How to keep busy during unfortunate downtime in the Salon

It’s the middle of March already and right now you would probably expect to be on the

horizon of your busiest period of the year in the Salon. But… with the pandemic disaster in full swing, you’re no doubt going to struggle to keep a busy Salon whilst all this is going on. Not to worry! There are plenty of ways you can keep busy in this unfortunate downtime and we’re going to tell you exactly how...

First of all – if you don’t have Salon Tracker, now is the perfect time for a free trial!

Salon Tracker is a very effective way of keeping on top of the Salon in terms of appointments, SMS reminders, marketing texts, stock control, business reports & lots more! Whilst you are having some downtime in the Salon, why not try a 2-week free trial of the software and see how it could work for you? We offer free, unlimited training as well as support and there are no set-up fees. If you’re currently with another software provider, we will transfer your clients from that software in the trial period and will also offer your first 3 months at 30% off for moving from another provider! If this sounds good to you, then just go to https://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx and a member of the team will be in touch as soon as possible to get this arranged for you.

A marketing campaign

Around this time of the year, you may find it difficult finding any time to fit in a quick marketing campaign to send to your clients. So now is the perfect opportunity to perhaps send a campaign out informing your clients about an offer you are holding on gift cards. For example, you could put an offer on that entitles clients to buy a £30 voucher for the price of £25 and so on. Not only will this give you that bit of income in this quiet period but it will ensure clients will be coming back in when this disaster has calmed down and also encourage the rebooking of brand-new clients!

A big spring clean/ makeover

I know its often hard to find the time to do a thorough clean of the Salon and it probably bugs you that you can’t get it as clean as you want it. Well now’s the perfect opportunity to do so! If you’ve got a day where you’ve got next to no appointments in, grab your cleaning stuff and hinch away. Not only will it leave your Salon sparkling, but it will also boost your mood! Even better still, if you’ve been thinking of redecorating the Salon to have it exactly as you want it, why not go for it and get your staff in on it as well instead of hiring decorators? This will keep you busy for a few days and will really give the team the opportunity to bond as well as being extremely satisfying when you’re finished.

If you are still busy in the Salon then that’s great, just make sure you take all the precautionary measures to ensure you and your staff are safe as well your clients. A little notice board inside and outside of the Salon as well as being promoted on social media is where you can start. 

The notice board should include:

• If anyone with an appointment booked or wants to use the sunbeds, please make sure you have had no sign of any COVID-19 symptoms e.g a high temperature, a cough, shortness of breath. If you do, please rearrange your appointment to the late future!

• If you are still attending the Salon, please make sure you wash your hands as soon as you enter the Salon. Hand sanitiser will also be provided.

• Ensure we at the Salon are taking extra precautionary measures to make the Salon as safe as possible, we always disinfect equipment after every client.

• Anything else you feel is important.

If you still don’t want to risk the Salon being open, you could encourage your clients to purchase gift cards for their nearest and dearest or for themselves for the future when all of this has blown over -just to keep your head above water in this global disaster.

In light of the current pandemic - we are all working from home however if you do have any questions just give us a call on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help - it is business as usual!

Salon Tracker x

Business Planning for SS/20

Nearly through the first quarter of the year already! So now is definitely the time to start looking in to planning for the next season, as days get longer and nights get lighter – you want to ensure that your business has a Spring/Summer strategy in place to work towards.

This is also a great time to reflect on the last quarter, to also see where you are against the targets you set yourself for the past 3 months, and how business has been since the New Year. It’s also a good time to measure success against where you were this time last year, and see if you’ve had any improvements. A lot of businesses find that this is also the perfect time for a team night out, to boost staff morale and keep the work place atmosphere up! Quarterly reviews are also a great time to implement any changes that you feel necessary for the salon as we head towards Spring/Summer – maybe it’s a good time to refresh retail ranges and also improve the salon aesthetics in time for the new season.

So, first of, what can you capitalise on during the next few months to create some PR and social media marketing coverage. The first big one, in a couple of weeks, is Mother’s Day; on Sunday 22nd March this year so it’s around now that you need to start pushing your Mother’s Day offers so that your customers are aware of this on time. What are you thinking of doing this year at the salon? Common advertises include, ‘Mother and Daughter Pamper Days’ or ‘Family treatment days’ – especially if you are the owner of a spa or gym. You can create a family wellness package so that sons and daughters can take their parents to celebrate Mother’s Day together. You may even want to do a little complimentary fizz with all services booked in the week leading up to, and week after Mother’s Day, to make the client’s service seem a little more luxury!

Next up, Easter! Falling this year on Sunday 12th March, you’ll always find that clients want their ‘bank holiday pamper’ in time for their night out. So, this is prime-time for salons, so now may be a good time to push your service packages, for example; if you are a hair and beauty salon you may want to do an ‘Easter Bundle’ consisting of a couple of mini beauty treatments and maybe a hair style? These can then be pushed on your social media channels and can also lead to an ‘Easter Styling Competition’, where you could ask any clients who have had any seasonal treatments to share these online, tagging your salon, to then be entered in to a competition? This gets people shouting about your business, improves online engagement & promotion, whilst also making a bit of fun for the clients too!

Speaking of Bank Holidays, the Easter weekend is closely followed by Mayday and Spring Bank, in which this year the first May Bank Holiday actually falls on a Friday, which will contribute to the amount of clients looking for their Friday night style-up! It’s also a great marketing technique to promote the change in Bank Holiday date, as believe it or not there will be a lot of your clients who are still unaware of the Bank Holiday change, so make sure you get in there first to get your calendars booked up. You might even look at running a ‘Bank Holiday Beauty event’ which you could advertise to clients to attend with friends and family. If some of the client’s friends haven’t been to the salon before, this then helps with your salon reputation and WOM promotion, by creating a fun event for everyone to talk about.

Following all these Spring events, we then head in to Peak Wedding Season and also Proms & Graduations too, so you definitely want to start marketing your special packages early Spring, as lots of salons will be pushing similar promotions and so you want to make sure you are at the head of your game. Especially in the tanning market, we know this can be quieter over June/July and so this is a great time to boost spray tans and safe tanning over Summer! If there are quieter weeks for you, this could be a great time to push your salons blog, getting your staff members to write some Spring/Summer articles to boost your salon awareness. These could be anything from Summer wedding styling, to new seasonal products that you are going to be offering. This then creates some PR around your salon to be able to push online through your blogs and also share on social media, in the hope that this is re-shared/posted by people who follow your salon social networks.

Once you have planned for all of the above events, it may then be good to set yourself some new targets for the second quarter, taking you to the end of Summer, in order to track business performance based on Q1 to Q2. By doing this planning, you then allow your business to measure success before you head in to the Autumn, and shortly after that the Christmas period, so it is your Summer months that really set you up for the second half of the year. Towards the middle of Q2, around May/June time, this is a good time to check-out and plan for Autumn events, just as we are suggesting you do now for Summer, to get you in good stead for each season.

Finally, get yourself a company planner, that maybe even your employees can contribute to too. Plan in sessions to analyse business measurements and also some sessions to chat to your staff about business performance and how their work is impacting your growth. Make sure to do regular reviews with employees too, as the more your staff understand about your business the better this is work team morale and also this helps to boost motivation if employees have clear goals to work towards.

Hope this has given you a few pointers to think about, and of course as always if you want to chat to a member of our sales and marketing team for a few extra tips, we are always on hand to help you with any marketing tools, or simply to offer further advice on using our software functions! Look forward to hearing from you and helping you to boost sales this Spring/Summer!

Salon Tracker x

Meet the Salon Tracker Team

When Salon Tracker was first built there were only five staff members, six years on and we now have a team of over thirteen people, the expansion is tremendous and will continue through the years. As time has passed, we have welcomed many fantastic new team members. Let’s take a look at each team member working at Salon Tracker currently. 

Toby and Conor are members of our support team, they help the girls working within the sales and marketing team to find a solution when an error or problem occurs. They are always there to support their fellow staff members and Salon Tracker customers and they offer their assistance in all situations which can be difficult. 

Nicola is the head of the sales and marketing team at Salon Tracker, she sets achievements for the sales team to meet each year and will break these down into specific targets to reach each month. She is currently managing our multi-site salon project and will be dealing with all enquiries who have multiple salons. When her fellow team members are uncertain on how to carry out specific tasks she is always there to support and assist them, such a lovely manager. She is unlucky when it comes to holidays for example her most recent trip to Lanzarote started two days late after a sand storm hit the island and she was stuck in Alicante. Not the first unlucky trip she has had unfortunately. When the team carry out a fuddle, she has been voted the best fuddle food provider with her range of gluten free options.   

Joseph is the newest member of the Salon Tracker team and has been labelled a technical wizard by his fellow colleagues, as he’s always on hand to provide a solution to the range of different problems Salon Tracker face on a daily basis. Joe has been a part of the office now for just over four months now and has been a fast learner in regards to the software. He encourages his fellow team members to eat healthy with his Huel regime and meal prep however he is known for his regular cheat days, which influence the rest of the team, McDonald's Monday did someone say?

Halle is the newest member of the Salon Tracker sales and marketing team and is currently managing the companies Educational Salon Software project and will be dealing with all enquires regarding beauty academies. Even though she has only been with the company for six months now she has learnt a lot during her time with her fellow team members and is assisting customers throughout their journey with Salon Tracker, she has been labelled friendly by many. Colleagues state that she is the best dressed in the office and has never been seen without a face of makeup. Halle is known be her fellow team members as being the office organizer as her desk is always extremely clean, she doesn’t like boxes and always disposes of them from the office.

Naomi has been apart of the Salon Tracker team for over two years now she was the first apprentice to join the Salon Tracker team, her knowledge about the software and the company allows her to assist her fellow team members. She is also known as the technology wizard when joe is busy the team turn to her for her knowledge and support, she is always on hand to help. The girls in the office know Naomi best for her love of prosecco, she's the life and soul of the party, when work events are arranged, she must attend. Naomi likes to play tricks on her fellow team members, she’s a joker and makes her team laugh on a regular basis.

Leah is a member of the sales and marketing team at Salon Tracker, she is currently managing and supporting our hair and beauty clients as part of her new project. She is always helpful to her fellow team members and continuously provides support to customers. She is the designated driver when work events take place such as the Christmas works party as she is extremely reliable. Tea duty is extremely important to the Salon Tracker office and Leah is always on hand to make the cup of teas and coffees without a doubt the best tea maker in the office.

Christie has also been a member of the Salon Tracker team for over two years now and at the moment is managing the company’s tanning clients as part of her company project. She is a dedicated hard worker who is always here to help her fellow team members. Christie is best known for her cake baking however she is yet to win the office bake off. The office prankster is her most popular trait every day without a fail she carry’s out a prank on at least one person in the office. The office turns to Christie when in need of a snack as her snack draw is the best in the office.

If you would like any further information or would like to get booked in for your FREE demo and two week trial contact us on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk.

Salon Tracker. X

Using Reports To Help Grow Your Salon Business

For those of you that already have Salon Tracker, I’m sure you already know about our amazing reports suite. We have plenty of different reports on the software, from the more basic cashing up report to the more complex reports like sales summary by category, there’s one for everything. Although you might already use the reports to get the figures and information you want, you might not be using them to your full advantage, and that’s where I step in. 

Sales by Hour

Once you’ve had the software for a few months, the reports will be able to give you a more accurate overview. The Sales by Hour is a great report, as it lets you see your peak hours when you’re super busy, and then the quieter periods where business is a little bit slower. From this you could then look to introduce a Happy Hour scheme, as this will help to improve business and revenue during these quieter periods. I mean you might as well give it a try and see if there’s any difference!

Sales by Day

This one is very similar to the sales by hour report, but it’s going to show you a bar chart of your sales by day. This is another great one, as it will give you an overall view of your best-selling days or your not so good days. This is a great one to pair with the Sales by Hour report if you are thinking of introducing a Happy Hour scheme, as you might want to look at only applying it on specific days. For example, if we look at the Sales by Day chart you can see that Sunday is the worst performer, however in most cases salons are open for limited hours on Sundays, so I am going to ignore this and look at the next lowest. Both Monday and Wednesday are showing similar figures, if we then look back to the sales by hour chart, it might be a good idea to introduce the Happy Hour on Monday and Wednesday only, between 12pm and 2pm. You can even set it up on Salon Tracker to only give discounts within a certain time period, which is great as it means that staff don’t need to remember to put the discount on themselves when putting sales through as everything is auto!

 

Retail Sales by Number Sold

This is a great report if you are wanting to focus on your retail sales, as it will list your best and worst selling items. This is great as it means that you can narrow down your stock to be the ones that you know your customers like, this will reduce your overall costs as you won’t be buying as many products. It also gives you more ability to try out new and different products, as you will have more budget to spend. By using this report, you could also look at increasing your prices on your best- selling products, as customers will still be likely to buy them even if the price is slightly higher. This doesn’t have to be anything ridiculous; it can just be a 50p or £1 increase.

Booking by Numbers Confirmed

This is another great report if you are wanting to look at your services in more detail, to see which services are performing well. As you can see on the report you will get a break down of your best to work selling service. This again is very similar to the retail sales by number sold, as you can see which services aren’t worth selling, and again which ones are your most popular so you can look to increase the price.

Hopefully this has helped you to understand how the reports suite in Salon Tracker can help you improve your business and grow your sales! If you aren’t already a customer of Salon Tracker and would be interested in taking a look at the software you can register for your free demo and trial here www.salontracker.co.uk/freetrial.aspx or alternatively you can call us on 0113 350 8230 and someone will be happy to help.

Don’t forget we are exhibiting at this year’s Professional Beauty London! Don’t hesitate to drop by our stand (S35), you can meet the team and have a live demonstration of the software. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Salon Tracker x

February’s feature of the month – Siteview app

If you already have our software, you’ll know about our especially helpful feature – Siteview. Siteview is an online platform that allows you and your staff to log in from anywhere on their mobile, tablet or laptop and see what bookings they have in for future periods, run reports, charts and a dashboard featuring useful information. Obviously with user permissions you can decide who sees what and limit their view but for the owner of the business, it is the perfect solution to being able to access the software from home giving you that peace of mind that you needed on your last break away from the Salon. 

Well now our Siteview is a downloadable app on the Apple App Store and on Google Play for Android! Now you can experience the ease of checking on the Salon without having to navigate through the safari and weblink first. Instead you can simply click on the app and have all your figures and bookings directly Infront of you! Perfect for you busy on-the-go Salon owners! 

To download the app, simply search ‘salon tracker’ in the search box. It is completely free to download and all you need to input once it’s downloaded is your ‘Account Name’ which will be the name of the Salon with no spaces or capitals (you will only need to input this once) and your username and password… then you’re on!

If you do get stuck with this at all just give a member of the team a call on 0113 350 8230 and we'll be happy to give you a free training session on this!

If you don't currently have Salon Tracker but sound intrigued by this, then feel free to enquire at https://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx and a member of the team will be in touch as soon as possible!

We hope you love the App as much as we do!

Salon Tracker x

How Salon Tracker Can Help Your Hair Salon!

Here at Salon Tracker we are dedicated to ensuring we can help you run your salon in the most efficient and stress-free way possible. For this week’s blog we decided to put together a list of our most popular and helpful features that our hair salon customers seem to love!

Text Reminders

SMS text appointments are one of our most popular features for all types of salons, not just our hair clients. This feature allows you to choose a time period of one or two days before one of your customers appointments for the software to send out an automatic text reminder, without you having to think about it at all! The message will contain information about the customers booking and who their stylist is. This is also a one-way messaging system so you won’t need to worry about customers constantly texting you back.

Groups

Groups are another, really useful, quite hidden feature. This feature will allow you to only make certain services available to each staff member. For example, if you have staff members with different abilities or different pricing plans, we can help you create each individual staff member their own services group which will mean that only certain stylists and therapists will be able to book in certain services. This works especially well in salons with self employed staff or staff of different abilities, like apprentices!

My Reports

Another feature which is great for salons with self employed staff or even just staff who like to keep a track of their own profit on bookings and retail sales is our ‘my reports’. These reports will allow each individual staff member and stylist to be able to see reports such as booking and retail sales just for themselves. This is great for security and privacy reasons as staff members will only be able to view their own takings, not everyone else’s.

Stock Management

The selling of retail products is a large part of many different hair salons total income. We have incorporated many different small features in order to help your salon manage stock in the easiest way possible. One feature we provide is a stock control, this helps you keep track of how many of each retail product you have in and makes it clear when you’re running low on certain products. This will help ensure that you never run out of anything! We also offer a stock ordering feature which allows you to order and accept stock through your salon tracker. For more information on this feature go check out our October feature of the month blog > https://bit.ly/2S81IS9

Split Booking

The split booking feature is also another that we created with hair salons in mind. This allows you to create a booking and then split them into two halves. This feature is good for things such as colours and highlights as it will allow you to split up someone’s appointment for a development time that works best for you. It will also mean you can fit in other appointments in between the colour and finish, therefore making the most of your time!

Site View

For many hairdressers, having client’s message them for appointments out of salon time is a frequent occurrence. Our site view feature allows you to view your calendars from a tablet, phone or computer so you can check your availability even when you’re not in the salon. You can also view reports on this such as cashing up and the day end report! Salon Tracker site view is now available to download on the app store as well as online! Come back for next weeks blog to learn even more about our site view app.

Commission

Like we said before, we know retail sales are a large part of some hair salons income. In order to push staff to drive sales many salons use commission as an incentive. On salon tracker we have developed a feature which allows you to set up what commission (if any) you want staff members to get on certain retail and booking items. You can set different commissions for different staff members and also different commission rates for different products. You can then run our ‘Commission By Staff’ or ‘Commission Summary’ report to see how much each staff member has earnt, this will mean you no longer have to sit for hours before each payday to see how much each individual staff member has earnt.

If you would like any information on any of these features or you would like to get booked in for your FREE demo and 2 week trial give us a call on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk.

Salon Tracker x

How Salon Tracker Specialises in Multi-Site Business Management

Do you own more than one salon? Did you know that you can control all your salons from one main headquarters with Salon Tracker software! As we specialise in the management of multisite salon businesses, there are lots of specific built-in features designed to suit multiple salon environments.

From organising your customer data, where services & tanning courses can be shared across multiple sites, to systemising your stock ordering; our software improves the day to day running of larger salon branches. So, here’s a few simple benefits that Salon Tracker provides to help the overall running of this type of business:

HQ/Marketing from Head Office

In larger organisations, normally there are lots of different departments involved in the overall running of the business. Especially when the salons are based in several locations spread across the UK, it can be hard in these situations for the company owners to be able to oversee productivity at each separate site. With the Salon Tracker HQ, this makes the running of this so much easier; whether it be the Salon Owners, Directors or Area Mangers, they can all have access to one main system that allows control of each location from one main machine. Marketing can also be segmented based on salon location, age of customer, gender etc; and SMS campaigns can be sent straight from the HQ itself. You can then generate reports following sending these campaigns out in order to reflect on how effective these have been based on their message/promotion.

Siteview

This is very similar to the HQ feature in terms of it can be accessed away from the salon location itself, the difference in this however is that this is permission protected, based on user level. Therefore, for staff members, owners might just want them to only have the ability to see their own booking calendars, whereas for salon owners they can see similar reporting and tracking information to that on their HQ, but this time from their smart phone or tablet. A great way to stay in control of business whilst on the move, from anywhere, 24/7!

Sharing Product/Customer Data

Whether your business wants to link all site data, have pricing per area (so this could be services based on geographical location/county) or whether sites are all separate – Salon Tracker enables salons to have the ability to link all customers so that they can use their services at any of your salon locations. Similarly, to the way that a lot of commercial gyms are now set up, where users can go in to any gym location via a pin. This is similar with Salon Tracker, where clients can activate their details at each site using their fingerprint, which is especially useful in the tanning industry due to age restriction.

Reporting

Salon Tracker has individual reporting for every salon, in which there are annual charts that are also generated per site. We have integrated with Microsoft’s power BI software, where charts and heat maps are generated to provide information based on location, average client information, bestselling services and so on. This information is much easier to visualise within Power BI and so this can be used to really focus on data in a certain area, making analysing and comparing of those figures & KPI’s much easier.

Clock in and out

Using Salon Tracker’s fingerprint technology, sites can also track staff shift times by prompting clock in and out for all staff. A great way to keep track of punctuality and also salon security; as fingerprint recognition means that staff can’t then sign colleagues in to cover for them if they are running late, where this may have been possible with password sharing or staff barcodes.

The HQ is available as part of Salon Tracker’s Enterprise package. You can trial Salon Tracker for a fortnight free of charge by simply filling out the enquiry form at https://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx

Alternatively contact our sales team on 0113 350 8230 or info@salontracker.co.uk.

Salon Tracker will be exhibiting at Professional Beauty London across 29th-30th March! You can visit us on stand S35 where we will be giving live demos of our software and new features across the 2-day event. Keep an eye out on our news page and social media feeds for a link to FREE tickets for the show to be released soon!


We look forward to meeting you there!

Salon Tracker x