Feature of The Month: SMS and Appointment Reminders

For June’s feature of the month, I’m going to explain how quick and easy it is to contact clients through text messaging! 

Whether you own a tanning, hair or beauty salon, text messaging can be used by any business of any size and to your advantage. This feature is undoubtedly the most commonly used and effective method of marketing for salons, it is extremely important for a growing business to know how to use SMS and encourage clients to return back through the doors of a business.

So why use SMS?

Here are some statistics to put this in to perspective, over 5 billion out of the 6.8 billion people in the world now own a mobile phone, around 75% of that number have their phone to hand and 90% of text messages sent are read in under 3 minutes, making it the quickest way to contact someone. A lot of people may be thinking that email is just as effective and it’s free, the same with social media, which unfortunately isn’t true. Emails only have a 20% read rate and more often than not they are disregarded or moved in to a junk mail inbox.

Reduce No-Shows

Setting appointment reminders and online booking confirmations not only gives your clients piece of mind, it also dramatically reduces no shows up to 90%. As the most common reason for missed appointments is people simply forgetting and getting mixed up with times, clients value communication. It allows businesses to see who has confirmed appointments, which saves you valuable time, not having to chase down customers. This brings me to my next point…

Entirely Personal For The Client

Confirming appointments with customers on a busy schedule can be very difficult, clients will appreciate being able to reply at their own leisure, meaning that missed phone calls or leaving voicemails can be avoided. If your salon uses Salon Tracker Software, there is an SMS suite where multiple clever features make the entire process a lot easier. It is very useful during a salons busy period as most messages can be automated and set to send hours, even days before. Text messages can be completely customised to each client which is why we encourage Salons to attain as much information as possible. The software can also track the messages sent, alerting you with a notification when an SMS has failed!



Creating the Perfect SMS

Using the software Salons can personalize the entire SMS, a very interactive feature for a business. When writing your own message it needs to be short, sweet and concise, easy for clients to understand. When sending out an appointment reminder, address the customer by their first name. Text messages are available for preview, all you have to do is send it to your own number to see if your message is right and everything is spelled correctly. It’s always good to have an opt-out option at the end of the text or even set it so there’s a no reply service, to save yourself time.

Here is a template of an automated text…

Hi <<Forename>>

You have an appointment booked at <<Salon Name>> with <<Beautician/Stylist Name>> on <<Date>> at <<Time>>

Please call <<Company Tel >> to cancel your appointment.


An example!

Hi, Louise

You have an appointment booked at SalonSpa with Maia on 01/08/2018 at 11:00am.

Please call 0113 350 8230 to cancel your appointment.


So drop your customers a quick text and keep them up to date!

Just make sure you have enough texts, here at Salon Tracker we sell 1000 SMS credits for £50 or try out a FREE demo and trial with 50 SMS credits to try out the feature for yourself!



If you have any further questions or would like any more information on Salon Tracker SMS features, don’t hesitate to call us on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk

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