Feature of The Month: SMS and Appointment Reminders

For June’s feature of the month, I’m going to explain how quick and easy it is to contact clients through text messaging! 

Whether you own a tanning, hair or beauty salon, text messaging can be used by any business of any size and to your advantage. This feature is undoubtedly the most commonly used and effective method of marketing for salons, it is extremely important for a growing business to know how to use SMS and encourage clients to return back through the doors of a business.

So why use SMS?

Here are some statistics to put this in to perspective, over 5 billion out of the 6.8 billion people in the world now own a mobile phone, around 75% of that number have their phone to hand and 90% of text messages sent are read in under 3 minutes, making it the quickest way to contact someone. A lot of people may be thinking that email is just as effective and it’s free, the same with social media, which unfortunately isn’t true. Emails only have a 20% read rate and more often than not they are disregarded or moved in to a junk mail inbox.

Reduce No-Shows

Setting appointment reminders and online booking confirmations not only gives your clients piece of mind, it also dramatically reduces no shows up to 90%. As the most common reason for missed appointments is people simply forgetting and getting mixed up with times, clients value communication. It allows businesses to see who has confirmed appointments, which saves you valuable time, not having to chase down customers. This brings me to my next point…

Entirely Personal For The Client

Confirming appointments with customers on a busy schedule can be very difficult, clients will appreciate being able to reply at their own leisure, meaning that missed phone calls or leaving voicemails can be avoided. If your salon uses Salon Tracker Software, there is an SMS suite where multiple clever features make the entire process a lot easier. It is very useful during a salons busy period as most messages can be automated and set to send hours, even days before. Text messages can be completely customised to each client which is why we encourage Salons to attain as much information as possible. The software can also track the messages sent, alerting you with a notification when an SMS has failed!



Creating the Perfect SMS

Using the software Salons can personalize the entire SMS, a very interactive feature for a business. When writing your own message it needs to be short, sweet and concise, easy for clients to understand. When sending out an appointment reminder, address the customer by their first name. Text messages are available for preview, all you have to do is send it to your own number to see if your message is right and everything is spelled correctly. It’s always good to have an opt-out option at the end of the text or even set it so there’s a no reply service, to save yourself time.

Here is a template of an automated text…

Hi <<Forename>>

You have an appointment booked at <<Salon Name>> with <<Beautician/Stylist Name>> on <<Date>> at <<Time>>

Please call <<Company Tel >> to cancel your appointment.


An example!

Hi, Louise

You have an appointment booked at SalonSpa with Maia on 01/08/2018 at 11:00am.

Please call 0113 350 8230 to cancel your appointment.


So drop your customers a quick text and keep them up to date!

Just make sure you have enough texts, here at Salon Tracker we sell 1000 SMS credits for £50 or try out a FREE demo and trial with 50 SMS credits to try out the feature for yourself!



If you have any further questions or would like any more information on Salon Tracker SMS features, don’t hesitate to call us on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk

Salon Tracker x

Salon Tracker's Top Tips to Achieving Successful Father's Day and Summer Marketing Campaigns!

Less than 1 week to go until Father’s Day, and just a few days left until the first official day of Summer! This year is going fast, right? So, as we step in to Summer, we thought we’d offer you our best ideas to put you in the right direction for a successful season.

There are lots of events and areas that you can use to market your salon over the Summer period. Obviously, as just mentioned the next main one we’ve got coming up is Father’s Day. But then not long after we also have School and College Proms, University Graduations and Weddings to cater for, all of which are typically planned for during the Summer months.

Events such as these are great over Summer. As they can be targeted to both male and female audiences of all ages, you have such a large market to reach out to!

As Father’s Day is however the closest, let’s focus on this first. Essentially, barbers are going to capitalise on this the most being a solely male industry, however there are ways that multi-sex salons can also get the benefit, see some of our best ideas below:

- Run a Dad-Daughter/Son pampering day, or family spa package. An easy way to advertise to all family members, a great opportunity for those of you that offer lots of types of services at your salon, you can come up with some great family deals.

- Up-sell your gift vouchers and get some personalised Father’s Day ones made, with themed artwork. This way your clients aren’t then having to go out and buy extra cards suited to Father’s Day to hold the voucher in, you are saving them a job!

- Retail hamper packs! This is especially good if you usually sell a lot of retail products and you have clients that have their favourite buys from you, as their children are likely to know this and hopefully purchase them as gifts! Visuals are key in the upselling of retail products. So, to persuade people to buy, create a present table within the salon to make your products more aesthetically pleasing!

- Salon Tracker’s favourite - offer a gift-wrapping service! This is such a nice little add on for anyone buying Father’s Day gifts and such a simple, easy way to make a profit. Charge £1.50 per wrapping service and you’ll definitely see a 50% profit margin if you buy your gift-wrapping materials cheaply.

Now, moving on to Proms, Graduations and Weddings: a lot of prom-goers may have got on the bandwagon early and already have their treatments booked with you, however there’s always those last-minute clients that will be looking to book, so this is the perfect time to catch their attention! As for Wedding and Graduations, these happen all through Summer, with Graduations being mainly in July and so here’s some further ideas to get booked up: 



- For those of you that sell multi-treatments,

this is a great opportunity for you to put together some little packages to market to your clients. For example, for Prom you could do a little ‘Prom Prep’ package, inclusive of 3 mini treatments; so, a facial, lash & brow tint? Or, if you offer hair and beauty, you could do a Summer pamper pack, applicable to all events, inclusive of: highlights, brow tint, spray tan and nails? Just a couple of ideas for you, as through research we’ve found that people go to separate salons for their brows, then nails and then their hair treatments - so if you can offer all these treatments together then this is much more profitable for you. If you however are solely a hair, or just beauty or a nail bar, why not look in to partnering with your surrounding salons, or mobile technicians who offer different treatments to you, to boost each other’s business throughout Summer? 



- Party packs for Bridal Parties or Graduates, where every member of the group comes to the salon for a treatment together on the same day. It’s up to you how you create these packs, whether you offer a small discount for booking a bulk treatment in volume, or whether you just create an experience instead with free complimentary refreshments throughout the day. It depends on past promotions what will work best for your salon, you may even wish to do a combination of the two. Advertise these packs on social media, through an SMS/email campaign or even traditionally by using little flyers through the doors of your local village!

- Run a competition on your social media channels. It could be something as simple as ‘Like, comment and share this post for the chance to win a Summer pampering package.’ Not only does this give one lucky client the chance to win a service pack with you, it also helps to boost your brand awareness, by sharing your online social network among many (hopefully) potential new clients. However, before running an online competition, it’s vital that your social media pages are up to date and full of photos of your work before you share it. You’ve got to think, your social networks are essentially your salons online portfolio, therefore ensure that this sells your business well before it reaches a wider audience. 

- If you offer online booking, promote your client base to use your booking app by sharing the link with them either by text, or a social media post. Use your latest Summer offers, whether these be discounts or new treatments, to prompt those clients to make a booking with you. However, not only does this improve your booking rate for Summer, it also notifies any clients that weren’t already using your online service that they are now able to book appointments 24/7 using their phone!


We understand that throughout Summer this is generally the busiest time for you at the salon and so if you’ve not had time to think about your marketing then hopefully a few of these little tips will help to ensure that you maintain your Summer success. And hopefully contribute to filling any of those potential last-minute gaps that you do have so you are remaining profitable all season long - Good luck!


Salon Tracker x

Why a Competitor Analysis of Local Competition is Essential

If there’s only your salon in your local area then you’re rather lucky, but I’m guessing for most of you there’s a few other salons nearby? You may not always think of doing competitor research for any nearby salon, however it is something that you could really find beneficial to your business. By competitor research I don’t mean walking past all of the salons nearby and trying not to stare too hard but getting a close enough look to pick up some details. Well I mean, you could do that as a starting point, but there’s a lot of better ways that you can gather your research…

Who are they?

The first port-of-call would be to find out exactly who your competition is. The easiest way to do this would be to just do a search on google for salons in your local area. Once you’ve got a list of all of your competitors, you can begin collating information about them, and really start defining who will be your direct competition and who is sort of your secondary competition.

Social Media

Nowadays most salons will use social media, especially Facebook, and this is the perfect place to find out all of the latest news about any of your competitors. This could be their latest deals, any new services, reviews, photos, events, pretty much anything you need to know can be found on there. You could draw inspiration from their posts or their services, they might offer something you’ve never heard of so it might be a good idea to start offering it if its something that you could provide. Perhaps you see that they’re doing a deal on something that you also offer, you should try to match it or even beat it to try get more customers in. The main con of social media is that this also means that if you use social media for your salon, then I would guess that your competitors are also looking at your page, so if you decide to promote an offer on your social media pages then there’s a good chance that they will see it and want to offer something similar, if not better.

Website

Take a look at your competitors’ websites, you should be able to find out a lot of information on here as you would be expecting them to want to showcase their business. Not everyone will have a website, as social media seems to be taking over, but its always good to try and find them. Look at what they’re doing well and if there’s anything that you could take from them to replicate on your own website or just on your social media.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Once you’ve done your research on the website, social media and just through google, make a list of all of the strengths and weaknesses that your competition offer. From this you will be able to see what you could be doing better or what you should try stay away from doing in your salon. Also think about how you can beat their strengths to make sure you stay ahead of your competition.

The last thing you want is for one your customers or potential customers to go to one of your competitors down the street instead of visiting your salon! I hope you can use these tips to help collect some information about your competitors and begin to create some sort of strategy in order to make sure you stay ahead of the competition.

Salon Tracker x

Do you use social media to it's full potential?

The average hair and beauty salon loses between 10 and 25% of it’s clients each year. To put that into perspective, after 3 years, that’s half of your client base gone…

Which is why it is essential to consciously attract new followers on a regular basis. Unsure where to start? Carry on reading to discover all our useful tips.

Content

Don’t fall into the trap of using your social media pages as a billboard with the sole purpose of advertising what your Salon does and any offers you have on. Yes, it’s a good platform for it, but followers soon get bored of the same content every day and this is where you lose your followers - Not what you want. Identify your market and what content they will enjoy viewing. As a Salon owner, your market is potential clients and current clients. Quotes, tips, client transformations, news in the industry and trends are all a good start for a followable account such as Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram

Instagram is an essential account to have for your Salon. Using a business account to register allows you to have access to an important tool called “insights”. You can see a chart of the gender, age range, top locations and the best times and days to post your content on. On-top of this you can post Instagram stories and live stories which will more often than not notify your followers that you have posted – bonus! Furthermore, Instagram gives you the option to add polls to your stories giving it an interactive, engaging element, allowing you to see the results which can be beneficial if thinking of adding a new product line etc. 

Make your Instagram feed at least 80% pictures inside of the Salon. This can include showing off work you’ve done such as a manicure or hairstyle, or pictures of the salon with seasonal themes you’ve implemented along with pictures of the outside of the Salon and your valued staff members. The other 20% of your feed can be creative. Quotes are always a great hit, offers you have on that are only valid with a code (this means they can only use the offer from following your page) and pictures showing         condolences to unfortunate events and current news.

Tip: Tag used products such as L'Oreal and O.P.I etc as well as following their accounts to gain a business relationship.

Give-aways

Create a social media incentive. Offer prizes or discounts for everyone that shares your page such as 10% off or a free product. Similarly, raffles are always a good hit and tagging friends in your page works a treat too. Nobody would turn down a freebie for a quick share of your page - it’s simple!

Make use of your Instagram and Facebook stories to offer exclusive discount that can only be used if they show the story and follow the account. This way you can monitor and track your online traffic all in one!

Be interactive

Follow back clients that follow you and like their stuff, this way you can gain a customer relationship and develop loyalty to your Salon. Also, following useful accounts such as Salon Magazine will help develop your business and brand name as well as finding interesting content for your own feed.

Respond to client queries/ shout-outs and be quick about it! Not only does this satisfy your existing clients, but if potential clients can see that you’re efficient at replying then they will already get a good impression of the way your business goes about thing’s and therefore choose to follow your account and visit the Salon.

Retweeting, liking and sharing of useful content are all features that are a blessing in disguise for your Salon. Not only for your social media presence but to get your brand name out there too as every time you retweet something your name will appear in that list which everyone can view.

Listening to what your client wants

If you wanted to go that one step further to satisfy clients and attract new ones, consider a tutorial page where you can demonstrate different looks and how to do them. Videos are a highly interactive element of any social media page, especially if it is something your clients have requested. Whether you decide to do these live on Instagram or posted on a channel such as YouTube your videos will catch the attention of new and current customer’s and will get people talking about how useful they are. Furthermore, they’re free!

These are just a few useful tips you can use to gain more followers on your Social media accounts, try them and see for yourself! 

Any questions or queries? Call 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk and we'll be happy to help!

Salon Tracker x

Create the Perfect Email!

Now I know it may seem that emails are becoming a thing of the past, but they are still one of the most used and most effective marketing tools. There are plenty of great providers out there that you can use to really maximise the benefits of using email marketing. One that I recommend you using would be Mailchimp, for starters its free, but it offers a range of different templates and designs that you can customise to your needs.

The method of A/B testing is one that’s used widely across many businesses, and at first it can be quite tricky to get your head around, but online tools make it very simple and easy to do. So, I know some of you will be thinking “I’ve got no idea what you’re on about”, so let me think of the best way that I can give you a full detailed description of what A/B testing is, but I’ll try keep it to only a few sentences…

A/B testing is designed to allow you to send two emails to only a percentage of your customers, from this you will be able to determine which email has the better open rate or click rate. After a certain amount of time Mailchimp will then send the email that performed better to the remaining percentage of your customers. And then overtime you will be able to complete a number of different A/B tests to find the perfect design, template and subject that your customers will want to open. So essentially, you’re creating an email that your customers will want to open, which is great if you have any offers on that you want to get out to your customers. It can be quite a lengthy process, but if it gets more people into your salon, then it’s worth it! Well, I hope that’s sort of made a clearer picture in your head as to what A/B testing actually is.

Mailchimp offers a free service that will do all the sending work for you, all you’ll need to do is design the emails. It will ask you to select which part of the email you would like to test, this can be: subject line, from name, content and send time. You will then need to enter the percentage of your customers that you want to receive the test email, for example 30% would mean that 15% receive one email and the other 15% will receive a different email. You will need to select how the winning email will be determined, so this can be by the open rate or click rate or you can manually choose, and then enter the number of hours or days that you want to send the winning email out to the rest of you customers. Even just typing that out, having done some A/B testing in the past, I can see this being quite daunting if you’ve never done it before. But as I mentioned earlier, Mailchimp is a free service so you can do as many tests as you want before you actually begin to send them out to your customers, which I would definitely recommend doing just to make sure you know the exact steps on how to send you’re A/B test out.

Here’s an example of something you could do:

You could then wait a day or so and see which offer is bringing more customers in, and then you will be able to send out the winning email to the remaining percentage of customers who are yet to receive the offer.

I really recommend trying this method out to really maximise your offers and see what your customers want to see and what will get them into the salon. If it works then its worth putting in all the effort! Good luck!

It's Sunbed Awareness Week; so here are Salon Tracker's 'Tanning Rules'

It’s that time of the month again, where we run through one of our most relevant and favourite features with you. And with the recent amazing weather, we have had lots of feedback from our fellow tanning-salon clients that their footfall has been through the roof! So, with this summer-spurt hopefully continuing and as we enter the holiday season, we just wanted to discuss how to ensure that your clients tan as safely as possible when using your beds. And with the sunbed association running a 'sunbed awareness' campaign this week, we thought that this was the perfect time to 
share our feature for this month: Tanning Rules.

So, what are our tanning rules? These are little checks, if you like, that we have put in place to ensure that your clients are as safe as possible according to current laws and regulations, when using your sunbeds. Below, we explain each of our rules and what our system uses to check each client is as safe as possible.


Rule No. 1

“Forbid a client to book a sunbed if their date of birth field shows that they are under 18.”

First off, it is illegal in the UK for anyone under the age of 18 to use a sunbed. We are aware however that it is easy for a client to lie and make a date of birth up, but not so easy if you have the relevant checks in place.

With our software, we have fields on their digital client card that prompts a client to have a photograph added to it, so that this can be matched up with a form of their ID before they are allowed to book on to a sunbed. We have also introduced fingerprint recognition, which again means that a client's perhaps younger sibling can’t try and pass as their elder brother/sister as the fingerprint will have to match. For further security, we have also implemented a signature pad so that a client has to sign a disclaimer stating that they are over 18 and that they will comply with your salon T’s & C’s before using a sunbed. Protecting your business from any lawful damage as you also have the clients consent on file.

 

Rule No. 2

“Warn a customer if they have not set a Skin Type.”

To advise clients on how long they should be using a sunbed for, we have implemented a field that asks the customer to state which skin type they are. This is because if the customer describes their skin type to be sensitive to the sun, or fair, it is recommended by the sunbed association that they do not tan for longer than 6 minutes every 48 hours. Therefore, if your salon staff are aware of this, it gives them the option to advise the client appropriately when they come to book a sunbed.


Rule No. 3 

“Warn a client if they have had a sunbed in the last 24 hours (or last 48 hours if they have skin type 1 or 2/sensitive or fair.)”

The sunbed association also recommends that no one at all, no matter what their skin type, tans more than once every 24 hours. Whilst this is not yet illegal, it is still a recommendation that we like to follow and would advise all tanning salons to operate with too. As just mentioned, if a client has specified that they do actually have a sensitive or fair skin type, the sunbed association recommends that these individuals don’t tan more than once in 48 hours, and so our system will keep a track and record all sunbed use so that your staff can advise clients appropriately.


Rule No. 4

“Maximum Minute Usage.” 

Finally another recommendation from the sunbed association is that unless a client is using a low-powered sunbed (such as the Sun Angel where we are aware courses are 21 minutes each time), no one should go on a sunbed for any longer than 15 minutes for each session. We have therefore set all of our sunbed configurations to a maximum usage of 15 minutes by default, in the hope that all tanning salons that are users of our software will stick to this recommendation to eliminate over-use from clients.


How do you implement these rules?

All salon owners using our software will have access to an ‘admin’ section, in which we have tanning calendar settings within this section, where the owner can choose the level of enforcement for each of these rules. Aside from Rule No.1, in which this is a legal enforcement that all clients must be over 18 to use a sunbed and therefore we force this rule by default, all our other rules can either be forced by recommendation, or you can simply warn the client by giving advice. Recommendations are at a salon’s discretion; therefore, we have put these rules in place for the safety of your clients, it is up to you how you use them.


So, if you currently have a tanning salon and want to ensure that you maintain the highest level of safety possible, get in touch with us today on 0113 350 8230 and we can offer you more information on our tanning safety rules. Or alternatively, send us your details at http://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx so that we can arrange you a FREE 2-week trial.

Let us help you to keep your tanning salon safe this season!

Salon Tracker x

5 fault-proof tips on how to provide a 5* star Salon service

It’s common knowledge that your sales are bound to go up and down, but great service is forever. Which is why we’ve written a helpful blog full of tips and tricks on how to provide the most memorable, 5* service!

Wondering why great service is so important?

· It increases your client loyalty – Clients are much more likely to return to a salon they know they’ll feel special at.
· Increases referrals – Similarly, clients are likely to talk about a good experience they’ve had in a Salon, or even better, people will ask your clients where they got their hair or nails done.
· Ultimately, higher profits – Repeat customers and a bigger client base overall will work wonders on your revenue.
· No more gaps in your calendar – Your staff will no longer have to carry out pointless tasks to keep themselves occupied, there will always be a client to see too.
· Widespread brand awareness – You’ll find yourself with clients who travel for miles to receive your service. Word of mouth is something that spreads far and wide!

Facts to remember

According to Harris Interactive customer experience report:

· 85% of customers would be willing to pay 25% more for a superior customer experience.
· 40% began purchasing from a competitor after a bad experience.
· 55% became a customer to a company for their great customer service reputation.

How do I make it happen?

1. First thing’s first. You need to know all your clients like the back of your hand. Old and new. Get to know them, how they like their tea, their preference of nail length, hair style, routine, everything. Now I should hope you know your long-standing customer’s pretty well by now, but for your new customers; try a survey. Ask personal questions, but not intrusive ones. Are they an introvert or an extrovert, casual or glamourous, confident or unconfident? Don’t lose sight of these surveys, revise them, store them – use Salon Tracker to note all their important answers on their client card to give you a helpful reminder.

2. Make them feel at home - nobody wants to make their clients feel like coming to the Salon is a chore. Offer them a drink, hot drink, cold drink (related to their preferences), and offer them regular. Biscuits, cake or snacks is always a nice gesture and having a comfortable waiting area is so important. Modern, comfy sofas with a choice of recent magazines and a TV wouldn’t go a miss. And don’t forget cleanliness. Hire a cleaner and ensure that the Salon is spotless every day. Think of what a perfect salon in would be like in your client’s eyes, it is always good to look at things from other’s perspective.

3. It’s the small things that matter – Remember the details. You had a client come in for her nails doing last month for a wedding, how was the wedding? Did they have a nice time? Small things like this will make your clients feel special and form a great relationship between staff and customers, therefore encouraging loyalty.

4. Be consistent – So you might have started off small, offering only a few treatments at a at a very professional level. So now it’s time to expand your service line and offer more treatments – which is great! CAUTION – don’t step over the reachable line. It’s great that your business is expanding but every service you have to offer needs to be to an exceptional standard, displaying consistency. This will place a level of trust between the staff and clients meaning your salon will become the hub for every treatment.

5. Communication is crucial – When your clients leave you in charge of their valuable possessions such as their hair, they are putting their full trust in you and rely on you to make them feel and look good. This means It is very important that you clearly communicate with each client and find out exactly what they want before carrying out any service/ treatment. On top of that, keep checking if that’s how they like it, giving them compliments to make them feel good about it before they even get to see the final result themselves.

And there you have it, 5 useful tips for a 5* service. Put them into practice and your reviews AND results will show it!

Any questions or queries? Email info@salontracker.co.uk or call 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker x