Goodbye Summer, hello cosy seasons!

So, we’ve had the very best of Spring and Summer… sensational football, glorious sunshine and BBQ galore but now it’s time to get the cosy blankets out, put the kettle on and prepare your Salon for the Autumn and Winter months to come.

We’re quickly approaching the joys of spooking Halloween and festive cheer and I think you all know what that means… a busy, none-stop salon most of the time. So, if you’re wanting a few ideas on how to take some of the weight off of your shoulders when it comes to managing the Salon this year… you’re in luck! Below I’ve listed 5 useful suggestions and ideas to get you started.

Upgrading your online resources.

In this day and age, online booking is such an important asset to any Salon. Recent research has discovered that 35% of clients prefer scheduling appointments during non-business hours and 25% of millennial's only book appointments online! That number is huge, think about missing out on 25% off your potential appointments because your online booking isn’t in place or isn’t up to date? That’s 25% of potential profit lost; let alone the 35% of clients that like to wind down with a glass of wine in the evening and then book their salon visits. Here at Salon Tracker, we include online booking in our enterprise package and not only does it allow clients to book outside of opening hours, but we also do not charge any more on commission per appointment booked. What you see is what you get… no hidden charges! On top of this, it will reduce the amount of time your staff spend on the phone making appointments and free up time to spend on other things which will be needed as we approach the busy season.

Training Salon Staff

You may have found yourself losing track of time and completely forgot that your Salon Staff require training, especially if they’re new to the system, Un-trained staff can result in mistakes being made and time being lost. Now is the perfect time to schedule some training for your staff before the calendar becomes full with Halloween fast approaching and then the manic Christmas period. Lucky for you, we offer unlimited free training with ALL of our packages! Just ring up, book your training for a date that suits you and you’re all set to go.

Advertise your offers

Around this time of the year, customers are all about saving a bit of money; with Christmas coming up and all. As a result, when it comes to getting pampered… they’re on a budget. So consequently, if you don’t advertise your offers widely, you’re going to lose out on business. Blast them all all over your social media channels, promote them and make use of your marketing section. Send an SMS campaign out to all your customers including offer details. Many customers have given us feedback and informed us that the money they spend actually sending the campaign is made back just with a couple of bookings. So, if you’re sending out a text to 1000 customers for example, if only 4 of them were to book an appointment, you’ve pretty much made your money back and more!

Create a look-book

Gather together a load of looks you have created previous years and put them in a book to have in the salon. You can also upload them to your social media pages so customers can have a look at what your team is capable of and then refer to the image as being what they want. Which not only makes it easier for your customers but also easier for your staff as they have created the look before so it will be easier the next time. Extra bonus – it increases engagement on your channels and your reputation!

Make use of siteview and mobile web app

It isn’t just going to be your Salon that will be busy these following months, you, also will be busy. Family events, friend gatherings, work do’s, Christmas shopping… it goes on and on. This is where siteview becomes your best friend, out and about and wondering if everything’s going smoothly in the Salon? Log into siteview and have a quick look. Staff want to see what appointments they have scheduled for the week? Log into siteview and they can have a look themselves.

There's our top 5 tips in preparing for the Autumn and Winter Months ahead, I know most of you will still be in shock that i'm even talking about winter yet but i'm afraid it is the 3rd of October! Yes October, yes less than 3 months to Christmas! Yes you need to start preparing now! 

Salon Tracker x 

Improving your Salons Online Presence

As we all know social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are a great way to market your salon. As well as being one of the cheapest forms of marketing, it is also one that reaches a wide audience so more and more potential clients will be aware of your salon. Whilst having social media accounts for your salon is all well and good, the larger your online presence is, the more potential customers will hear about your salon. So, here are some of Salon Tracker’s top tips on growing your online presence!

Competitions

Competitions are also a great way to increase your salons online presence. Recent studies have shown that businesses who run a competition will get more than double the number of clicks and engagements from new or existing customers. This is because customers are more likely to engage with you online if they feel they can get involved or contribute something to your posts. The possibility of them winning a prize is just another bonus for them. They’re also a lot more likely to do things such as tag their friends or share your posts if you’re running a competition. Facebook is a great platform to run a competition due to the large amount of people who use it on the daily. One competition you could run is getting your customers to like share and tag three friends in a picture to be in with a chance of winning free tanning minutes, or a free cut and blow-dry. By having people tag others and share your post it means it will reach a wider audience and therefore help increase your online presence. Twitter is another example platform where you could run a competition. This may involve your customers sharing a hashtag related to your company, along with a photo of your choice to be in with a chance of winning one of your prizes?

Online Reviews

Online reviews are another great way to improve your online presence. There are many different platforms you could ask your customers to leave reviews on, such as Facebook and Yelp. One thing that online reviews benefit towards is where your salon will place on web results. This means the more reviews you get, the higher you will place on a search engine when someone searches for a salon in your area. This will improve your salons online presence due to the fact that more people will therefore hear about you and will be able to view your page. This will then in turn boost sales and increase customers in your salon. You may choose to encourage your customers to leave reviews by offering them small prizes, such as free tanning lotion sachets or 10% off their next treatment. New customers will also be able to look at the reviews and see if your salon is right for them before they come in. Most customers have said that they will trust a salon with a mix of reviews, even if there are a few bad ones, over a salon with no reviews at all.  In order to obtain a positive array of reviews you could target the market of your customers who you ask to review your salon. Directing them towards loyal and frequent customers would increase the amount of positive reviews you got, due to the fact that if they didn’t like your salon or services, they wouldn’t keep returning. This means you can improve your salons online presence in a positive way.

If you’re a user of our system let us know your opinion by leaving us a review on www.capterra.com/p/81148/Salon-Tracker/#reviews to get 1000 FREE texts or a £50 hardware voucher!

If you aren’t a user of our software at the moment and are thinking of looking at getting a package, why not visit us at Professional Beauty North next month, head to https://bit.ly/2KNI1Iu to get your FREE ticket with us! We’ll be at stand E67, hope to see you there!

Or if you’d like a little bit more information, give us a call on 0113 350 8230 or email us at Info@salontracker.co.uk to speak to a member of our team!

Salon Tracker x

What to expect from ST @PB!

Only a month away from PB North in Manchester central, the biggest trade show in the north of England! Here’s what to expect from our Salon Management Software for the end of this year.

We’ve recently updated our subscription software which includes some brand new features, desired by some of our wonderful customers. For the show this year, we’ve had a redesign of our stand and we even have a few new faces!

The New Stand

For this PB show we have redone our stand tables and even changed the layout, with a fairly updated theme. We’ve decided to change from our plain black and pink lotus logo, so keep an eye out for our burnt orange counters! We will be demonstrating a number of the products we sell and giving demos on the software throughout the day on request, showing potential customers our new features. This year our stand is E67 so it’s quite central to the show room, we’ll have a number of our team dotted about the stand so don’t hesitate to come over and have a chat!

The New Features

The tech team behind Salon Tracker Software have developed a number of new features

to add on the program in time for the PB show, so here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve recently added in.

One of the latest features we’ve had implemented is ‘Advanced Deposits’. This is for

when bookings are made and you want the customer to leave a deposit with you, to secure their booking and reduce the number of no-shows in your salon. This is very flexible so you can adapt the feature to suit the way that your salon works which is a great benefit. You can either setup the deposit to be a percentage of the overall

treatment cost, where you can add a set minimum or maximum value or you can set a flat-rate deposit for all services. If it is only particular product groups that require a deposit, you can now also set this up easily with our ‘groups’ feature. For example; if you only wanted to take deposits on hair treatments over £50, this is possible.

Another one of the new features is a signature screen which you can advertise your salon on, through a touchscreen tablet! This is similar to our signature pad feature which enables you to obtain your clients signature, this is for purposes such as patch test requirements or written consent to salon disclaimers. However, it also now allows you to display your company branding, logos and gives you the opportunity to advertise any current offers you may be running, all-in-one!

An additional new feature is a settings icon which can be added on to your Calendar Booking Screen. This features allows you to quickly make any staff unavailable for booking on that day and allows you to transfer any bookings on to another column, under another staff member. Using this feature you can also hide all the unavailable staff for that day, expanding the dimensions of your calendar and only showing available staff.

The PB North Offers

This year we have an entirely NEW OFFER on Salon Tracker Software, this will be available from the 21st of October 2018, the weekend of PB North, up until the 16th of November 2018. This end of season offer will include 30% off all hardware and software for the first 3 months of your subscription. These is an exclusive offer and is only available in the given time period, so get signed up before it ends!

If you haven’t already signed up for your free PB North ticket, you can do that here! https://registration.n200.com/survey/3pud1tsgfmxw1?actioncode=NTWO000118SAF
 
We hope you all enjoy this years show, see you there! Salon Tracker x

September Salon Tracker Feature of the Month: Advanced Deposits

Ever get frustrated with people not showing up to appointments, even when you’ve sent them a text-reminder message that it seems that they’ve completely ignored? Do you think that people would react the same if you added a little upfront pre-pay rule to their booking? We’ve enhanced our software by advancing our upfront deposits system, to help you to clamp down on people missing their appointments once and for all. Especially with Peak season, Christmas, being just around the corner, your calendars are going to be booking up fast with festive appointments and so you really don’t have time to waste with no-shows! That’s why for September we’ve chosen ‘Advanced Deposits’ as our feature of the month! So how do our deposits work?

You have a few different options when it comes to setting the rules for your deposits. So, if you want to take a set value amount for every treatment that you offer, we have a simple way of implementing this. Or if you want to do specific percentage deposits for a certain range of treatments; so, for example say that you wanted to just take deposits for all treatments that are over say £50, we can also set this up as a rule for you using our product-group permissions feature. You can also set a flat-rate deposit, or a minimum and maximum value dependent on the price of the treatment, therefore the feature is extremely flexible depending on how you wish to run this in your salon.

Some of the benefits of having a deposit as well as an appointment reminder are:

- If a client has already pre-paid a small percentage of their appointment then they are less likely to cancel a booking that they have already committed money to

- The benefit to you if the client doesn’t show is that you at least retain the value of the deposit to slightly make up for the inconvenience

- It makes the clients remaining amount cheaper when they arrive for their treatment, which some customers deem as a benefit, as this splits the payment up for them making it seem more affordable

- It gives you and your client a better sense of security for their booking, as for you as salon owner you have the confirmation of the deposit and for the client they have the confidence that their booking is secured with a payment.

What package is deposits available on? We are offering this as an inclusion on both our Professional and Enterprise software packages, as they are part of our advanced management tools which are available on both of these software editions.

For more information or for your FREE demo and trial, please call our team on 0113 350 8230, who’d be more than happy to give you a run through of how this feature can benefit your salon this season.

We are also exhibiting at Professional Beauty North next month, where we will be giving live demos of this feature to anyone who wishes to visit our stand! You’ll find us at #E67 across the 2-day event. Not got your ticket yet? Simply head to https://registration.n200.com/survey/3pud1tsgfmxw1?actioncode=NTWO000118SAF to get your FREE ticket to the show with Salon Tracker!

Hope to see you there!

Salon Tracker x

It’s been a year!

And what a year it’s been! I’m sure we’ve had the privilege of speaking to the majority of our clients already but if you haven’t spoken to us yet… we’re Christie and Naomi, part of the sales and marketing team at Salon Tracker, and degree apprentice students!

Naomi started just over a month before Christie, at the start of August, and this tends to be our more off-peak season; which meant that the first few weeks were focused on picking up the ropes and learning all of the aspects to the job. However, since around the time that Christie started it has been none stop (with it being our peak season) so this has lead us to where we want to be, therefore allowing us to progress and develop further. When we first started we both don’t think we really realised how hard it would be to pick up the role of the job and be able to answer a call without having to double-check answers from our manager Nicki. But once we got closer to the end of September, we found that it was much easier to manage clients of our own and new enquiries, without having to hold to find out more information. We then worked up the courage to deal with more difficult tasks and by Christmas we were flying through our day to day responsibilities.

Shortly after we’d both come to grips with the job itself, we both started University in February of this year. We study at Sheffield Hallam University and are completing a Chartered management degree, both due to graduate in 2021! So, a little low-down on the Uni-work life: Our degree is the equivalent to your regular degree, however the only difference is we work full time as well as attending university for 4 days every 8 weeks. In that small 4-day period, a full module is squeezed in and admittedly, at first, taking everything in was a challenge and it can be quite intense. But with a bit of perseverance it became natural and allowed us to return to work with new information fresh on our minds. We’ve even brought ideas back with us that have been put into place at Salon Tracker, showing that the degree is really bringing something to the business! At times it has definitely been a struggle trying to juggle both work-life and our university course-work, and often we will have to come into work early or stay late to make sure we meet our deadlines. But we are dedicated!

In February, Christie attended her first exhibition at the Professional Beauty London show with some of the team. This is where it really tested her knowledge, as she was often speaking to visitors and giving demonstrations on her own; which although it was challenging, it was exciting to meet current customers and potential future clients. In case you didn’t know… we are attending Professional Beauty North in Manchester this October too, we’ll be on stand E67 so make sure you come and give us a visit!

Overall though, the past year has been a very enjoyable one and despite all the things we have already learnt, we are always expanding our knowledge of new things and loving meeting clients (and getting to know our current ones!) We’ve got lots of exciting projects planned for the lead up to the new year so keep tuned, and if you are interested in visiting our stand (E67) at Professional Beauty North; you can get your free tickets here: 

https://registration.n200.com/survey/1pkbrn40glgdr?actioncode=NTWO000075TWK&partner-contact=1uzk9m0whf61y

We hope to hear from you soon!

Christie & Naomi

Feature of the Month - Autumn Marketing with Salon Tracker Software

With summer coming to a halt and the Autumn months fast approaching, you’re all probably tired of hearing the phrase ‘Back to school, back to normality’ but that’s exactly what it is. Here at Salon Tracker, we want to share with you some of our top tips for marketing your Salon effectively this season.

The Autumn season leaves plenty of opportunities for some great campaigns for you to take advantage of in your salon.

Back to School Bundle

A back to school mini bundle could be a great idea for your salon. For example, offering a package deal with some mini treatments, such as lash and brow tints, could increase your profit and help you gain a selection of new clients that you may not have previously had. Pairing this with a ‘back to school’ hamper containing some of the retail products you may stock would mean you’re making a positive of this otherwise dreaded time of year for many people.

Getting the Message Across

Whilst having these promotions and campaigns is all well and good, you need different ways to get the message out in order to ensure that all your existing clients and possible new clients are aware of it. There are many different avenues you could take when it comes to this.

Social Media

Social media is a great way to advertise your salon and the campaigns you’re running, to ensure that a wide array of people see it. Social media marketing is a great way to reach your current audience and then also broaden it to potential new clients. Using popular hashtags will also increase your income traffic. The best thing about social media marketing is that it is completely free so is possible for every salon owner to take advantage of.

SMS Marketing 

An advantage of this is that you can target specific customers or audiences. For example, if you wanted to target customers who haven’t visited in the last 3 months, you can do this through our filters. Our software has a built-in marketing suite which gives you the opportunity to easily use SMS and email marketing. You can choose client groups or make your own in order to send out your message to the group of people it was intended to. For example:

Hi << Customer Forename>>

We miss you! Book now for your new Autumn look before space runs out!

<<Company Name>><<Company Contact Details>>

As you see, summer finishing may put a frown on many faces but with these tips you could turn it into an incredible opportunity for your salon.

If you would like any more information on our filtered marketing or any of our software features, don’t hesitate to head over to www.salontracker.co.uk or call our office on 0113 350 8230 to book your software demo, our support team are available Monday-Friday from 9am-5am.

You can also trial salon tracker free of charge for a 2-week period. Hope to hear from you soon!

Salon Tracker x

My Glam Camping Essentials

Doesn’t the idea of sleeping under the stars sound enchanting? If you’re not the biggest fan of camping, I might have a suggestion for you…

With August being the prime time for holidays, here is a new blog to give you some of my essentials for having the perfect glamping trip! There are two main types of glamping, the first is bringing along a luxurious tent or campervan which you can make in to your home away from home. The second is there are a number of campsites available throughout Europe which offer various luxury accommodation, more campsites are upgrading their facilities and services to accommodate for the growing amount of happy campers.

So what makes Glamping more appealing than camping? Well first of all the accommodation, wouldn’t you rather spend your week in a spacious 16-ft canvas Tipi tent equipped with zip-able mesh windows, a heavy duty waterproof canvas and a zip-able ground sheet, like this one from Amazon.

Tent - https://amzn.to/2BxV3e0

What also makes it more appealing is the bigger the tent makes more room for a comfortable camping bed. Some of us have learnt the hard way that sleeping outdoors can be uncomfortable, I’d recommend investing in something slightly more pretentious than an off the ground camping bed. Although they would keep you dry if there is sudden torrential rain, I prefer an inflatable double mattress with inflatable pillows.

My next tip to making your trip entirely more comfortable is taking
various extra sleeping bags or even a duvet to build up the layers on your camping bed. Taking extra blankets and cushions to decorate the tent and your bed with will make you feel more at home as campsites can get extremely chilly during the night even in summer, you never know when you might need an extra blanket. It also makes sitting round a campfire at night cosy and more enjoyable.

Portable grill - https://bit.ly/2MFRczO

Another one of my essentials to a Glamping trip and what first time campers might forget about is a light! A typical torch is good enough but if you want to go the extra mile and feel more homely, a nice touch is string lights. A lot of garden stores sell solar powered fairy lights which saves you having to change the batteries after a few days and they look adorable!

If you’re planning on eating while you’re at the campsite I’d recommend investing in a portable grill and BBQ, they are becoming increasingly popular and more affordable. They’re extremely useful, easy to maintain and saves you spending your money in restaurants. Taking plastic dishware and cutlery are also easier to eat meals from and a lot easier to clean. To store your food many camping stores sell large cool boxes, finding one which will charge from your car is really useful or using a solar panel charger.

Shelves - https://bit.ly/2PrhfZU

There’s nothing worse than trying to enjoy your holiday while you’re practically living out of a suitcase! For general storage I’d recommend purchasing a collapsible wardrobe and shelves, there is a variety of sizes to suit your needs. They are really useful when it comes to keeping unworn clothes fresh throughout your trip.

Another tip is to take some comfy glamping chairs or even fold up deck chairs, you will feel the comfort after a long day and it means that you can sit outside and enjoy the last of the sunshine during the evening! Whilst you’re out and about, I’d recommend a waterproof picnic blanket to sit on so you can rest your legs even if the ground may be wet.

Lights - https://bit.ly/2BzCy8L

Here are some extra decorations you could add around your pitch to make it even more glamorous. Some outdoor mental lanterns, you can purchase these usually in bargain stores in the outdoor section, some bunting to hang around the trees and from your tent, I also really like the idea of a welcome matt at the front of the tent to take off any shoes or muddy boots.

Here are a few extra tips and tricks for whilst you’re camping;

⧫ Micro-Fibre quick dry towel, not only does it soak up water extremely quickly but it also dries quickly too.

⧫ Take some extra string or rope to act as a make-shift washing line, useful for drying your wet and sandy beach clothes

⧫ Take some extra hoodies and coats, even in summer the campsite might get chilly and its really useful if you need to get out of the tent during the night

We hope you have a lovely time camping and find this blog useful, just in time for Bank Holiday! 

Salon Tracker x