Why We Rock the Spectrum Chose ROLLER + Patch Retention

As Chief Marketing Officer for We Rock the Spectrum, Shane Stahl owns the tech stack across all 120+ franchise locations, including how the brand collects, understands, and acts on customer data. When it came time to find a platform partner network that could scale with the franchise, one thing was non-negotiable: the point of sale system and the CRM had to actually talk to each other.

The Gap: Disconnected Systems, Missed Moments

Before ROLLER, We Rock the Spectrum's previous point of sale platform came with its own partnered CRM, but the setup never quite fit the business.

"We knew that the one we were using for over a decade was taking the circle and putting it in he triangle," Stahl said.

The bigger issue wasn't just the software itself. It was what a disconnected system cost the business in practice. Online bookings were averaging just 3% across the entire franchise.

Families were calling the front desk to complete bookings that should have taken seconds online, tying up staff time that should have gone toward guests on the gym floor.

And for a business where birthday parties are a core revenue driver, the previous setup couldn't capture or act on the data that actually matters.

"Most businesses that aren't in the indoor playground space, they don't really care like when your birthday is. But for us, with birthday parties being such a big part of our business model, that is essential. If we are the first venue to market to that family that their kiddo's birthday is coming up, we are likely to be that first venue to get picked."

Chief Marketing Officer

Shane Stahl

Without a system built to capture and use that data, We Rock the Spectrum was leaving bookings, and revenue, on the table.

The Fix: ROLLER's Data, Patch's Marketing

When We Rock the Spectrum moved to ROLLER, they paired it with Patch Retention,an AI-Powered CRM and marketing automation platform, to close that gap.

"Working with ROLLER and Patch, the experience really has felt seamless," Stahl said. "We're getting all of the key metrics, the key pieces of data from ROLLER from a visit behavior standpoint, and feeding that into the Patch system so that we could market to those individuals when they hit certain key milestones in their customer journey — such as being a certain number of days away from their birthday, or if they haven't visited one of our facilities in some time."

Chief Marketing Officer

Shane Stahl

That integration is what makes the birthday-marketing strategy possible. With ROLLER and Patch connected, We Rock the Spectrum now starts marketing 30, 60, sometimes even 90 days before a child's birthday.

"If we are the ones to actually remind the parent, 'Hey, your kiddo's birthday is coming up, you might want to pick a venue,' we are likely to be that venue to get booked," Stahl said. "And with that being partnered with an awesome platform like ROLLER, the online experience is very, very easy. So when that customer sees that marketing email from us, it's a very seamless experience for that parent to get that child's birthday booked."

Chief Marketing Officer

Shane Stahl

The results have shown up directly in competitive wins. "We've even had customers that have been marketed by other businesses, sometimes our competitors, and they have ended up choosing our venue as the place to host their kids' birthday because it was a very easy online checkout experience," Stahl said.

"The combination of key data, marketing at the right time, and an easy online checkout experience means that we are often the venue to get picked as opposed to our competitors."

Chief Marketing Officer

Shane Stahl

Built for Scale, Not Just for Launch

The rollout of ROLLER and Patch out across 120+ franchise locations in six months was, in Stahl's words, "a doozy." The standard onboarding model wasn't going to work for a franchise this size, so both teams built something custom.

"Typically, the setup was a teach-the-trainer kind of model. But we needed a much more hand-holding experience with our franchise owners," Stahl said. "Both ROLLER and Patch were very innovative in that way, creating a brand-new onboarding experience just for We Rock. I wouldn't have changed a thing about how the onboarding experience was done."

The ROLLER and Patch teams went a step further, integrating both companies' training videos directly into the ROLLER learning platform franchise owners used to get trained; one connected experience rather than two disjointed ones.

"It was a seamless experience for them, going straight from ROLLER material into Patch material," Stahl said. "A very tight-knit relationship between partner systems like that was essential in order for it to be a really good training experience for our franchise owners. Not only do the systems need to be connected in that way and not disjointed, but the way in which the material is trained on needs to be just as connected."

Chief Marketing Officer

Shane Stahl

Why Integration Is the Whole Point

For Stahl, the value of ROLLER's partner ecosystem comes down to one word: integration.

"You want your tools to be talking to one another. You don't want to be working with disjointed tools, because that ultimately adds more operational time, and time is money," he said. "The more time you're spending figuring out your tools and how to use them, the less time you're working towards marketing to your customers, the less time you can be giving the customer service that you want to deliver."

Chief Marketing Officer

Shane Stahl

That's the throughline for We Rock the Spectrum's whole tech strategy now: fewer disconnected systems, more time back for franchise owners to focus on what actually matters.

"Streamlining saves time," Stahl said. "When a franchise owner can spend more time working with their team, working on marketing, that leads to a happier franchise owner, which ultimately leads to a happier customer, which is the ultimate goal."

Want to learn how ROLLER can help your venue put these ideas into action? Book a free demo today.