone, through your employees being able to send out mass (but individual) texts to your member database from the SMS Virtual Terminal using a simple template.
Further to this, your employees can schedule game reminders to send to your members, to refresh their memory about upcoming events. You’re also able to track registrations through the SMS Virtual Terminal – for example, if a potential member has started registration (and supplied a mobile number) but has failed to complete the process, you’re able to send a prompt text with instructions for them to complete it – driving new membership and. In turn, increasing your revenue.
Further Benefits
Once you enable text to pay for athletic leagues, the capacities with which you use it are essentially limitless. It’s possible, for example, to drive further participation and sales from your current members, by sending out promotions for new events or schemes that simultaneously feel personal to your customers and can effectively drive new profit for your league. A simple text from your SMS Virtual Terminal can do the same job that thousands of dollars in marketing cost can, in the most direct way.
Also, you can use text to pay services to organize your staff and schedule shifts. Through creating a list of contacts for each shift or event, you’re able to then send a simple message (from a template, for added ease) to all of your employees or volunteers at once. They’re then able to reply to you directly to confirm hours or attendance – or, can even access links you send to any scheduling software or spreadsheets, to sign themselves up and save you further hassle. You can even use text to pay to send updates and training to your employees, too – it’s an easy way to communicate, both for you and your employees.
The Bottom Line
With text to pay services, athletic leagues cannot only utilize SMS technology to consolidate payment and augment payment collection but also to communicate with both their members and their employees directly and easily. Through simple text messaging, you’re able to maintain contact with your people better than ever before.
To discuss further options for payment integration with your athletic league, contact Agile Payments today. With almost two decades of experience in payment integration, our knowledgeable team knows just how to help your athletic league succeed through new technologies, and take your organization to the next level. Get in touch now.
