Parent communication
Comms lets you email the right families at once instead of managing dozens of individual threads. You write the letter as families will see it, then pick who gets it and send.
Announcements are the studio owner's: Comms is in the owner's sidebar and More menu only, on the web and in the app. Front desk and instructors don't see it — they reach families through Messages.
New announcement
To: the whole school · 34 families
Snow day: classes cancelled tonight
Makeups added to next week
Email + pushEvery family
34 families · 52 contacts
In sync
Sending an announcement
- 1
Open Comms and write the letter: subject, optional inbox preview, and the message. New letters start with Hi {name}, — edit that greeting however you want. A letter needs something to say beyond that greeting — words of your own, a photo, or a button. Until it does, sending, scheduling, and tests all answer 'Write your message first.', wherever you send from, so a blank letter can never reach a family.
- 2
Insert {name} anywhere in the subject, preview, or body — each family sees their own name. Open Preview to flip through families and see the letter as they'll receive it.
- 3
Type / for a heading, list, button, or image. Drafts save as you write.
- 4
Tap Send. Choose who — all families, a billing segment, overdue balances, a recurring program, specific families, or a saved group — then check the recipient list before you send a test or send now. Overdue is households with an unpaid charge past its due date; Past due is still the autopay flag. Opening Who shows every contact who will be emailed, grouped by family: the audience count is families, the list count is people (one household can have two parents). Uncheck anyone who shouldn't get this letter. Households with no email are called out, and so is an address on file that can't receive mail — a test or placeholder address like @example.com: the counts under Who only ever include people the letter will actually reach, with a note like '1 address can't receive email (skipped)' for the rest. A program letter goes to the households of dancers on that program, and the list stays live as dancers join or leave. The confirmation tells you how many recipients were emailed; a skipped address is kept with the sent letter's history so you can see it was left out, and one bad address never stops the announcement for everyone else.
- 5
Send a test first and it lands in your own inbox exactly as families will see the letter — your studio's letterhead, the greeting, every button and photo — with [Test] in front of the subject so it can't be mistaken for the real send. A test goes only to you: no family is emailed, and nothing is recorded against the letter's history.
Note. Sending requires email (Resend) to be configured for your studio. Transactional emails — receipts, booking updates, invitations, and (when enabled) a New payment alert to your admins — go out automatically regardless.
Drafts and history
Every letter — drafts you're still writing, scheduled letters, and everything already sent — lives in the Drafts and history list beside the composer. Open a draft to pick up where you left off, or a sent letter to reread exactly what went out. The list starts with your most recent letters; when there are more, a Load older emails button at the bottom reaches back page by page, as far as your history goes. The iPhone app's Comms screen has the same list and the same button. Start typing in a sent letter and you're working on a fresh draft copy — what already went out is never changed.
Unsubscribing
Every letter ends with its reader's own 'Unsubscribe from studio emails' link. Opening the link never changes anything by itself: the page names the studio and the address and asks for a confirming press — so an inbox that scans links can never unsubscribe anyone. Confirming stops studio announcements for that one address only; receipts, billing, and booking emails keep arriving as before.
The inbox's own Unsubscribe button works too. Mail apps like Gmail, Apple Mail, and Yahoo Mail show their own Unsubscribe next to a letter — pressing it does exactly what the letter's link does: it stops studio announcements for that one address, and nothing else. Each letter's link belongs to the exact address the letter was sent to, so forwarding a letter can never unsubscribe anyone but its original reader.
An unsubscribed address simply drops out of future sends — it works the same as turning off that contact's announcements preference on their family's record, and turning the preference back on there brings their letters back any time they change their mind.
Ask Ida
Announcements answer to chat, too. Ask Ida what letters have gone out, to whom, and how a send fared. At studios with Ida's studio-wide change cards, Ida can also write and send them: draft a letter, send it now or schedule it for a date, send a test copy to you first, retry addresses that failed, and keep your saved groups current — adding families to a group, editing one, or deleting a group no letter uses. A draft costs nothing, but nothing reaches families on Ida's say-so alone: a send only happens after you've named who gets it in your own words, the card shows the letter, the audience, and how many households that is, and the count is checked again the moment you apply. A scheduled letter can be undone right from its card while it's still waiting to go.
On the iPhone appiPhone app
Comms (under More) is the same letter, pocket-sized — the phone writes with the very same letter editor as the dashboard, so a letter keeps its look however many times it moves between your phone and your computer: headings, centered text, divider lines, buttons, and linked photos all survive the trip. New email opens a full-screen composer: pick who — including Overdue — see the names and emails that will receive it, uncheck a parent who shouldn't get a copy, write the subject and inbox preview, insert {name}, preview the letter as each family will see it, then write with Title, Heading, lists, bold, italic, Center, Line (a divider), buttons, and photos. Send a test, or send now.
Drafts save as you write, and closing the sheet keeps your very last words — even ones typed as it closed. A sent letter opens to reread, with how delivery went; start typing in it and you're working on a fresh draft copy, with the letter that went out left untouched. And if a letter won't open — a dropped connection, say — Try again reloads it without losing anything you've typed.
When Send, Send test, or Schedule is greyed out, the sheet says why — 'Write your message first.', 'Add a subject first.', or 'Pick who this goes to first.' — so you always know the one thing left to do. And if the letter editor itself can't come up — a weak connection, say — a plain text box takes over after a few moments with your letter's words already in it: keep writing, everything still saves as you type, and {name} still drops in at the cursor. A text box can't show photos or buttons, but they stay in the letter below your words — a note on the box says so — and the full editor is back the next time you open a letter.