How your Salon can help Children in Need this year!

Children in Need is right around the corner again! Here at Salon Tracker we want to help in any way possible, and I’m hoping you do too. Your salon is the perfect place to raise some money for Children in Need this year, but it’s all down to the planning and preparation that you put in. There’s no need to panic though, we’ve mustered up some of our best ideas for you to run in your salon!

Raffles

One of the best ways to get your customers involved would be by setting up some kind of raffle, give people that extra incentive for making their donation. Maybe you could offer out a free treatment to those who win, or a free voucher worth x amount. You could even use our SMS marketing feature to send out an SMS message to everyone that participated, thanking them for their donation, so make sure you take down any contact details for the customers that contribute towards the cause.

Bake Sale

One of the most stereotypical methods to raising money for charity is a bake sale, but if it works, it works! Get your staff involved, ask them to bring in some cakes, biscuits, flapjacks, anything that tastes good really! I’m sure your customers would love a little snack during their treatment with a nice cup of tea or coffee. It’s also a great opportunity to give your clients some extra information about the campaign, and why they should join in.

Dress Up

Get people talking about your salon by getting all of your staff to dress up, you can be as imaginative as you want! Be sure to let your customers know why you are dressing up, as this could persuade them to leave a donation. It doesn’t even have to be anything over the top, you could just all wear something yellow for a period of time, or maybe just get wear ‘Pudsey’ ears. Anything to make your customers think “why on earth are they wearing that???” as this gives you the chance to give them an insight into the cause, and hopefully encourage them into make a donation.

Old pound coins

As I’m sure most of you know, the old pound coin has now expired, meaning that you can’t spend them anymore. Well, I have some good news for you! Children in Need are still collecting the old pound coins this year, so why not ask your customers if they happen to have any old ones lying around in the bottom of their bag, I mean, it’s not like they can use them anywhere else!

Get involved
Don't be afraid to really get in the spirit of the charity event. Create a special offer on "Pudsey themed" nails. Donate a percentage of the profits to Children in Need and make sure its well promoted and your customers know about it. Your salon should aim to be as involved and interactive as possible! 

Social media

With all this effort that you’ve put into your planning and preparation, I’m sure you are wanting to raise a lot of money, for one of the best causes. This is where your social media pages come into effect, you need to make sure that you are posting across all of your social media pages so that your customers are aware about the work you are doing. Not only does this benefit the charity itself, but it also benefits your salons reputation. Everyone’s a winner! Especially if you’re offering some sort of incentive with every donation, as this could be the difference between a client visiting your salon or not, and helping you raise some more money. You know what they say, every little helps!

These are just a few ideas that you can use this year to help donate Children in Need. It’s fast approaching so if you’re going to make a real effort this year then you better get planning now, it will be here before you know it! On the Children in Need website you can find plenty more resources which can be very helpful towards your fundraising - http://www.bbc.co.uk/corporate2/childreninneed.

Just in case you didn’t know the Children in Need appeal show is on the 17^th of November this year, and as always will be on BBC One, so make sure you tune in!

Salon Tracker

Feature of the month - Hidden Features that you perhaps didn’t know about!

For those of you that regularly follow our social media and news page, you’ll be aware that we are exhibiting this weekend at Professional Beauty North! Quick reminder also…if you haven’t got your ticket yet, you can bag yourselves a free one using our link here:

https://registration.n200.com/survey/364r05ev8wm44?actioncode=NTWO000123RTD

So in prep for the show, we thought we’d dedicate our ‘Feature for October’ to some of our hidden features that perhaps aren’t as obvious to the user, yet are extremely beneficial! Below I’ve discussed a few features that can really help you to organise your salon whilst maintaining maximum control over it.


Admin Permissions

How many of you have our pro or enterprise packages but are unaware of all the admin features? Well, let me go on to explain…

For those of you who employ over 2 staff, you probably have a hierarchical staffing structure for your team members; be this staff, to team leader, to management, to senior manager etc. - you get the drift. And it may be obvious that you don’t want all employees being able to view all areas of the system, so for example you may want to hide your company sales & profits reports but might still want staff running an end of day check for you.

Our permissions allow you to tailor your software logins per each employee group, or by particular staff member. So for example, you can hide all company reports from employees that have a ‘staff user level’ and also remove the discount button for everyone except management, to protect your business from being subject to staff giving friends un-approved discounts.


Customer Groups 

Leading on from the removal of the discount button, you may now be thinking ‘how do my staff manage discounts when yourself or management aren’t around?’

Another hidden but very beneficial feature is the customer grouping, again configurable on the site-admin permissions. You can create a particular group, so for example we’ll use ‘student discount’. It is then up to the salon owner to decide what the % discount would be for retail and for bookable services and then any customers that are added to this group will receive auto-discounts on all purchases - but the system won’t make it obvious. Customers can be added to the relevant group upon registration and this can also be done by your staff-level employees if you wish as they will only be able to see the name of the customer group and not the discounts associated with it. You can then use this same grouping feature to give your employees discounts as well.


Happy Hour Services

Many of you will probably take advantage of our sales by hour and sales by week reports, to identify when your quiet or peak times are for purchases/appointments. But, how many of you then use this information strategically to plan offers and discounts around these particular identifications?

Say for example, you notice on the report that between 1 & 2pm most weekdays, you see a bit of a lull and the salon generally has a few gaps. Our happy hour feature allows you to create particular offers to be able to run automatic discounts on certain products/services for that 1 hour per day. These are setup by the salon owner so that you don’t need to have staff or managers doing manual discounts, the system will operate this for you in the background so it is all organised and efficient. A great way to improve custom and boost those profits in times that otherwise may remain quiet!


Hierarchical Pricing

How many of you price differently per sunbed brand? Or for example your junior & senior therapists. There is a very organised way to run these discounts via our groupings tool, however you may not know that this exists and I imagine a lot of you have all of your services in one long list, correct?

It is quite long-winded to get your head around but trust me, once you have cracked it, it will make organizing your service prices so much easier and also, it eliminates the chance of human error. As once you have created all of your different services and their prices, for example junior hair services - you then associate these services with that therapist level, so in this case with Junior Stylist. This means that when your staff members come to select the service under one of your Junior Therapists, only the junior services will be there to select and therefore they won’t accidentally select a senior price and overcharge the client. For any of you that think that setting up these groups will help you, please give us a call and one of our lovely sales team will be able to assist you with this!


Alerts

Many of you will use the client ‘notes’ section on their record card to note-down dates of their last patch test, allergic reactions, usual colours/tints or just for general information for reference of that customer. However, did you know that if you simply put ‘ALERT:’ before some important information in the notes box, this will then flag that information up in a highlighted red box on the screen each time you click on that customer’s client card. So for example, if it is allergy information that you want to clearly notify all staff members of, this will flash up on the screen boldly when they book that customer in for a treatment, giving you peace of mind that all employees are made-aware.


So how many of you didn’t know about these little gems? Each of those features are so useful to have in your salon and really help to keep the running of it secure and efficient. If you feel you’d like a bit of extra training on those, please get in contact with us and let us help you to tailor this exactly to your salon requirements. Find our contact deets below:

info@salontracker.co.uk
Sales & Marketing - 0113 350 8230

And also, another reminder (we did mention at the top but in case you’ve got lost in the blog) here’s the link for FREE PB North tickets this weekend! Be sure to visit us at stand #E84 for some goodies and more helpful salon tips.


https://registration.n200.com/survey/364r05ev8wm44?actioncode=NTWO000123RTD


Look forward to seeing you there!


Salon Tracker x

The perfect spell to make your salon sales soar this Halloween

As we get into the month of October, there’s only one thing that’s on every salon owner and workers mind, Halloween. This and how their salon is going to take advantage of the guaranteed Halloween rush. Here at Salon Tracker we have come up with a few tips and tricks for you salon owners to take full advantage of to market your salon properly in order to have a happy Halloween rather than a horrifying one!

Spooky Social media 

The first thing we recommend (and probably the most obvious) is to use social media. Make your customers and followers excited about Halloween and use sites such as Instagram to promote your incredible work from previous years. Advertise all your deals on social media outlets; put your salon out there! Start off your Halloween posts well in advance to give your customers chance to make a booking before you get fully booked, we recommend you start the advertising at the beginning of October or the end of September for the best results.

Deadly Deals 

We also recommend you advertise deals and promotions for Halloween. For example, a ‘bring a friend’ scheme which includes 2 friends coming in for a Halloween look, and only paying for one. From this, not only are you attracting more people to make use of this deal and therefore selling more, but you are also attracting a wider client audience as one of your clients brings a friend with them, their friend could potentially become your regular client. You could also advertise things such as ‘pay for a Halloween makeup look and get eyelashes free' which is a bargain and as well as your current clients booking this,  you will also find (if you advertise the deal effectively) that new customers will be choosing your salon over your competitors. Something which is not only beneficial in the short-term but also beneficial in the long-term as you have attracted new customers to bring regular profit to the salon. And these are only a couple of our sales ingredients to add to your cauldron to create the perfect recipe for a Happy Halloween. 

Trick or treat!

It would be offensive to the Halloween season if you didn't have a plastic pumpkin filled with spooky sweets in your salon. Better yet, why don't you add some print out vouchers/deals such as 'visit again in November and get 30% off all treatments' or '20% off all hair and beauty products if purchased today'. Not only does this sales feature add to the spirit of Halloween and makes your customers feel welcome, but it will also encourage sales in the Salon and make the spirit a lot brighter than the Autumn weather! 

Loyalty cards

The final thing we here at Salon tracker recommend is when new clients come for their Halloween looks, (trust us there will be loads) offer them a loyalty card or discount off their next treatment or appointment as this will then encourage them to revisit your salon throughout the year, not just at Halloween. This will then increase the amount of paying customers you have throughout the year and not just a these peak times and holidays. Making your salon a spooking success! 

Inside of your spine-chilling salon

You're all well and good offering special Halloween offers but what use is a Halloween offer without the Halloween spirit?! Go all out on the decorations this Month. Make your customers want to come inside with your inviting display. Posters, cobwebs, witches, broomsticks, skeletons... anything is better than nothing.

Make one of your employee's head of Halloween so they can take full charge of the display and give you one less thing to worry about. Halloween is the perfect time to remind your clients that Christmas is near around the corner and start taking bookings now. 

A freaky photo booth is something to consider. Something like a before an after picture where the client can show off their new hair cut, nails or makeup look which is not only rewarding for them but also shows off your salons skills and services.

So maybe Halloween isn't as scary as you thought and I'm hopeful that the thought of it no longer gives you the chills! For the run up to Halloween, I have included some of our favorite looks that we found on pinterest which may be perfect for your clients!

Salon Tracker x

Everything you and your employees need to know about protecting your client details in time for the launch of GDPR 2018

I am hoping that you are already aware of the new and updated law coming into effect on May 25th 2018. I am also hopeful that you are already considering the changes you and your salon may need to make in order to comply with the new regulations. However, if you’re not, we’re here to help and want to make it as easy as possible for you and your staff… so take a seat, a notebook and a large coffee; you’ll need it!

So, before I go full speed ahead, you’ll need to come to terms with the definition of the GDPR and what it actually means.

The General Data Protection Regulation May 25th 2018

The GDPR (commonly referred to as the New Data Protection act) works within the EU to give consumers a high level of control over their personal data and how it is used.

Everything that applied to the DPR still applies to the GDPR yet the GDPR holds stricter regulations and privacy policies – not to worry, we have a breakdown of the changes and a structure of how you can start preparing now.

Staff

One thing you should begin doing now is informing your staff. You as a Salon owner will

be responsible for all of your client’s information and if any factors of the GDPR are preached by you or your staff it’ll be you facing the consequences such as 4% of your annual turnover fine… money that could potentially be an investment into bettering your Salon! 

From May 25th and onwards, when your staff collect any personal information off of their clients, whether its online or in person, there are 4 important rules they need to follow. Firstly, the employee must reveal the salons identity, the reason for collecting the data, what the data will be used for and who will have access to it. This gives the client confidence when exposing their data as they are giving it to a well trusted business who conform to the GDPR. 

Disposing of data

In the event of having to dispose of any client data, the GDPR requires you to prove that the disposal was controlled. For example, if the data stored is IT based, make sure you have a well-trained IT team to properly dispose of the data ensuring that they cannot be recovered. Alternatively, if your data is paper based there is the option to hire a shredding company who will securely shred the data for you and hand you a certificate to prove the data has been shredded. Never heard of a paper shredding company before? Take a look at these: https://www.shredall.co.uk/shredding?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsOaY3JHc1gIVqbftCh0gcgwxEAAYBCAAEgLVyfD_BwE

Engagement with 3rd parties

The involvement of 3rd parties such as Payroll, software providers (like us at Salon Tracker!), solicitors and HR companies is still permitted, providing you have informed your clients of this and they have agreed to it by signing something like a terms and conditions box to keep you covered.

The meaning and importance of consent

Consent must be freely given without any pressure applied by the presenter, it must also be unambiguous and specific without any misunderstood concepts.

Pre-ticked boxes are a definite NO go when it comes to the GDPR. The client needs to personally tick the box themselves and should be allowed to take as much time as they need. Your client is also allowed access to their personal information at all times and they are also entitled to altering any inaccuracies, erasing any information and objecting to direct marketing.

So, if your salon require consent when recording client details, be sure to regularly review the way that your staff seek, obtain and record the consent given. And if changes do need to be made… start doing them now rather than later!

Holding client information

In order to hold any information on your clients, as a business (especially the owner), you are given a responsibility that you must abide by. 

1) Firstly, protect client’s details at all costs. Only release information to the sole client that holds it and this should be security measured with things like codes, fingerprints and facial recognition.

2) Hold the information only for the purpose you told the client it was for. The information must be properly deleted once it expires (see disposing of data above).

3) Finally, make sure you are fully aware of the ins and outs of the data protection law. Do your research, educate your staff and take strict precautions when dealing with client data. Your clients rely on you.

Yes, all of this is a lot to take in, especially whilst trying to be a successful salon owner.

But if you start taking steps now, the thought of May 25th 2018 won’t make your skin explode with cringing Goosebumps because you’ll be ready for it and so will your Salon!

Still feeling a little lost? Visit https://blog.datasalon.com/2017/07/17/getting-ready-for-the-gdpr/ to help you get more of an idea.

Salon Tracker x

Ways to improve your social media!

We’re now in a world where people are constantly checking their social media pages, so if you don’t already have social media accounts for your salon, well you’re missing out! The best thing about social media is that its FREE, yes you read that correctly, free! Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the three main social media platforms with over 2.8 billion active monthly users combined, so why not use them to your advantage! Maybe you already have accounts but they aren’t really working out for you? Well fear not, I’m going to give you our best tips so that you can improve your social media and make it worth your time.

When you Google a salon name, the salons Facebook page will be often be one of the top results, and its where potential customers will be able to see what people think of that salon. Facebook reviews are seen as a saviour for many people, and they will often help them to make up their mind on whether they want to visit your salon or not. They can give a potential customer that extra level of trust that you’re going to do a good job and not ‘ruin their lives’. So, my top tip would be to ask your customers to leave a positive review on your page, if your page has a bucket load of 5-star reviews it could be the difference between someone visiting your salon, or going to your competitor down the street. Persuading your clients to leave you a review isn’t as easy as it sounds, maybe start by asking your most loyal customers who you can trust to leave you a positive review. The last thing you want is potential customers seeing a bad review on your social media page, so we recommend that if someone does leave a bad review, you immediately reply quickly and positively, even apologising when they are in the wrong. This will often lead to them deleting their review, or even posting a new, more positive one, and even if they leave it be, potential customers will be able to see that you have at least attempted to resolve the issue.

I know it can be hard finding the time to post on your social media pages, especially when you’re a salon owner.  But there’s no need to panic, there are plenty of websites out there with a sole purpose of helping you, well not just you but you get what I mean. A great online scheduler, that’s once again free, is ‘Hootsuite’. Hootsuite is the perfect way for your business to plan ahead with your social media, anytime you have a free hour or even a few minutes you can schedule some posts that will then automatically post on the date and time that you want. It’s important that you plan your content, and make sure that you’re not only keeping your customers up-to-date with the latest salon news and offers, but you are also posting more personal and relatable posts. Social media however is the best place for you to be posting any offers or deals that you are currently giving out. Your customers or any potential customers will be able to just view your social media pages and immediately see that you are offering these deals without physically having to visit your salon. You need to be using these platforms to show your best work off to the world, so why not ask your customer if you can take a quick picture of their latest hair style, or set of nails, and then post it on your social media. Instagram probably first sprung to mind when I mentioned posting pictures, and obviously it’s a great platform to use, as people will go to your Instagram expecting to see pictures of your work, but make sure you don’t shy away from posting them across all of your platforms. If potential customers can see the great work that you have been doing, then this could, again, be the deciding factor in whether they visit your salon, so why not give it a go?

Hashtags can be both brilliant and off-putting, all depending on how you choose to use them. Although hashtags allow you to reach out to a wider audience, which is great, if you use them incorrectly it can take away from the message you’re trying to send out. Twitter was the original start-up for hashtags, paving the way for them to be added to almost every social media site, you can even search for them on Google. On Twitter, using hashtags can improve engagement by 2x, but using over two hashtags can actually reduce engagement by 17%, so be wary of going overboard, especially with the newly introduced 280-character limit. Hashtags haven’t quite got going on Facebook, so I wouldn’t really recommend using them, it turns out posts without hashtags tend to do better than posts with hashtags. With Instagram using 11+ hashtags is the way to increase your interactions, although you may want to add them in the comments or separate them slightly from your caption, as users may assume they are spam and you, again, don’t want to avert them from reading the caption. All in all, as long as you use hashtags correctly, they can only bring more engagement and interaction to your social media counts, but over or under use them, and they will be pointless.

Although all of the platforms I have mentioned above are free, there are some methods that you can use that will cost, but it’s an extremely low cost for the money that it might bring into your salon. If you didn’t know already, Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, and through these platforms you can create adverts for as low as $1. You can tailor your ads so that they are only reaching people that you think will be intrigued by what you have to offer, so you might want to add a location field to it so that only people in your local area will see it on their timeline. You might as well test it out with a low budget and see if it works for your salon, maybe give out an incentive like a £5 voucher for new customers. Then ask the customer to show you the advert in store to receive the discount, this will allow you to see how much reach the advert has had and if it’s worth sending out more in the future.

You can find plenty more tips and tricks for improving your salons social media on the internet, but these are just a few of our tops tips, we hope that they can help you out in way!

Salon Tracker