How to keep staff motivated during busy periods

Christmas is almost here. We cannot believe it is only a few days away. It seems to me that the year has only just started, but 2017 is approaching unbelievably fast. A lot of salons are especially busy over December as many customers would like last minute appointments to treat themselves before the festive period to look extra glamorous. However, this can often cause extra stress for the salon owners and its staff members. Long hours, extra promotions that bring the numbers of appointments up and customers that seem more stressed than usual can often be draining. It is understandable that energy levels can be low and it feels hard to keep motivated. This can lead to a lack of desire to give 100%, which can negatively affect customers and therefore your business. After all, those who work extra hard during this period deserve some appreciation. Therefore, we are looking at some last minute tips on how to keep staff members motivated and plan for the months ahead of you. As salon owner or manager, you have to overlook the business and manage the salon. Customers are not the only thing you have to take into consideration, but also your staff members. Without them your salon wouldn’t function on a daily level.

Happy staff = good atmosphere at the salon = happy customers!

Good customer service comes from your staff. Client retention, reputation and revenue all strongly depend on excellent customer service. However, what do you do if your staff are tired, stressed and over worked? You know, one of those days where it simply seems a bit too much for them. Especially in the run up to Christmas this can happen quite often. Here are some tips on how to keep staff motivated all year round, but especially during busy periods.

Regular breaks

This is a given, but when it gets busy I know that sometimes a break can be skipped. Every member of staff is entitled to a 30min break if they work for six hours and longer. Not only should staff members take their breaks, it also helps them to wind down, shut off and relax for a quick period. Refreshed and nourished they can then return to work with a fresh mind and new found energy.

End of Year Awards

This incentive is a great one for showing your appreciation to your staff and also combine it with treats for them. All you have to do is enlist everyone into a competition. Tell staff they will all be entered into a competition where their colleagues will nominate them for who deserves the ‘what’ award! This can be anything from a ‘Newcomer of the year, Profitable Stylist, Most appointments taken, or hardest working staff’. The winner might receive a little trophy and a goody bag, or a gift card. This doesn’t have to coast much and you provide whatever is possible with the budget you have.

Seasonal Events

Events such as Secret Santa and Christmas Jumper Days are great for promoting community and involve everyone at the salon. You can even team up with a local charity and motivate your customers to get involved and donate too. Using the Marketing Suite on Salon Tracker Software is an easy and quick way to spread the word about upcoming events. Secret Santa is always good for a bit of fun between employees. Create a theme with a set spend amount so that it is affordable for anybody and then get your staff members to pick names from a hat.

Socials

We all need some time off here and then and it is especially important to get away for a while to embrace other non-work related activities. How about you plan a social for all your staff. This could be anything from bowling to eating out, or attending a show. Find out what people are passionate about and book something everyone would enjoy. Team bonding activities such as karting are great fun and leave everyone with good memories.


No matter how busy some days can be, don’t forget you are a team and no one is supposed to handle all the customers and stress on their own. Plan in advance how you can make this time easier for you can your staff. Organisation is key and will make life a lot easier when done early and properly.

With that said, we hope some of the tips come in handy and it gives you some ideas for the New Year as well.

Salon Tracker x

Raising money for Save the Children!

Every year, Save the Children run a national charity event in December to raise funds for their global children's charity. One of our clients the 'Sun Centre' in Ormesby, Middlesbrough ran a little fundraiser to join in with the national 'Christmas jumper day' and we helped out by donating free text messages so they could notify clients of the event.

Salon Tracker donated 3000 free messages to the salon so that they could instruct customers that if they visited Sun Centre on Friday December 16 wearing their best festive knit, they would receive offers on 
their treatments and retail products - where 
suggested donations to the Save the Children 
were recommended as part of each offer.

Talking about the day, Sun Centre’s Director Kevin Conway said: “The event went well, it was decent plus we raised a fair bit for charity.”

Nicola Soanes, Marketing Manager at Salon Tracker, further added: “We assisted Kevin with his charity campaign as we always want to support clients where possible when they are hosting fundraising events, especially in this case for the wonderful cause Save the Children at Christmas time.”

Sun Centre raised more than £65 for the charity and according to the official Christmas Jumper organisation, funds raised across the nation have so far reached a massive 537,860.

Salon Tracker x

Christmas Lookbook 2016!

'Tis the season of sequins, sparkles and glam! From glitter to metallics, we have chosen our fave looks as seen on Pinterest, beauty blogs and make-up brands this year for this seasons Christmas styles. So if you're in need of a bit of inspiration, here are our selected looks perfect for your festive days out and party wear ready for you to recreate this Christmas...

               

How our Software can help you through busy periods

Running a salon can often be a stressful task. Managing staff, juggling with clients and oversee sales and marketing can be a hideous task to manage all by yourself. Especially, in the run up to Christmas, when all of a sudden you have customers after customers wanting to be squeezed in before the festive days. How is there any time left to improve things such as client retention, stock control and business analytics. After all, you can’t be at the salon 24/7, but probably wish that in these periods there would be a possibility to be more productive even when you are not around. If these things sound all too familiar to you then Salon Tracker might be the solution to you. Let me tell you why:

Many salons still rely on the traditional pen and paper appointment booking system, however new technology now makes it possible to use Salon Software to seamlessly manage your salon. Salon Tracker is designed to keep track of all appointments and client data and is simply supposed to help with managing your salon better. It is far more than just an appointment scheduling system. We offer features such as stock control, booking and no show reminders, SMS and email marketing, online booking, advanced reports and many more. This is certainly important if you are looking at boosting any last minute sales and want to target specific groups. What you want, especially before big sales opportunities such as Black Friday, Christmas or Mother’s Day is a system that makes life easier not harder, as well as support your staff and help you plan ahead.

The calendar view helps you to keep track of general appointments, upcoming bookings and no shows. You can access it from your salon PC or laptop or on the go on through our site view feature on any portable device. We have chosen a few features that are useful in everyday salon life and will certainly make life easier in busy periods.

Marketing & SMS Reminders

Our Marketing feature is so simple to set up, yet a very easy way to engage with customers. Salon Tracker supports email as well as SMS marketing. It’s an easy way to spread the word about offers and incentives without the lengthy process of planning numerous marketing campaigns. Just use our software to filter your customers database for upcoming birthdays, VIP’s or customer by age and simply send out your message. Our handy feature can be used for all kinds of things and is primarily designed to get the word out if you want to promote your services. You have a variety of options to choose from for your personalised campaigned. It's a great way to work on your client retention and encourage your customers to book with you in the future.

To ensure customers won’t miss their appointments, once booked in, always remember to enable automatic booking reminders. That way you can sit back and relax, without worrying to ring numerous customers. In case of a no show the same concept applies. All customers who haven’t turned up to their appointments will receive an automatic SMS notifications.

Advanced Business Reports

Reception duties and evaluating your salons performance is one of those tedious tasks that no one has time for, but can be crucial for planning ahead. Save this time for your clients and let Salon Tracker do the job. As we provide a variety of business reports, the advanced business reports on the software enable you to find out clear and concise information on all aspects of your business quick and easy. We offer simple reports from a cashing up report to more complex annual sales charts. This helps salon owners, especially those of multiple sites, make informed business decisions to increase profitability whilst absent from the salon.

Fingerprint Reader + Staff Rota 

When your Salon is busy and you as a salon owner has a lot going on, it sometimes can be hard to observe every client that comes through the door or your staff. To speed up the process of looking clients up on your database, you can simply add their fingerprint to the system and the next time they put their finger on the reader their client card will open instantly.

Our smart staff rota system, now lets you take control and ensure your staff arrive and leave on time. We have integrated a function on our software that links to a fingerprint reader. Our ‘Staff Rota’ feature is an easy way to track clocking in and clocking out times. Once it is linked up to a fingerprint reader, staff members simply place their finder on the reader before they start their shifts and again when they finish their shifts. The feature will accurately track the duration of staff shits without them being able to edit or manipulate the rota. You can run specific reports at the end of the week/month to check your staffs working hours.

Site-view

Salon software is a great way to take control of your salon business, especially for when you cannot get in to the salon. Site View is designed to oversee salon activity wherever you are at home or on holiday, ensuring that business still maintains its professionalism even in your absence. 

It gives you the ability to oversee your business and monitor activities such as bookings, takings, refunds and stock management. You can also access staff performance charts to maintain authority in your absence. Site View is an essential for those salon owners who hold multiple sites and need to split themselves between sites, especially those business owners that are constantly on the go. Access your current business activity from your smartphone, iPad, tablet or a PC. Furthermore, your staff will get their unique log-ins to view their upcoming appointments for the upcoming week.

All in all…

As you’ve guessed, Salon Tracker is great as it comes in various packages and you choose the one that best suits you. We have crated three packages that are guaranteed to manage and grow your business. We are here to help and therefore, offer free unlimited support if you ever get stuck on something. The best thing to do is to contact us if you want to find out more about the features. We can demonstrate our best features to you and you will then trial the software for 2 weeks for free.

Sign up now http://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx


Salontracker x

Promo tips for the Holiday Season!

The holidays are coming…we can’t believe it’s the first of December tomorrow, let the advent period begin! And, as promised, here are a few tips from us with advice on what you can be doing in the salon over the festive period to increase those Christmas sales!

Festive Treats

If you have a bit of spare budget, why not get some Xmassy-themed trinkets or even some of the classic festive chocolates that everyone loves, quality streets or a box of Terry’s will do the trick. You could create a Christmassy box to put the sweets or little gifts in, this could even be something as simple as a cardboard box dressed in wrapping paper and trimmed with tinsel around the edges. This just gets everyone in the festive mood and ready for the holiday season. If you decide to get some mini pressies, these could be retail product minis or something that you could even get your company logo printed on, like Christmas-smelling air fresheners or post it notes shaped in a Christmas tree? Both mini-retail products and anything that has your brand appearing on it are winners for you in terms of pushing those Xmas retail sales and brand awareness!

Your Choice of Background Music

You may remember a few weeks ago we actually wrote a post about how songs can influence consumer buying habits, and the same applies for over the festive period! You don’t want to over-do it and drown your clients in a series of Xmas songs on repeat all day, every day throughout December, but you do however still want your playlist to be a bit merry, mixed with a few other beats to keep in with the Christmas cheer. Depending what type of salon you have, your playlist will have to reflect your usual ambiance still, just with a bit of an alteration for Christmas time. As it’s the height of Party season, you might want to create a feel-good playlist, which there are plenty of websites that offer advice on great 
party-season songs. Another idea could be to ask your fellow 
clients on social media to pick a song (within reason) 
to add to the playlist.**Make sure however that you have 
a license within the salon to play music before attempting 
any of the above. **

Rewarding your loyal best-spending Clients

There is no better time than to remind your loyal customers that they are appreciated than at Christmas time. Everyone’s a bit strapped for cash and so by giving your faithful clients a little something extra and selective only to them, this just shows them that they are valued and also reminds them of why they chose your business in the first place. Plus, the more you reward your dedicated clients, the better your client retention. (P.s, if you already have our software, we have a built-in filter in our 
SMS marketing suite where you can autumatically search for 
your best spending clients at the click of a button!)

Competitions

A light-hearted way to get people talking about your business. And as everyone runs competitions around Christmas time it’s a great way to win over a few clients by enticing them with a great winning prize at the end (should they be lucky enough to win)! Ideas could include the best Christmas hair, makeup or nail style, and clients participate by emailing in their best photo? Or maybe it’s even a chance to win a free mini-treatment, and they enter by liking and commenting on a social media post?

Salon Atmosphere

Set the Christmas Scene! Everyone loves a good tree, some fairy lights and a hint of mistletoe. If your store looks twinkly and welcoming, this instantly reflects on customers moods, in which happy customers = better sales! You could also run a Christmas uniform theme, which doesn’t have to be over the top but say your usual attire is a black shirt and trousers? Why not jazz this up by letting staff where a sparkly shade of red with some Xmas accessories throughout December?

Christmas Selfies

A great way to get people to have a bit of fun and also, to get 
people talking. Advertise your ‘Christmas selfies’ around the salon and on your social media pages, getting clients to hashtag #my<yoursalonname>selfie with their uploaded photo after 
a treatment at the salon. Not only is this entertaining, it also gives your salon some cost-free advertising to showcase your work. The more people that upload their pictures and share them to a wide range of people, the higher the chance of some potential new clients loving one of the styles they’ve seen and actually visiting you for the same treatment.

Event Nights

All throughout the lead up to December and during the advent period, business participate in all kinds of Xmas events, such as Black Friday, Christmas Jumper Day etc. and often there are local events happening in the area too. Whatever it is, try and cooperate in the salon by creating a little festive event night, accompanied with some mince pies & prosecco, or maybe take part in one of the Christmas charity days. At least this way you are raising money for a good cause and also creating an opportunity to get some PR coverage about your salon in the process.

Happy Christmas Marketing!

Salon Tracker x

How to improve Sales for Black Friday and Advent (plus Salon Tracker Black Friday Offers)

One month till Christmas. We bet December is one of the busiest months for salons and spas. Plenty of opportunities packed into the run up to Christmas. One of the biggest sales opportunities in recent years has definitely become Black Friday. Year after year, businesses throw out the best deals they can possibly think of this time of the year. The increase in popularity is hard not to notice since they are designed to boost sales and everyone seems to get on the bandwagon.

In case you forgot, it’s Black Friday this week, followed by the first of Advent on Sunday. These days, not just retail shops participate, but many other businesses are involved. Meaning, especially for those working in the beauty industry, it’s just another opportunity to market your salon and pull some discounts out of your sleeve. The secret is to know when and how to get discounts out, in order to improve your salon sales. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable, especially when everyone around you is competing for the best deals. Luckily, the run up to Christmas is full of potential opportunities to boost sales. That’s why now is the time to really focus on your sales campaigns. You’ve got a busy month ahead of you that you should use to its fullest potential. So, to stay focused and not get lost in the discount jungle I’ve compiled some ideas that can help get the most out of the next few weeks, but also prepare you for any other upcoming events.

First of all, you’ll have to get the word out

This is an obvious one. People won’t know about your discounts unless you advertise it. This can be done through your favourite marketing tool. Over the recent years, social media has become one of the best ways to market your salon and deals. It’s easy to use, most people are familiar with it and best of all it’s free. It can be a very effective marketing tool and improve your sales over the festive period.

Post events and updates on your Salon’s Facebook and Twitter.  As most of us do, you probably own a smartphone or have a computer with internet access at home or in your salon. Posting on social media is an easy way to keep your customers engaged and spread the word about any weekend incentives quick and easy.

However, if you prefer reaching out to customers differently, there are other ways such as promotional material in your salon window and reception area or SMS and Email campaigns, which are popular as well. All you need to do is gather your customer’s information and you can create targeted campaigns to be send directly to their phones and email addresses. As long as you let them know you don’t risk missing any opportunities.

Run fun incentives for customers and staff

This can involve both staff and your customers. The options are endless, such as anything from a 'Christmas themed Selfie competition' to an 'advent calendar'.

This can be easily linked to your social media outlets, where you can post winners and updates. This, not only motivates existing customers to claim their gift but also new ones to participate in order to win something.

An advent calendar is an all-time favourite and is such a fun thing to do. Give clients the chance to put their name down and you choose a lucky winner each day. You can give discounts away or products all together. This could include things such as 30% off your next treatment – any treatment, free minutes (if you do tanning) or retail products. It’s up to you. Offering free things leaves customers happy and they might share their experience with friends and family. It’s a good way to work on your client retention.

Invest in Salon Software

Salon Software is designed to help with managing your salon. It is far more than just an appointment scheduling system. This is certainly important if you are looking at boosting any last minute sales and want to target specific groups.

Most software’s have features built in that can help you to store important information and ways to improve client retention, or simply reach out to them at special occasions. There won’t be a need for a pen and paper appointment book. Salon Tracker for example is an easy to use software. The calendar view helps you to keep track of general appointments, upcoming bookings and no shows. You can access it from your salon PC or laptop or on the go on any portable device. Especially during December, when your salon is busy, our software can help track last minute slots and cancellations in order for you to fill the gaps. 

Our Marketing feature is so simple to set up and a very easy way to engage with customers. Salon Tracker supports email as well as SMS marketing. It’s an easy way to spread the word about offers and incentives without the lengthy process of planning numerous marketing campaigns. Therefore, you can create specific Black Friday and Christmas offers to be sent to everyone in your database to promote your sales.

Through our subscription service we give clients the opportunity to choose the package that suits them best. We offer three packages starting at just £30 per month.

Last but not least we’ve got some Black Friday Offers at Salon Tracker over the next two weeks:

We are offering 30% off Hardware & SMS Messages to all EXISTING customers, and 20% off Hardware, as well as three months free on software packages for NEW customers!

Make sure to claim your offer now! Just give us a ring on 0113 350 8230 or send us an email to info@salontracker.co.uk

Salontracker x 

Social Media Marketing is so important to Salon businesses, and here's why!

You may recall back at the beginning of the year we shared our social media predictions with you and also a few tips on how you could implement certain features in to your social media campaigns. As 2016 is drawing to a close, we just wanted to re-visit these points again so you can evaluate how you have used our pointers over the year and also, so you can use them during your Christmas marketing before forward planning for 2017! You’ll find below our points from last year (in pink) in which we have gone on to expand on these a little bit further, just to reiterate how you can apply these methods to your marketing over the festive period and the coming year…

- A picture speaks a thousand words so it’s no surprise that 2016 is set to see some huge growth for businesses on various platforms including photo based apps such as Instagram and Pinterest. Any business can make themselves visual but you need a plan to find success using these apps.

Instagram and Pinterest are two of the best way to tell a story through photographic media, and for salons this is imperative, as the majority of your marketing is visual due to the nature of your business. With Pinterest, their popular categories and national events are a great way to get your content out there for the consumer market to view, and with Christmas just around the corner, Pinterest is a fantastic social channel for you to upload and share your festive-style treatments!

- Speaking of Instagram; although Facebook purchased Instagram just under 4 years ago, it is only until 2016 we will see a huge merge in the advertising element of the platforms. Facebook ads are now pushed to coincide with Instagram ads meaning that now strong visual content is imperative for successful lead generation. Instagram now offers the ability to pay for sponsored content but also a “shop now” button meaning the platform is completely taking out the middle man, ‘the search engine’. You can even share audio and video footage on most platforms now such as ads, tutorials or web casts. Think about what you can offer to the market to promote brand awareness.

Whether you take advantage of the Facebook and Instagram advertising tools or even if you just have your company social pages to share content on, Facebook and Instagram are impetrative accounts for all business to have of the hair, beauty and tanning industry. Especially over Christmas and in to the New year, you can upload imagery, audio and video footage to users, and even boost these posts so that audiences with a similar like range will pick this up on their newsfeed. Boost posting doesn’t cost much at all, and you can put a daily budget on this so that you’re not over-spending, meaning it is a manageable form of marketing. If you’re still new to this, head over to Facebook ads manager where there are lots of step by step posts to help you along the way.

- Julie Ellis (Social Media Week, 2015) confirms the point above by stating that many users “are skipping the search engine and performing their searches directly on social media”. Obviously search engines are still a popular way to find information but this is a huge point to highlight since many people put their trust into accessing sites where they can see using customers of the chosen brand. Twitter, for example allows an advanced search to see product “problems” which means businesses are more accessible than ever, as are reviews.

The above statement is still very true, businesses need to make sure that they are active on all social sites and with a strong page for each channel at that, so if consumers are searching for you through either ‘Facebook search’ or ‘Pinterest’ for example, when they land up on your social page they need to be able to see that everything is up to date and that your content is regularly refreshed. This adds value to your company and deems you more trustworthy, in which bag yourself a few client reviews on there and you’re at the top of the game!

- This leads us to the importance of social media reviews. The searches conveyed through social media will be focused on finding product and also reviews on product, which means you need to ensure there is a business push on engagement and/or reviews. Even if your business has backlash, you need to learn how to deal with it. Micah Soloman (Forbes 2015) lists the 5 best practices to use when handling social media complaints or issues, in which everybody should be taking into account now on verbal based platforms. Especially on the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

According to econsultacy.com 77% of UK shoppers consult reviews online before making a purchase, in which the same applies to buying a service. The more reviews you can generate from clients to appear on your social feeds, the bigger the increase in your brand awareness and company value. It’s like going back to basics, ‘word of mouth’ promotion was one of the main methods of marketing a couple of decades ago, and reviews have the same concept, except this type of verbal feedback is on a bigger scale by being viewable online.

- According to Statista (2015) there will be an increase by 16.7 million on smartphone users in 2016 is the US compared to 2015 and a further 12.6 million increase into 2017- though this point isn’t only relative for social media. Have you noticed the amount of retail giants that are mobile optimised? It should have hit home before 21st of April 2015 when the Google Algorithm came into play but we cannot stress enough the importance of optimising your phones for your consumers. 2016 is only going to grow with the amount of users accessing sites with their handheld smart devices, which means you need to up your game before you lose the potential customer. 

According to Google, the majority of Google searches are now carried out through a mobile device, which this proves to all businesses that the switch to mobile is even more apparent and probably is going to be the preferred search method moving forward. It is therefore very important that if you have a website, you make sure that this is optimised for mobile, as also then if a link to your website is shared on a social media page you then have the comfort of knowing that your website is easily accessible and viewable to consumers on their mobile devices.

- Facebook Ads will improve their targeting reach which means you NEED to know your customer. You might think you already do but what are their stereotypical interests, what do they read, buy, watch etc.? How are they accessing your site? This can be sourced through Google Analytics as long as you are using a URL builder to measure every type of marketing activity you partake in.

A great way to find this information out is to have little feedback cards for clients to fill out at the end of a treatment, or even maybe a questionnaire for them to fill out online. And we can fully appreciate that getting people to fill these things out can be quite difficult, so maybe even offer a small incentive or run a competition for every person to be automatically entered in to if they provide you with feedback? Once you have gathered this info you can then use it to help you target a specific area of interests on Facebook when you are using their Ad creator or boost posting, to ensure that you get the best ROI through the targeting reach.

- According to Chuck Frey (Content Marketing Institute, 2015) Twitter has “255 million active users” that “send more than 500 million tweets a day” however, it doesn’t make it right for everyone because the stereotype is much younger. So you’ve researched Twitter, tried our Twitter Top Tips guide and set-up and run an account for a year and still just aren’t feeling it…That’s okay. Not every platform was made for your business. Invest your time in areas that you are succeeding. Don’t get us wrong it’s important to have an active profile across the platforms but if you invest your core chosen platform whether this be Facebook or Instagram you really will see growth.

Twitter is a great platform for those quick fire messages to be posted as and when you think them up. However, it is still true that with 500 million tweets a day, it is easy for messages to become lost among other tweets very quickly. Therefore, have an active account on there, but in terms of your visual and advertorial content, it may be that Facebook and Instagram are your best ports of call to really determine growth.

- Did you know that “49% of people aged over 65+ are active on social media sites”, (PewInternet 2015) with a huge 89% of 18-29 year olds also active. It is therefore by far quickly becoming the fastest and most efficient way in which to reach anybody, whether that be your friends, family, companies or clients of a business.

This quote still speaks for itself and is the main reason why all businesses should have active and regularly refreshed profiles on a wide range of social media channels. In this day and age, social media helps to create brand awareness, provides consumers with a place to instantly communicate with you and also builds up company credibility…so if you’re not already on social media, after reading these points it is definitely the next step for your business!

Salon Tracker x