Get your Salon Spring-ready!

Hello, hope everyone had a lovely weekend in the sun! Or if you were at Professional Beauty London, like us, then we hope you made some good purchases for the salon!

Speaking of this unseasonal sunny weather, we thought it’s about time we had a chat about Spring and how you can use the next few weeks to ensure you salon is Spring-ready! With the weather being as it is, Spring might not be as long away as we thought! So, what can you do to be prepared?

Spring-Clean! There’s nothing better than getting rid of your old Winter stock and refreshing your product ranges in time for the new season. Maybe a lick of paint here and there, plus switching up your accessories might be an idea to give your salon a really fresh feel. Atmosphere is everything in a salon, and your clients will really notice and appreciate a clean, modernised environment! Your salon aesthetics can really add to the customer experience, so definitely something to think about over the next few weeks.

Enhance your online presence! Do you have an active company website and social media page? Technology is at the forefront of every B2C business now, so if your salon isn’t active online, this can be detrimental to your sales, especially if your competition has active social media profiles.

Facebook has become a popular ‘check-point’ for people to identify a business, especially as it has a review service from current clients. In the past, people may have looked in to your business through Google reviews but nowadays people go straight to social media pages. So, you want to make sure that you are consistently active and updating these profiles, to ensure that people recognise that you communicate with your followers regularly. For the salon industry, another popular network is Instagram, in which this is a great network to showcase your work. If clients are happy for you to photograph before and after photos, Instagram is a good place to promote your styling, especially as you can now boost posts on there to ensure a larger audience of people see your feed!

Emails! Email marketing is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to directly market to your clients in bulk. There are also lots of email providers that can give reporting and analytics about the open and click through rate of your campaigns, a provider in particular that we like to recommend is Mailchimp. This is a very user-friendly service, making it quick and easy for you and your staff to learn. You can create visual emails simply with their ‘build tool’ so you’ll soon get the hang of it. According to Wordstream, ‘email is one of the greatest drivers of customer retention’, in which this is a great stat to go by when thinking about sending regular e-newsletters or product news.

Send a Text! Similar to email, however a little more expensive to run, SMS marketing is another direct, quick way to reach customers with a message. Instagiv, states that ‘32% of consumers respond to promotional SMS messages.’ Therefore, going by this it means that over a quarter of your client base are likely to react to any marketing messages you send to them by text. There are lots of providers out there that can offer business SMS services. If you are currently a user of our software ‘Salon Tracker’ our Professional & Enterprise packages have the SMS marketing suite built-in, making SMS marketing campaigns simple to create! We also have our own search filters included in the tool, dependent on the sort of campaign you wish to send. For example, if you want to select your best spending customers, no problem, as with 2 clicks you can have the entire list ready to send a text message to, using our software! For Spring, you may want to advertise your upcoming promotions or offers over Easter for example? So, to get you started, here’s a few of our SMS ideas below:

Hi <<Forename>>

MAYDAY PAYDAY! Secure your payday treat by booking an appointment with us before 30th April to receive <a %> off!

<<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply


Hi <<Forename>>

Spring has Sprung! To kick-start the season, we are offering a FREE complimentary <yourchoiceofproduct> with every appointment booked in April!

<<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply


Hi <<Forename>>

Fresh Spring Air calls for Fresh Treatments at <your salon>! Call <<CompanyTel>> to book your new Spring style today! Hurry as slots are going fast!

<<CompanyName>> T&Cs Apply


Now we’ve established a few marketing methods and strategies to step in to spring, let’s have a look at some seasonal events that you can use to promote over the next few months!

Spring Bank Hols! With Easter falling much later this year, our first Bank Hol of the year is still only 6 weeks away, closely followed by Mayday and Spring bank on May 27th. This triple Bank Holiday is a great time to promote your seasonal offers and get your footfall increasing. Start to research the upcoming hair & beauty trends, to identify what the up and coming styles are going to be this Spring/ Summer – and then advertise these to your clients using SMS marketing or social media.

It could be something like; ‘Get your Brows Bank Holiday Ready with <your salon name>’, then perhaps even bundle a little offer in with this, such as ‘Book before end of April to receive <X %> off your chosen product in time for Bank Hol!’. You could even use your social media channels to push a Bank Holiday selfie competition, to up the engagement on your networks!

Bridal Packages! From the beginning of May right up until the end of September, especially if you’re a Hair and Beauty salon, you are likely to see an increase in bookings for Wedding Season. You’ll probably find that most of your salon’s competition will be offering similar sorts of Bridal bundles or packages for Groomsmen, so how can you make yours stand out? Some complimentary goodies might be something to think about, for example a bottle of Prosecco on the house for the bridal group whilst they have their treatments done, or some bottles for the guys? Or you could even get other local businesses involved if possible (such as a café or bistro bar) and see if your clients can receive a little % off voucher for food or drinks if they book a wedding package with your salon? A good promotional technique for both your business and theirs! Another thing to the think about is getting reviews from your bridal parties, as the more chat you have on your networks about wedding bookings, the better this is for people who are looking first-time as they are likely to trust a salon that has more Wedding testimonials.

Prom Season! We know this is a Summer thing, however lots of students start their prom prep early Spring, so why not advertise early to ensure that they book your salon for their treatments too. Advertise your prom packages on social media, flyers at schools and colleges and even via email/SMS to your current client base to ensure that prom goers choose your salon!

We hope we’ve inspired you and given you a few little things to think about for your salon-prep and marketing this Spring. With these few fresh ideas, by putting these in to practice your salon should see a seasonal boost! And if you want a little bit of extra advice, no problem, our marketing and sales team are always on hand Mon-Fri to help you every step of the way – just give our team a call on 0113 350 8230!

We look forward to hearing from you!

Salon Tracker x

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