Feature of the Month - QR Codes

Of course, having a busy salon is what every salon owner wants, but when you have a queue out of the door it can be difficult to spend 5 minutes registering a new customer. This is where our new and upcoming feature will make your lives much easier. For anyone that isn’t sure on what QR Codes are, they’re similar to a barcode, and will enable your customers to easily visit a specific link just by scanning the code. You’ve probably seen them before in shop windows or on advertising boards. Our new QR Code integration will allow our Enterprise subscription customers to give customers the ability to easily register their own customer account online on their phone. Below is an example of one that you could have in your salon. Most smartphones work with the QR Codes, as you can see using the camera on iPhone will bring up the website immediately for the customer just from holding the camera over the code. 

Once the customer has registered this will sync with your Salon Tracker software, and you will then be able to serve them. This will not only then allow you to serve any other customers that are in the shop, it also means that the customers details will be correct as they have entered them themselves.

Another great way that you could use QR codes in your salon would be to have one in your salon window with a link to your online booking. This would be great for people that are passing by and don’t have time to come in or look at your treatment list, then all they have to do is scan the code and they will be able to view this at home and then book an appointment. As I mentioned, you will need to be on our Enterprise subscription package to integrate with QR codes, as it will need to sync with your software.

This feature will be ready within in the next few weeks, we are just finalising the final parts of it. If you would like any further information on this, or if you would like to get booked in for your free demo and trial then please email info@salontracker.co.uk or call 0113 350 8230. Don’t forget we are also exhibiting at the Professional Beauty show in London this coming weekend on Sunday the 24^th and Monday the 25^th of February. We will be on stand W28 so feel free to drop by if you have any questions!

Salon Tracker x

Getting Ready for PB and what to expect from Salon Tracker at the show!

Its less than 2 weeks until we will be exhibiting on stand W28 at the Professional Beauty London show! We thought we’d put together a little blog to let you know what to expect from us at the show.

Prep

Here at the Salon Tracker office we have been in preparation mode since the new year. From ordering our new brochures and leaflets to designing our new pull up ad’s it been a crazy month or so! As well as all of this we have been working on some new features to make sure they’re ready for the show to make sure our system works as efficiently as possible for our customers!

Our New Features!

Here at Salon Tracker our developers are constantly working on new features and improvements to ensure that our system is the best it can possibly be for our customers.

One feature we have recently updated for ease of use is that the system now has buttons for when you’re adding bookable service onto your booking calendar, we have done this in order to help with the use of Salon Tracker on touch screen PC’s. They also help the system look a bit more stylish as you can set different colours for each different category you have.

We are also working on getting a new feature for our enterprise package which is online split bookings. This is for Salons who offer services where a rest period is needed halfway through a treatment. this new feature will ensure that every spare minute can be used for extra bookings.  For example, a hair salon who does colouring. As some colours need to sit for a period of time before the rest of the service can be complete, when booking online customers will book in this service and there will be a break down the middle of the booking for the amount of time you set for this rest period.  This means that time on your calendar will no longer be taken up by people who are just sat resting their colour.

Another feature we are working on in time for the show is a Calendar zoom feature.  This is a highly requested feature from some of our customers so we are working hard to get this done.  This feature will allow you to zoom out and be able to view your whole day so you can see what upcoming bookings you have for the day and also what gaps you have. This will be useful when looking to book a customer in on a certain date, you will be able to see all the time slots you have available without having to do any excess scrolling.

These are just a few of the new features we are working on in the run up to the show, in order to see all the rest of our exciting new features come see us on our stand!

Our PB offer!

At Professional Beauty London this year, Salon Tracker are offering money off out hardware and our software packages. For this show we are offering 30% off your first 3 months of the software subscription and also up to 30% off hardware! This exclusive offer will be available up until the 29^th of March 2019 so snatch it up whilst you can!

We will be exhibiting on stand W28 on both days of the show!

If you haven’t already got your tickets you can sign up here: https://bit.ly/2DotCC5

We hope to see you there!

Salon Tracker x

All the social media and marketing tips you'll need to make 2019 your best year yet!

So the long Month of January is finally over! I hope you've had a good month (as good as it can be in January)... but if you haven't had such a good month and you're worrying about what next steps you should take; consider going on a marketing spree and the results will follow for a better February and March. Carry on reading to find out some of our best tips!

1. Facebook is your best friend in disguise

Nowadays Facebook is the hub for all contemporary businesses. Without an up to date and full of content business page, you may as well forget about new customers. I for one definitely use Facebook as a guide of trust in a new business I am considering using the services of, especially if i'm putting them in the hands of my hair or looks. The things I look for in a business Facebook page?...

· Opening hours
· Reviews
· How often they post
· The content they post-relatable? Funny?
· Previous work/ looks
· Offers
· Online booking
· Social media contests     

These are the main things you need to focus on, your Facebook page should be as adequate as your Website and your clients/ potential clients should be able to find all the information they need here without having to message or call you.

 Give us a call to find out more about how our online booking can integrate with Facebook!

2. Instagram is underrated!

Facebook may be the hub but your Salon being active on Instagram is an essential component to any successful salon. Trending hashtags work a dream and get your post seen by lots of people as well as relevant hashtags such as #salon etc. Instagram also gives you the ability to add a geographic location to a picture which is something you need to make the most of! If you add your Salon Location to a promotional post or a look you've created it allows users to search that location and see what's around that area, meaning you're marketing yourself to potential clients near by... all for free!

Instagram is the perfect place to showcase your clients before and after pictures. Whether it just be a change of style, a re-colour or a completely new look; any before/after picture is attracting clients to your page and encouraging them to book after seeing your amazing work! 

Quotes that are relatable and funny would never go a miss as it shows you're a fun and quirky salon. Don't forget clients don't just come for a treatment, they come for a natter and that's what brings your clients back.

Key tip: Follow your customers back to let them know you appreciate them and support their pictures!

3. Tweeting doesn't go a miss!

You may think that having a twitter account for your Salon is pointless but these are the reasons exactly why it isn't. Twitter possesses a feature called retweeting which can be very useful for your business. Sharing articles from well known companies in your industry is a very interactive function and gives you a presence on twitter without you really having to do anything other than press retweet! Simple and easy and a great way to gain presence on social media.

Encourage your followers to retweet your offers for a reward, such as £5 off your next treatment if you retweet this tweet, it works a treat!

That's a wrap, 3 easy, cheap and quick ways to market your Salon effectively this February!

Salon Tracker x

Valentines Promo and our Gift Guide!

Valentines Day is right around the corner with many people wanting to treat their significant other, meaning great business for salons. There are many different ways that your salon could optimise the surge in demand for your services and we through we’d also throw in a few of our gift ideas.

Valentine’s Day Promotions

Doing special offers and promotions in your salon around this time of the year is a great way to help you stand out from your competitors and really use this holiday to your advantage.  

Couples Offers

One promotion we would suggest is some couples offers. This would help your salon due to the fact that a couple’s treatment would be seen as a great gift idea and will therefore become very popular around this time of the year. This offer could be a 2 for 1 offer or it could be something such as a discount on a specific treatment such as a ‘mine and yours pedicure’.

Retail Offers

Another thing that could help you stand out from your competitors and also help boost your profit over this time of the year is doing some offers and promotions on your retail products. Doing things such as ‘Pamper Hampers’ will also help you sell some of the retail products you may have struggled getting rid of as individual items.

Salon Trackers V-day Gift Guide

When it comes to gifts, here at salon tracker we know everyone is different and you want to get something special for that individual. However, we have decided to give you some of our top valentine’s day gift ideas for anyone who needs a little inspiration.

Flowers

This might be simple but who doesn’t love flowers? Now a days there is a wide range of both real and fake flowers on the market for you to choose at your own leisure.  We love these roses from https://www.flowersbox.co.uk/collections/roses. They have a large range of different flowers at prices which won’t break the bank. We especially love this large bouquet of pink roses.

Perfume

Perfume is a classic valentine’s day present which the recipient can use all year round. There are hundreds of different options available so you can find the perfect one. The Perfume Shop has a wide variety of options at great prices.  We love this Lancôme LA VIE EST BELLE https://www.theperfumeshop.com/lancome/la-vie-est-belle/eau-de-parfum-for-her/p/26560EDPJU and to make it extra special the Perfume Shop are offering engravings for a small extra cost.

Pamper Essentials

After the long month of January, one thing we feel everyone needs is a quick de- stress pamper session. Whilst Spas are one of the most popular romantic getaways, here at Salon Tracker we feel you can create the atmosphere of a Spa with all of the same outcomes from the comfort of your own home.  Amazon have a great range of ‘Pamper Hampers’ available, we especially love this ‘Winter in Venice’ set which is also on prime! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winter-Venice-Casablanca-Jewellery-Case/dp/B01MXEBGUN/ref=sr_1_3_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1548758531&sr=8-3&keywords=pamper+hampers+for+women

Chocolates  

Here at Salon Tracker we believe that Valentines day is the perfect excuse to break the yearly resolution of ditching the chocolate. We believe that after the long month of January we all deserve a little treat to keep us going through these cold winter months.  Hotel Chocolat have a range of luxurious chocs where you can find the perfect treat for everyone.

From everyone here at Salon Tracker we hope everyone has a lovely Valentine’s day, even if it’s a day spent at the Salon! If you have any questions regarding this blog or our system don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker x

How Salon Tracker Can Benefit Busy Colleges

Are you a college looking for 

software to manage your busy 
Beauty, Hair or Barbering academy? Here at Salon Tracker we know how hard it can be managing all those customers, students and appointments in just one paper book… Crossings out here, ripped pages there and missed appointments everywhere! So, we’ve come up with a tailored service especially for Colleges like yourselves, which will make your life so much easier.

For starters, we’ve enabled a multi-tab feature for sites that need it. This allows you to easily differentiate between all the different services you have to offer and the different level of qualified stylists/ therapists. For example, if you have 60 therapists it also helps you organise different shift times and different classes, as your Level 2 class may be different to your NVQ, for example. This saves time scrolling through the whole calendar to find one appointment for a level 2 appointment.

Multi-tab feature 

A whole new level of organisation - as a college, I’m sure you’ll have a countless number of students as well as a countless amount of staff. Salon Tracker brings that level of organisation that you need to make your days in the Salon run smoothly and feel like a breath of fresh air.

Send out marketing campaigns to a selected audience using our multi-filter feature where you can decide exactly who to send a campaign to. So, you can say goodbye to wasted SMS credits!

Losing track of the retail products you sell and want something accurate to monitor your stock levels? Look no further, use our barcode to scan your retail products which will quickly add them to the client’s basket allowing a smoothly running check out process. Run stock reports and accept stock directly from the software as well as being able to track the profit made on your retail products too.

An extremely popular feature with our current colleges is our Siteview. This allows anyone to log into Salon Tracker from anywhere whether it be on a phone, tablet or laptop. You can view the booking calendar from there, run a great deal of substantial reports which makes it easy for your finance department to access financial reports.

On top of all this, you get an exclusive, educational discount promise. If you’d like to hear more about this, please give me a call on 0113 350 8230 or alternatively, email christie@salontracker.co.uk.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Salon Tracker x

How to Utilise Quiet Periods in the Salon

This time last month I’m guessing you were rushed off your feet, and now maybe not so much... For many of you, January tends to a quieter month where sales can be quite slow, so this is where you need to use all the marketing tools you can to ensure that you’re still generating those sales. January also gives you the time to re-evaluate your salon, this could be by updating the pricing, looking at new services and retail products you might want to introduce, giving the walls a fresh lick of paint and just reflecting on the last year to see what you could do even better!

There are multiple approaches you could take in your quiet periods to really boost those sales: 1. Aim to get new customers in 2. Reward you most loyal customers 3. Target those that haven’t visited your salon for a while 4. Refer a friend.

Aiming for New Customers

Obviously, you’re always wanting to get new customers in, but you might not always have time to sending out marketing campaigns and really push to get those new customers in your salon. And January gives you the perfect time to do this. Social media, as we all know, has become one of the best places to market your salon on, especially Facebook, as it gives you a free platform to post all of your offers and campaigns on. An example of a campaign that you could run would be a discount of their first visit, for example you might offer £10 off or 30% discount, whatever you feel most comfortable offering! This is a great way to get new customers into the salon, who doesn’t love a discount?

Rewarding Loyal Customers

Seeing customers return to your salon over and over again has got to feel rewarding, so why not reward them in return! With Salon Tracker there is a great feature in the marketing suite which enables you to filter out your best spending customers, you can filter this to your best 10, 25, 50, however many you want, you can filter it for the past year or past couple of months, it’s really up to you. You will then be able to send out a text message to your best spending customers, an offer you could reward them with would be:

“Hi <<Forename>> Thank you for a great 2018! For your amazing loyalty we would like you offer you 50% off any treatment in January. We hope to see you soon! <CompanyName>”

Customers That Haven’t Visited in a While

How many times do you think you’ve only seen a customer once or twice? Or maybe you haven’t seen them for a few months? Well, why not entice them with an offer to try get them back into the salon. Again, are marketing suite gives you the ability to easily filter out which customers haven’t had an appointment booked in the past x amount of time, this could be the last 3 months, 6 months, the last year. There is also already a pre-filtered SMS message with this that you can quickly alter to fit what sort of campaign you want to send out. The message on Salon Tracker is:

“Hi <<Forename>> You are missed! All appointments booked before [ENTER DATE] will receive [ENTER DISCOUNT] discount.  <<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply

So, with this you can enter in whatever discount you want, or you can just delete the pre-filtered message and write in your own, again its completely up to you!

Refer a Friend

Did you know that 1/3 people come to a brand through a recommendation! This is a huge area that you should be targeting, as it proven to increase your client base and these customers will often have a higher retention rate, especially if they come through a loyal customer that loves your salon. It is important to decide early on what sort of offer you want to give for someone referring a new customer to your salon, and I would also suggest that you track your campaign to see if customers are returning once they have been referred to your salon to see if it is worth the extra effort. This again is a campaign that can be sent out directly from the Salon Tracker system. I would suggest only sending out the refer a friend campaign to your most loyal and highest spending customers, as if you send it out to someone that has only visited your salon once you will be less likely to receive anything from it and it could also tarnish your reputation. With the filters on Salon Tracker you can ensure that you only send out the campaign to those you want, by selecting, for example those that have spent more than £200. The message that is ready made on the system is:

“Hi <<Forename>> Special offer on [ENTER PRODUCT/CATEGORY/TYPE]. Bring a friend along and receive the 2nd treatment free! <<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply”

If you are wanting to send out a different campaign offer you can just change the message to suit the offer you are wanting to use for your refer a friend campaign.

I hope that these few different marketing approaches to the quieter periods in January have been of help to you. As I mentioned though, January isn’t just about trying to improve and increase your marketing, it is also a time to get some jobs and tasks done that you might not have had chance to do for a few months whilst you have busy. So, make sure that you use this time to not only think of new ideas and campaigns that you could offer, but to also get on top of any of those boring jobs you don’t want to do!

If you are a customer of ours and need any help with the marketing suite on the software, then please don’t hesitate to call 0113 350 8230 or email us at info@salontracker.co.uk and someone will be there to help you out! We do offer a free demo and 2-week trial of the software where you will receive 50 free marketing texts, so you can test out a marketing suite!

Salon Tracker x

Feature of the Month: Annual Charts

Hello, Happy New Year! How has everyone’s first week back been? Hope you’ve all caught up from Christmas and are back in to the swing of things!

We know you’ve had a busy few weeks, but have you managed to squeeze any time in to sit down and start planning yet for 2019? A new calendar year is always a good time to look over your business performance from the last 12 months and is a great way to organise your KPI targets for the upcoming year.

So, we thought that for our January feature of the month we’d talk about one of our most helpful tools on the software, that enables you to analyse previous years – and these are our; Annual Charts!

Ranging from your annual booking information to total sales profits, our charts offer clear concise information, allowing you to easily identify sales patterns and peak months.

For your months that may not have been as busy, these charts then allow you to analyse this and forward-plan for similar times this year. So, for example, say in January and Feb you notice that your sales drop off (which is probable after the Christmas period), you can then plan some promotional campaigns to notify clients of towards the end of December, in order to get a bounce-back of footfall in those upcoming quieter months.

Equally, your charts also monitor peak times of day, in order for you to see when your client’s preferred times of day are. A benefit of this report is that you can run ‘Happy Hour’ offers over the hours that are not as high in demand, discounting certain services to hopefully prompt clients to pop-in to the salon during those times. Salon Tracker also has a tool where you can set auto happy-hour services, meaning that our system will alter the prices to your discounted rate in the background over those time-periods, so you no longer have to worry about it! (If you want any more info on how we can set this up, please fill out our contact form after reading and we’ll be in touch!)

You can also identify customer behaviours, for example the charts will show you the average spend of each of your customers and also the age ranges categories of those, for you to get an insight in to the price ranges that best attract each group of clients. From this you can then tailor your marketing to suit each age category accordingly, using our age range filters within the software. This way you can advertise products of similar price ranges to those relevant customers.

All of our charts can be easily exported to print or saved as PDF’s, for you to keep an archive of those for if you ever want to run over these figures at a later date. These are also all accessible from our Site-View application, meaning you can even run these charts using your smart-phone or tablet from the comfort of your own home! 

And so, if you are currently a user of our software, you will find these charts in the reports tab on our system. If you are new to Salon Tracker or are looking to try out a software in the near future, these charts are also available on our free 2-week trial, simply fill out your details at https://bit.ly/2Qsv3Ei and a member of our team will be in touch!

Happy January Planning!

Salon Tracker x