Sunday chills spent in the most satisfying way

I know spending your Sunday doing anything other than laying in bed with Netflix on and munchies at the ready might sound a little daunting, but its time to get out of that winter hibernation mode and roll into the summer of success! Sunday’s can be spent doing all kinds of things, but we’ve got a few ideas lined up to help give you that little boost of motivation when you need it most. 

I’m not saying you should spend every hour of every Sunday rattling your brain and completing your full years marketing plan in one sitting, but maybe 3-4 hours of every Sunday will help you stay on track and not leave you in a hot sweat when you realise you’ve come to the end of last quarters plan and have to quickly form the next quarter, brief with your staff and create an action plan all in 2 hours.

Fun motivation fact? – Doing 4 hours of planning near enough every Sunday is the equivalent of 160 hours…  and that’s including 8 Sundays off to do whatever you like. Imagine what you could achieve in 160 hours!

So, first things first. If you want to make the most of these valued days off, wake up early… ish. Be up and ready for 10am at the latest. Make yourself a hearty breakfast, lots of spinach, protein, fruit to give you the energy you’ll need for the day. This way, the day will feel longer and you’ll have time for your own relaxation and free time, especially now that the lighter nights are drawing in. See http://ow.ly/f26M30jb22e for ideas on a great Sunday breakfast.

Secondly, organise your space into a work-friendly environment. Nobody can concentrate in a messy, unclean area because there will constantly be that voice in your head saying “tidy up” which is the very least thing we want when focusing on our businesses needs. Have a neat desk with some satisfying décor such as the mini cactus's that everyone raves about or some fresh flowers to set the mood along with a stress ball to hand which will be most beneficial at the best of times. If a desk environment isn't for you, then take a seat on the sofa - there's no comfort like home comfort! 

That’s the basic necessities covered, moving onto managing your time. To get the most out of the time you’ve got, a schedule would be useful. E.g., 10am-11am – Marketing plan for the next 2 weeks, 11am-12pm – staff rotas for the month,12pm-12.20pm break for a cuppa or bite to eat (breaks are essential), 12.20pm-1pm – social media post planning (Hootsuite is a good platform for this) 1pm-2pm – wrap up, check stock levels, order stock etc. 2pm onwards… free time! Relax, see some friends/ family, catch up on that series you’ve been meaning to, go for a bike ride… the world is yours and you’ll find it so much more enjoyable knowing you’ve got those tasks done that have been consciously following you.

To remember: An organised Salon is what keeps your staff happy and motivated, keep them satisfied and the results will show!

And I’m not going to overload you with too much information, but perhaps a brief on a marketing plan would be helpful. I know the thought of creating marketing plans may sound scary but there Are 5 key steps you should take to make it simple.

• Audit – Review a past time period (a year is usually best) and analyse the current marketplace, any potential and current clients and competitors, old and new. Look at you and your team’s abilities to identify any new opportunities and potential problems that may arise.

• Goals – Set realistic, SMART salon objectives. If you’re unsure on the meaning of SMART objectives, see http://ow.ly/KbL830jcemn for a better understanding.

• Approach – Use your audit to define an expansive approach and select your target audience.

•  Implement – This is where your time management comes in. Form a day-to-day implementation plan full of in depth marketing activities, tools and channels.

• Evaluate – Set your KPI’s and put monitoring systems in place. These should be regular, monthly is always a good indicator.

Still struggling on how to create the perfect marketing plan? See http://ow.ly/bmAg30jceYH to help you get a better idea.

And that's a wrap, the perfect ingredients for a Satisfying Sunday!

Any questions? Don't hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230 or via email: info@salontracker.co.uk. 

Salon Tracker x

Easter Marketing Tips!

Easter is coming relatively early this year, falling on the 1^st of April, so you need to get planning ASAP! For this week’s blog we thought we would share with you our best Easter marketing ideas for you and your salon.

The obvious Easter marketing tip to give would be to run an Easter promotion. Giving your customers some sort of special Easter offer will encourage customers, both new and current, to visit your salon. The main benefits for doing a campaign is to increase the number of people visiting your salon, which will also hopefully bring many new customers that will return in the future. Another big benefit of offering some sort of deal to your customers during and Easter is that you will be able to up-sell your full price retail products, as people will be more inclined to spend money if they have saved on their service(s). Here’s an example for an Easter promotion that you could do:

Once you’ve got your promotion planned, you need to get it out to your customers. There’s plenty of ways to do this, however there are some ways that will work a lot better than others. For starters you want to put your offer in your shop window, so that anyone walking past can clearly see the offer that you have on, which could potentially result in someone visiting your salon and not your competitor across the street. Social media is the perfect place to showcase your promotions, especially Facebook. The best thing about social media is probably the fact that it is FREE, so you might as well just give it a go and see if it works for you. You can also pay for promotions on some networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, so this will allow you to reach even more potential customers and get your promotion out there! Another great way to send out your promotion would be by SMS and judging by the fact that 99% of texts are opened, this is a great way to reach out to your customers. With Salon Tracker this can be done straight from the system in a matter of minutes from our marketing feature and sent out either instantly or scheduled for later time. Here are a couple of ideas that you could use for your promo SMS:

Hi <name>

This Easter we are offering 20% discount on all services! Show this text is the salon to receive your discount! Offer ends 8^th April so be quick!

Hi <name>

All us at <salon name> are wishing you a Happy Easter. All of our services and retail products are 20% off when you book over the Easter week!

I would suggest using both Social media and SMS to make customers aware of your promotion, as social media will allow you to reach out to both current and potential customers, whereas with SMS you will only be able to contact your current clients.

Although emails seem to be a thing of the past, compared to SMS, it is still a great way for you to send out your promotions to your customers. And it’s FREE! There are some great email providers out there, such as Mailchimp, that allow you to create templates and send out an email to multiple customers! Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, try use Social media, SMS messages and Emails to send out your promotions to your customers, and then you can see which one performs best for any future promotions.

Decorating your salon may seem like something that won’t make an impact on your salon, however for many it could be the difference in them visiting or revisiting, as it makes your salon feel welcoming and homely to your clients. You don’t want to go too over the top with your decorations, but just enough to make it look inviting and professional to your clients to ensure that they enjoy their visit. This could also involve creating some sort of product table, that displays all of your retail products that are included in the promotion, as this could encourage a client to spend some extra money and buy a retail product as well if it is clearly displayed on sale to them.

These are just a few marketing tips that we gathered together for you, however there are plenty more marketing tools you can use to promote your salon this Easter. If you want any help regarding the SMS and email marketing from our system, feel free to contact our team who will be able to help you with that.

If you want a demo and trial of the software you can visit our website www.salontracker.co.uk and enter your details, or you can email our team on info@salontracker.co.uk or call on 0113 350 8230!

Salon Tracker x

Are you ready for the GDPR? We are!

With less than 2 months to go until the big change we thought we’d give you a run through on what we, here at Salon Tracker have done in order to be fully GDPR compliant. Meaning you can put your trust in our Software and put your mind at ease. 

If you’re unaware of what the GDPR actually is, then it is an act which is put in place of the current data protection act 1998 and will be standing as of May 2018. The data protection act 1998 is very much still standing, the GDPR is just added security on top of what was already there.

Want further information? Visit our own previous blog: http://ow.ly/Z4w130iPhLI or the official GDPR homepage: https://www.eugdpr.org/.

So, here’s everything you need to know:

• We have made sure that the marketing consent boxes which serve the purpose of including your clients in mailing letters and SMS texts are now unticked by default, meaning the client now has to opt in to marketing by ticking the box themselves and wouldn’t be included in a salon mailing list under false-impression/ not agreeing to it. 

• We have also implemented a “lock down” on all of your clients given data for anyone that has a user logon lower than a manager status. This means that the clients data requires extra authentication in order for staff members to access any client data by “unlocking” the data for it to be revealed. Every unlock of data performed by all staff members is logged and can be viewed in an audit report as often as the owner wish to sees it. Meaning that you can monitor when any client’s data is being viewed and whether or not is it being viewed without reason allowing you to follow up accordingly. Furthermore, this feature is very useful for safety reasons too. For example, if a client has an allergy to a certain product, then the information regarding the allergy would be stored on their client card, therefore every practical employee must check their card so they can avoid giving them an allergic reaction. If a situation comes up where this was to happen, the owner can check the audit report to determine whether or not their employee checked the client card. And every employee account is password protected so there’s no excuse for mistakes, making your salon a much safer place. 

• We have also put into practice a “master delete button” which if functional for ‘forgetting’ clients details at their request. Don’t worry, under the GDPR you are still inclined to keep all legal information such as the signing of disclaimers, patch tests and treatment consent which can be stored securely in an external format to our software. However, you may need to be in touch with a solicitor for further advice should you need to keep these legal documents. 

• Under the GDPR, clients have the right to request a SAR (Subject access request) at any given time. The Salon then has to product ALL information they hold on the client free of charge and within 30 days. Now you might think that sounds like a timely effort and a costly one… but with our software you can do an extensive customer history report within the click of a button and then export it straight to print, the joys of technology! 

• It’s not new but golden for the GDPR! – Finger print reader. We integrate our software with our very own fingerprint reader (professional package and above) which makes the security of client data extremely safe with the help of personal biometric data. Clients can lock their data to their individual fingerprint meaning only themselves can access it and it’s as simple as walking into the salon and applying their finger print to the reader which automatically brings up their client card, perfect! 

And that's a wrap! A fully GDPR compliant solution to answer all your Salon needs, taking the weight off your shoulders and giving you the confidence when May 25th comes around!

Any questions? Email christie@salontracker.co.uk or call 0113 350 8230, we're always happy to help. 

Salon Tracker x

Feature of the Month; with a twist!

It’s time for our monthly blog, that we know you all love, on what we value to be the “feature of the month”. However, this month, there’s a little twist…

Our software developers have been working extremely hard these past few months, as they have taken on-board the voice and opinion of our loyal clients and pursued their thoughts into some new and pretty impressive features. So instead of one feature of the month, we’ve decided on our five features of the month… because it was just so hard to choose!

Easy appointment extension

Our software now allows you to simply drag a client’s appointment block if it is running over or under. Making it easier to manage your booking calendar both visually and in terms of running your reports so that everything matches up without causing you any confusion.

How to: To extend an appointment simply hover your mouse over the bottom of the appointment until an expandable arrow comes up, click it and you can adjust the appointment to either be longer or shorter.

3D reminders

We understand that not all of your clients will be tech friendly and therefore text reminders might not work well for them, which is why we’ve linked the “print appointment reminder” feature with the software so your clients can decide their preference keeping your customers happy. 

How to: Once the appointment is booked (at least 1 day ahead), right click on the appointment and click “print booking reminder”, it will then automatically print from your receipt printer… simple!

Not only can you print your appointment reminders, you can also print your customers remaining minutes and pack quantities out so they’ve always got a record which avoids any conflict between the Salon and client! 

How to: Go to the client in questions client card, click on the “my products” tab, all the minutes they have purchased and pack quantities they have will appear here. Next to each one, there will be a little information button, click that and the remaining minutes/ pack quantity will come up and it will also tell you exactly when they were used. Simple click print and your client will have their own copy at their request.

Help on your doorstep

Don’t get us wrong, we love being here to help and assist you when you get a little stuck with the software but we can understand it may get a little annoying for yourselves if you’re constantly having to ring up, especially if you’re new to software. This is why we’ve brought out a whole section full of help videos (50+ to be precise) which you can access directly from the software “help section”. The videos cover anything from setting up your calendar to things like the SMS marketing section and reports. All this along with our free support calls, what more could you want?

How to: Go to the help tab at the bottom of the screen, click the help tab along the top left of the page, several tabs will then be visible which divide the videos into different categories making them very accessible and user friendly.

Send SMS’S directly and quickly

This tends to be one of our hidden features that our clients don’t really know exists but is so handy! Our system gives you the option to directly text that specific customer straight from their client card with a completely personalised message so it is suited to everything! For example, if a client has left a personal item in the Salon, you can quickly message them letting them know and tell them to pop in the salon for it. Furthermore, they haven’t got the option to reply so the use of the one way communication line really helps you save time. 

How to: Go to the client in questions client card, click on the contact tab, to the right of their phone number there will be a phone icon, click that and the SMS gateway will pop up allowing you to put in your message and send it. Just make sure you have SMS credit!

Quick and easy reviews

Our software allows you to set up a automatic review SMS service which sends out directly to customers a day or so after their treatment. A great feature to get your salon name about and gather a wider client basis. 

How to: Go to your marketing section, click on the reviews tab, edit, and you will then be able to input your own review message and the system will automatically change each clients name etc by default. You can then preview the message to your mobile number and click save which will then enable the systems review system.

And there you have it, a complete run down of our 5 exclusive features of this month. Need any further assistance? Don’t be afraid to give us a call on 0113 350 8230, we’re always happy to help!

Salon Tracker x

Safe-Tanning: How Salon Tracker can help you to maintain maximum client safety

Hello there and happy month of Spring (hopefully). Now, as we enter the fresh daffodil season, it is likely that you will see an increase in footfall in your tanning salons due to the fact that people are wanting their glowing base-tan prior to their spring-break. Still, many of you will know that there remains to be lots of contrasting opinions surrounding the use of sunbeds and their potential dangers to people if they over use them. So as a salon software company that specialises in tanning, we just wanted to discuss with you how we have designed and built our software to ensure that sunbed clients are tanning as safely and legally as possible. So, without further due let’s chat sunbed safety.

First off, a few things about Vitamin D. Your body creates Vitamin D by using sunlight or UV rays. Therefore, it is essential that over a lifetime, every single person is exposed to some form of sunlight, with the current recommendation being 5 minutes 2-3 times per week on average for a person to sustain the amount that they require to produce enough Vitamin D all year long. In some countries however, and especially in the UK & Ireland, we are prone to much longer Winter months, meaning that this 15 minutes per week average can prove to be difficult, as the sun is not strong enough to produce the UV rays needed for our skin to absorb enough to make Vitamin D. This was therefore the start of sunbeds and also the vitamin capsules that you will find in many supermarket or pharmacy stores. 

Believe it or not, some medical experts have been known to advise a little bit of short-term sunbed use to clear up certain skin conditions. For example, eczema or psoriasis. Vitamin D is associated with healing up conditions such as these, in which if a sunbed is used in moderation and protective UV sun lotion is applied beforehand, this is similar to someone spending 6-9 minutes outside in the summer sun.

The Vitamin has also been linked to improving other medical conditions such as auto-immune diseases including Diabetes and Arthritis. It is also proven to improve the general mood of people’s mentality, especially those who suffer with SAD syndrome.

However we are very aware that a lot of people abuse sunbeds and spent far too much time on them, essentially burning their skin due to the over-exposure to sunlight. This however can also just as easily happen if you spend a day in the sun on holiday, or even out side in the Summer for too long without relevant UV protection.

Therefore, to manage and stop the over use of sunbeds, this is where the government stepped in and made it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to use a sunbed at all. In which now, any salon who isn’t compliant with this rule may find themselves subject to a fine as big as £20,000.

We understand as a company that it can be hard to ensure that all of your clients are telling the truth when it comes to their age, and that’s why when we developed our tanning salon software we created especial tanning rules, to ensure that we keep your clients and business as safe and compliant as possible with the current law. In 2010, we also followed the recommendations of the sunbed association, to ensure that any client that is using a tanning salon that has our software will be tanning as safely as possible.

So, what are our tanning rules and how have we implemented these to keep tanning clients safe?

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

We are aware it is easy for a client to lie and make a date of birth up, but not so easy if you have the relevant checks in place. With our software, we have fields on their digital client card that prompts a client to have a photograph added to it so that this can be matched up with a form of their ID before they are allowed to book on to a sunbed. We have also introduced fingerprint recognition, which again means that a client's perhaps younger sibling can’t try and pass as their elder brother/sister as the fingerprint will have to match. And we have also implemented a signature pad so that a client has to sign a disclaimer stating that they are over 18 and that they will comply with your salon T’s & C’s before using a sunbed. Protecting your business from any lawful damage.

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

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

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

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

Maximum Minute Usage.

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

Therefore, if you currently have a tanning salon and want to ensure that you maintain the highest level of safety possible, get in touch with us today on 0113 350 8230 or send us your details at http://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx so that we can arrange you a FREE 2 week trial. Let's keep your tanning salon safe together this Spring!

Salon Tracker x