Salon Evo magazine: An exclusive interview with Salon Tracker and Urban Calm!

One of our lovely Clients Urban Calm had the lucky experience of having an editorial placement with the fantastic Salon Evo magazine! And as Sacha and Leanne have explained how our Salon Tracker management solution has helped their business, in case you missed the edit, we really wanted to share their story with you. To see how we may be able to also benefit your salon too!

Interview:

A nail course 20 years ago, led Sacha Eastwell on a journey of working for herself. Working from her home salon was perfect for juggling her young family then, but when her sister Leanne came on board doing lashes, Sacha says that her ambition led them to join forces and open a salon together.

For the last four years Urban Calm Salon has been their base in Kent. The combination of the two sisters and the fact that they thrive in different sections of the business has been a great mix and has led to them having a successful, and very busy salon.

“We do lots of services, we have two Ergoline sunbeds, one being a red-light therapy bed, it’s a hybrid sunbed and we also do spray tanning. We offer lash services and nail services and we recently started with facials and massage too. We also have a young lad renting a spot who does barbering, and we have another person who comes in and does teeth whitening.”

Sacha herself is doing nails, brows, lash lifts, spray tans etc. It’s a busy place with many options on the menu. To keep track of appointments, the inevitable changes in appointments, and everything else that a busy salon owner needs to keep on top of their business, Sacha chose Salon Tracker which is a feature rich salon management solution.

“Initially, it was recommended to me, so I looked into them. I also investigated other systems to use for our salon to figure out what would be best for our needs. The thing that attracted me to Salon Tracker is that we needed a system that would allow us to sell block bookings. That is particularly for the sunbed side of our business. It is so helpful, when the client comes in to use the sunbeds, their minutes are taken off their account automatically without the team having to get involved. All the other systems didn’t have that feature, so this really fitted what we needed.”

Sacha offers her clients the chance to book through Salon Tracker too. “We call it our VIP booking, because they really are our very important people. If they want to become a VIP, they can go online and book a sunbed at their own pace. And now that Salon Tracker is offering Klarna payments which means that it can take deposits or the full payment. It allows our sunbed clients to pre-pay for their tanning courses before visiting the salon and make their appointments online using their own personalised booking link.”

Another plus for this system is that it offers a diary just for tanning. There’s a tanning tab at the top and then a tab for the salon side of the business. Two different diaries running in tandem.

“We started with a sheet of paper and were trying to write everything down and it was really tricky. Lockdown gave us the chance to take time and look at what we needed and also to take time to work out how to use the new Salon Tracker system.

“We’ve just built a new website and we have incorporated our VIP booking online onto our website. That, on its own, has taken away the pressure of having to book people in and explain our services. People can just go on there and look and make their own booking.”

Trust in existing clients means that they do not need to pay a deposit, but new clients that are booking online do have to pay a deposit which they do through Salon Tracker. Sacha said: “For us, it is an assurance that people we don’t know are less likely to cancel at short notice or not turn up. It’s a really helpful feature on Salon Tracker and if they don’t turn up, at least we still have the deposit.”

Clients are less likely to forget their appointments if they have a reminder sent to their phones and Salon Tracker provides a text message just as a gentle nudge to make sure that a trip to the salon is still on the priority list.

And Sacha has been impressed by the customer service she has received. “They are very hands on, if you have any problems at all they are there and will quickly talk you through any issues.”

The addition of Salon Tracker software to the business has been an incredible help in juggling multiple diaries for lots of different services and it has taken a huge amount of stress, worry and wasted time away from Sacha and Leanne leaving them to do what they do best. Run Urban Calm!

Free Trial?

If you want to see how Salon Tracker could help your business, head to www.salontracker.co.uk/freetrial.aspx and enquire for your free 2 week trial today! We hope too hear from you soon!

Salon Tracker x

Bank Holiday Marketing

 

As I’m sure you’re all aware, the first bank holiday of Spring 2022 is fast approaching. With this in mind here at Salon Tracker we thought we would give you some of our best tips and tricks on how you can market your salon to make the most of these upcoming long weekends.

 

Social Media

One of the easiest, and sometimes most effective, ways of advertising your salon is to do this on social media. Having an active account on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram is a key part to running a successful salon in 2022. The good thing about social media is that you can use it in whatever way suits your salon best. Some key things that you can use social media for in your salon are:

·         Posting pictures of the services that you offer to show clients what you provide.

·         Running competitions to gain interaction from customers.

·         Communicating with new and existing customers to give your salon a friendly vibe.

SMS Marketing

Another way you can market your salon is through text message marketing. This is a very effective form of marketing as text messages have a 98% open rate. With Salon Trackers professional package and above you can do a text message marketing campaign directly from Salon Trackers intelligent marketing suite. 

Here are some examples of text messages you can send out to your customers to try and get them to visit your salon.

Hi <<Forename>>

EASTER WEEKEND IS HERE!

Free Tan Accelerator Sachet when any course is bought Fri-Mon!

<<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply

 

Hi <<Forename>>

Long Weekend = Longer Opening Hours

This weekend only we've extended our opening hours until 9 so get booked in quick!

<<CompanyName>>

 

Hi <<Forename>>

Bank Hol is here, get booked in quick so you're ready for your night out. Gel polish on hands and toes just £30 this weekend!

<<CompanyName>>

Email Marketing

Another great marketing option for your salon is email marketing. In Salon Trackers marketing suite, you can grab a list of customers who have opted in for email marketing and export them into a CSV file which you can put into a free email campaign provider such as Mailchimp. Mailchimp allows you to send an email to up to 2000 people completely free of charge. You can design this email to match your salon theme and send them as often as you would like!

 

If you would like any more information on Salon Trackers Intelligent marketing suite, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230 or email us on info@salontracker.co.uk.

 

Salon Tracker x

We are Exhibiting at PB London this weekend! Come and see us on stand Q32!

We’re exhibiting at the show!

We can’t believe it, Professional Beauty London is only a few days away, it doesn’t seem like 2 minutes since we were last there and it’s been 6 months! And what a busy couple of months it has been, where we are so happy to finally announce that we have launched our online payments feature for tanning courses! So, we can now offer payments through stripe for all of our clients, whether you are wanting beauty/hair deposits, or wanting clients to purchase tanning bundles upfront, we’ve got you covered. We can also offer Klarna as a payment method, meaning that this allows your clients to buy now and pay later for their courses.

We also have lots of new features to demo to you, including our brand-new age verification tool, that only allows courses to be sold if there has been a proof of identity verified on the account. This is an extra security step to ensure that no one under the age of 18 can use a tanning bed. We also have a whole range of new reports to demonstrate, allowing you to get further insight in to your business and your KPI’s, plus these can be viewed on our Siteview app which is now editable! Appointments can now be made, updated and amended within the app, which is also native in the app store and on google play; in which all salon owners and employees can download and use on their phones & tablets. Making the ease of usage of the app even better now!

We also partner with both Dojo Payments and Star Micronics, in which both of these brand’s equipment work hand in hand together to create the seamless retail solution! We will be showcasing the new Star TSP100IV on stand, to show you how you can print client receipts and the also end of day reports from the printer. The new printer is also much smaller in size, meaning that this saves space at your registration desk to allow for a much smarter looking solution. Dojo have some new, compact card readers to go alongside the new printer, working hand in hand to create a smart retail environment.

If you’re lucky enough, you should have received a VIP invite from us so you can receive early entry in to the show on Sunday at 9.30am – there should be a VIP link on the email where you can register for your early entry pass!

We will be exhibiting at stand Q32 across the 2-day weekend, offering live demonstrations to all visitors, and don’t forget if you visit our stand to make sure you sign up with us for your exclusive show offer, where we will be giving up to 30% off hardware and 30% off first 3 months software to all attendees!

What can you expect us to be working on next?

Even though we know we had a couple of years where events were closed, from the last couple of events we exhibited at, we have taken on board feedback and put together a plan to begin a road map for the next few features that we hope to have developed for you. Here’s what you can expect from us from our next few phases of development.

Salon Forms

Predominantly for the beauty and aesthetics industry, Salon Tracker are hoping to integrate with ‘Tally’ to create forms that can be associated to a booking, complexed registration forms for spa and medical services and also potentially forms that can be associated with patch testing. These will also be sent via email to clients and stored electronically within the system. Salon Tracker will provide standard report templates through Tally and these will be editable for clients to amend to suit their services.

Salon TV

Salon TV is a new feature that allows Salons to broadcast their live bookable item times and waiting list times to a TV through streaming, using a google chrome cast. Clients will w be able to view when the next bookable item is available, therefore in the tanning industry they will be able to see the waiting list and approximate waiting time until their appointment, same in the barber industry and also this feature will work really well for anyone who offers a walk-in service.

Salon Assist

An improvement on the Salon Signature pad, as this can allow clients to be registered via a tablet, without needing to be on the Enterprise package. A tablet is client facing at the reception desk, allowing clients to register a new account, or check in to say they have arrived at the salon for their appointment (great for businesses in the hair and barbering industry). Some of the company’s tanning clients already use Salon Assist as a form of security, by asking clients to ‘check-in’ when they arrive for their appointment, alongside a PIN pad, where the client will then check in and enter their secure pin to ensure this matches up for their appointment.

Salon Occupation

Using motion detection and hopefully electrical usage tracking, Salon Tracker can use detectors on their powered bookable items, or through smart intelligence on security cameras to determine whether someone is having a treatment at any one time. This type of technology is used to stop malicious behaviours, to detect if a bed has been used but not necessarily started through Salon Tracker, and also to match up payments at the time of hair/beauty appointments, as motion sensors and occupancy trackers should match the times of a transaction.

We're so excited for the show this weekend, it's great to be back exhibiting! If you haven't registered for your exhibitor pass yet, follow the link below:

https://pbgroup.online/event/professional-beauty-london-2022

See you there, stand Q32!

Salon Tracker

Why Should You Visit Trade Shows?

Trade shows have been held now for years, in all different types of industries and there are plenty of
different salon, beauty, spa, clinic and hair events that are held all year round. You may have seen us before at shows such as Professional Beauty, Salon International and Beauty UK demonstrating our software to hundreds of customers throughout the events. Trade show exhibitions like these are great for salon owners and staff like yourselves who are looking to find out more about the industry, network and to see what great products and services are available.

What to do if you are wanting to visit…

The first thing you need to do is register for your ticket, depending on the show you may need to purchase a ticket so it’s best to book in advance as sometimes you can get your ticket for free or cheaper the earlier you purchase.

You also want to make sure to pre-plan your visit ahead of time! Most shows have apps or websites that you can go on to see which stands you want to visit and where they’re located.

Lastly, make sure you give yourself enough time to get round all the stands you want to visit and take into account time you might want to spend watching live talks and for stands you may not have spotted during your pre-planning!

Once you get there…

Visiting a trade show is the perfect chance for you to not only meet companies you already work with but to also meet new companies and find new and exciting products and services that can help to benefit your salon. According to CEIR, 92% of trade show attendees are looking to discover new products. New products are great to test in your salon, whether these are to sell or to use during services, there are always fresh and innovative products to keep you on top of the industry trends.

With us all been locked inside for the last 2 years it’s nice just to get out again and interact with those
within your industry. At many trade shows there are also live speakers and demonstrations that you can watch from industry leaders which can be very beneficial to watch. These range from anything such as business stages with marketing and social media tips to demonstrations on how to do skin, nail and makeup treatments. If you check before going to the show, you’ll be able to find a list of planned live stages and seminars that you can attend and watch during your time at the event. These also give you a great opportunity to network and create contacts with those in your industry and with those that follow similar interests.

One of the best parts of visiting a trade show are the freebies! Keep your eyes peeled for any stands offering any free products, not only is it nice to get a freebie it also gives you chance to test a product you may not have looked at or thought to try!

Not only do you get to meet hundreds of new businesses, it also gives you chance to see and meet businesses you haven’t interacted with before. Exhibitors tend to offer visitors deals or special offers for visiting them whilst at the show, so this is a great chance to try out your negotiation skills and get yourself a good deal.

Don’t forget we’re exhibiting at Professional Beauty in London next weekend on the 3^rd and 4^th of April! Come see us on stand Q32 to meet the team and see the system live in person, we can’t wait to meet you all!

Salon Tracker x

Our Essential Features

 

At Salon Tracker, we aim to help your salon become as efficient as possible. In order to achieve this, we have a range of different features which help save time and improve your overall running of the salon.

Advanced Calendar Options

Salon Tracker allows you to have a digitalized appointment book with split-screen columns for multiple therapists. Depending on which package you are on, you are able to have multiple calendars for different areas of the salon, for example, a tanning and beauty calendar. Also, you can have colours associated with your treatments so that you can easily identify them within your calendar.

Client Record Card

All client information, including date of birth, contact number and notes can all be stored securely within the system. This not only eliminates the need for paper record cards but also reduces the waiting time in the salon as you are able to pull their records up quickly. With the use of our fingerprint readers, you can also assign a customers’ fingerprint to their customer card and speed up the process further by simply asking them to place their finger on the reader upon arrival. This would then bring up the customers’ record.

Stock Management

Our software allows you to accurately track your outgoing stock as it automatically depletes when products are purchased. You are able to set your own low stock warning levels so that you can be alerted when you have sold certain amounts of stock. You are able to set different values for different products depending on popularity. Default order quantities can be set for individual products and used to create automated stock ordering forms.

Advanced Business Reports

Our system is able to generate a whole range of reports and charts which cover everything from sales to stock to staff management. You are able to alter the timeframes you run your reports to pull daily, weekly, monthly or yearly data. Our reports can be exported so that you can access them in both excel or pdf form. Also, with our Enterprise package, you are able to view your reports from home via siteview.

Intelligent Marketing Suite

Make use of our built-in sophisticated marketing suite, allowing you to text and email clients. Tailor your campaigns to your needs and target specific customers or use our pre-made campaigns. Reach customers instantly whether they are at work, home or on the go and encourage client return with personable approach.

If you would like to see these features in person, we will be exhibiting at the Professional Beauty London Show on the 3^rd and 4^th of April on stand Q32! Feel free to come down and visit our stand for an in-person demo and to meet the team, we look forward to seeing you there.

Salon Tracker x

Salon Tracker Solo

NEW PACKAGE ALERT!

Salon Tracker would like to introduce their new software package, aimed at single person run and mobile salons. Salon Tracker Solo gives you some of our most exclusive features for half the price of our enterprise package.

This package is specifically created for smaller salons in mind meaning that you’re only able to have this package if you have one bookable item in your salon. This can be anything from one hair stylist, one beautician or one sunbed.  If you don’t fit these criteria don’t worry, we have plenty of other software packages for you at great prices.

Here are some of the features we are offering in this package:

Customer Tracking

This package gives you the ability to store all customer data such as contact information, booking history and purchase history. This means you can look into a customers account to see when they last visited and how often they usually come in. You can then use the system to directly text them using our one-way messaging system to see if they would like to get booked in. This package can also use this contact information to send your customers automated SMS booking reminders to help reduce no shows.

Business Reports

This package also gives you access to our 8 standard business reports. This allows you to pull reports detailing information such as your end of day cashing up, all the actions which have taken place on your software throughout the day and also retail and booking sales for the day. You can run all reports for a day, month, year or even set a specific date range which you want to see this information for.

Retail Products

Selling retail products is an easy way to increase your salon revenue by quite a lot. Salon Tracker solo gives you the option to store all your retail products and sell them to your customers directly through the system.  This makes the selling of retail products even easier as you can just add them onto your customers booking.

Online Bookings and Payments

‘36% of salon bookings are made out of hours’

In order to make sure your salon is getting all the bookings possible; we are offering our online booking and payments feature as a part of this new package. This means you can offer 24/7 booking for your clients. With this feature you will get your own booking website which you can add on to your social media platforms and we can design to fit your salons. You will also be able to use our new online payments feature which allows you to take deposits or full payments online through stripe when your customers are making their bookings. This again helps reduce the risk of no shows.

 
If you would like anymore information on this new package or would like to get booked in for a free demonstration and trial, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk.

Salon Tracker x

SMS & Email marketing tips and tricks!

With SMS open rates being 98%, there is no better time than now to push SMS marketing! Which is why we've put this blog together to demonstrate how you can effectively use our marketing suite.

If you are on our Professional and Enterprise package, you're probably familiar with our marketing suite where you can target a specific range of customers and send them either a text directly from the software or use mail chimp to upload this list of contacts and send them an email! Either way, I bet you wasn't aware of the exact filters you can use on the software to precisely target your customers.

Alerting your customers their booking services are due to expire

The software has a clever way of monitoring your clients booking services such as tanning minutes remaining or beauty packages remaining. As a result of this, you can send out a text directly to those whose minutes are due to expire in any set time frame, whether that's the next month, 3 months or 6 months!

This will then encourage your customers to come back in the salon and use up their minutes thus resulting in them purchasing more and so on!

To use this filter go to:

Marketing > Filters > select 'Alert customers their bookable services will expire' > select dates to what you would like it to be e.g next 3 months or next 6 months > change the 'next month' to the time frame you would like also > apply filter > send SMS. 

The text is already pre-written for you but if you want to change the next please be aware it will need to be under 160 characters for it to be classed as 1 SMS credit. You can also preview the text to your own phone using the 'Preview Mobile Tel' box to input your number then press the phone mail symbol on the right hand side to make sure you are happy with the text!

Push your online booking for those customers who haven't booked online yet!

Moving from making bookings manually on the phone to using an online booking system can be a drastic change for both Salon owners and Salon Clients. Some may resist to the change and prefer to ring up themselves and do it which as you all know, can be very time consuming! So for those customers you're struggling to get using online booking, we've got you covered with a marketing filter!

Offering a simple gesture of just 10% off or £5 off can work wonders for encouraging your customers to book online, once they've done it they'll find it easier to continue doing therefore saving you time and utilising your online booking to its best ability!

Go to:

Marketing > Filters > select 'customers not online' > apply filter.

Give something back to your best spending customers

Whether you want to send it to your Salons best spending customers in general or for your self employed staffs' own customers the extensive filter selection has both covered!

That way your loyal customers will feel appreciated and will be more inclined to return whilst encouraging them to recommend you to other people!

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'Custom - create your own marketing campaign' > select 'best customer by spend' drop down > select your preference e.g 'best 10' then click apply filter. If you want to use it for your self employed staff then use the + button to add another filter row and use the dropdown to select 'customer by bookable item' then use the other drop down to select the correct booking item.

Birthday texts

Everybody loves to receive a birthday text, especially when it has an offer in it! The software has 2 types of pre-made filters for your customers with birthdays coming up. 1 is made for all customers called 'birthday gift message' and the other is for your high spending customers with birthdays coming up called 'birthday gift message for high spending customers'. It's up to you which you choose - whether you're feeling generous or extra generous - we've got you covered with this filter. 

A birthday gift doesn't have to be a lot either, it could be small voucher or even a percentage off but if your clients get that extra personalised touch - big or small it's bound to work wonders for you. You can even get extra personal and categorise the texts for genders, e.g men could get a free haircut for their birthday and women could be given a free manicure.

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'birthday gift message' > change the 'next month' drop down to what you would want it to be > apply filter. 

For customers who haven't visited in a while

Life happens, things get in the way and self-care becomes a thing of the past for some people. Well why not give them that gentle reminder to say that you miss them and would love to see them back in the salon? 

You have probably forgotten about half of the customers that you've had in the salon once and haven't been in again yet. Lucky for you - the software cleverly recalls these for you, down to the exact date they were last in. So if you're having a bit of a quiet period and need that extra push, use the 'for customers who haven't visited in a while' filter and go for the 'last year' or 'last 2 years' filter which will then provide you with a list of people that haven't visited the salon in that time frame. Entice them in with 10% off which will bring them in and encourage them to return, therefore boosting revenue and keeping you busy!

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'for customers who haven't visited in a while' > change dates to your preference (1-2 years normally works quite well) > apply filter.

If you would prefer to use email marketing, all these filters can still be used but instead of clicking 'send SMS' you would click 'send email' which will then export the list of clients into a .csv file which can then be uploaded directly to mail chimp! 

Learning new things can be quite daunting and we get that, that's why we offer free training with your monthly software subscription which can be booked whenever you need it! Just call us on 0113 350 8230 or alternatively drop us an email at info@salontracker.co.uk.

New to our blog page and want to give the software a go? Register for your free demo and 2 week trial here: FREE DEMO & TRIAL

Salon Tracker x