Salon Tracker Software- Designed to win you customers, grow your business and improve your profits!
18 Aug 2021
Unknown Beauty Hacks you just need to know!
11 Aug 2021
Utilising Pinterest for your Salon
When running a salon, social media is one of the most useful tools on offer. Pinterest is one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, with over 416 million monthly active users, but it is often overlooked. Here at Salon Tracker, we believe that Pinterest is useful in so many ways, such as: finding inspiration, showcasing your work and selling your retail products.
Finding Inspiration
Not only is it useful for finding inspiration for your
treatments, but it is also useful for the interior inspiration for your salon.
Whether this is a full salon makeover or simply a bit of seasonal décor, there
is bound to be ideas on Pinterest that you can use.
Another way in which you can use Pinterest to benefit
your salon is that you can create ads. These can be done in a few ways such as
a quick ad, which is a one-off payment that pushes one of your pins to a wider
audience. Another way is campaign creation which is a more in-depth way, in
which you can set daily amounts you wish to spend advertising.
Showcasing your work
As well as being able to save other people’s pins, you are able to create your own and share your work. You are able to upload a photo, which you can then add details to, such as what products you have used, and you can also link your website to the pin so that if they click the pin, they can be linked directly to your website. When posting, you have the option to post now or post at a later date so that you can post at times you know that people are more active.
Other image-based social media platforms such as
Instagram, Facebook and Twitter do not have a very long post life, meaning that
the posts do not stay on peoples feeds for very long. Pinterest however has a
much longer post life and can see businesses getting leads up to 30 days after
an initial post.
If you don't already follow us on Pinterest already, go give us a follow @salontracker and check out the different boards on our page for some inspo!
If you have questions, feel free to drop us an e-mail at info@salontracker.co.uk or call us on 0113 350 8230.
Salon Tracker X
4 Aug 2021
Things from the lockdown that are here to stay!
Appointment Only Salon
Before the lockdown, quite a lot of our salons offered a walk-in service, especially in the tanning and barber industry. Following reopening, a lot of salons had to operate as appointment-only, to ensure that social distancing was adhered to and for the government track and trace programme. However, for a lot of businesses that began running this way, they realised that for marketing purposes it’s much better to offer an appointment only service, as clients this way have to register to make a booking as a pose to just walking-in. So, this is brilliant for data capture and also client retention, as you can re-market to these clients to remind them to book their next appointment. It’s also brilliant for reporting purposes, as you can also see which clients are re-visiting and also what your most popular treatments are with certain age groups or demographics!
PPE/Sanitising Station and Screens
Even though the mask-wearing requirement has now been dropped by the government, a lot of our salons have opted to keep this requirement for the time-being, to ensure maximum safety within the workplace for both employees and customers. As the months go on and hopefully, as we begin to see the end of the pandemic, even if many of you decide to then stop the mask wearing, a few salons have said that they will ensure sanitising stations stay around the salon and also will keep their Perspex screens up at reception. These are just simple safety tools that will help to protect staff and clients in general and just improve the overall hygiene within the salon!
Online Registration and Online Booking
Digital Disclaimers
Most of our salons have terms and conditions that clients have to read and agree to before they are able to have a treatment. However, a lot of salons used to provide a paper copy of this to customers to keep as a reference of the salon’s t’s & c’s. Throughout the lockdown, we saw many businesses opting to have these added to their online registration page, or as a PDF link within their salon app, or simply as an email link, to stop the handling of paper documents during this time. But again, not only does this improve client safety, it also allows the salon to go paperless, saving on resources and meaning the client can now access these documents digitally on their phones or tablets!
App Ordering
For some of our salons, especially if they are in hotels, many have coffee bars or cafés attached on their premises. So, throughout the lockdown, some of you were offering app ordering as a takeaway solution. Now even though these premises are allowed to re-open properly, many of you have said you will keep the app ordering and QR scan at tables for online menu viewing, as this not only again improves hygiene, it also saves on paper menus and client queues at the till area! Many of you also operated as a card-only business throughout the lockdown, with a lot of businesses still operating this way until we know that the pandemic is over, to stop the multi-handling of cash.
So it seems that the technological advances have really proven to be beneficial to our salons over the past few months, as many of you are opting to keep your online features and appointment-only way of operating. We’re so glad that the last few months have been busy and successful for you and if there are any further promotional tips that you would like help with, our sales and marketing team are always on hand to help you. Just give us a call or drop an email to info@salontracker.co.uk and we’d be happy to book a free marketing session with you.
Not a user of Salon Tracker yet? Simply head over to www.salontracker.co.uk/freetrial.aspx to get your free 2-week trial of our software! See how we can help you to further boost your salon business!
Salon Tracker x
28 Jul 2021
Our New Dojo Payments Integration
We recently introduced our new Dojo Payments Integration into Salon Tracker making it even easier to
take your card payments. Since COVID many of our customers have seen an increase in card payments rather than cash, so we wanted to make this as easy and seamless as possible.
There are so many benefits to the Dojo card machine: serve your
customers quicker, get paid faster, protect your income and there’s no long
term commitment. The biggest benefit of all is being able to connect your Dojo
machine straight to your Salon Tracker Software. With the integration setup,
the payment amount is sent directly to your Dojo card machine making it so much
easier for staff when taking payments, especially when you’re busy! Here’s just
a few advantages the Dojo integration could bring to your salon:
Reduces Staff Error
Security
Similar to the reduction in staff error, the integration also
helps to make your payments more secure. As the payment amount is automatically
sent through to your payment terminal, staff members are unable to change the
amount once it has been sent from Salon Tracker. This means all your reports on
Salon Tracker should match the receipts from your payment terminal, as staff are
unable to purposefully or accidentally change the amount the customer is
paying.
Reduces Customer Waiting Time
As the amount is directly sent through to your Dojo machine,
this will also help to reduce customer waiting time as everything will be seamless
from when you confirm the payment on Salon Tracker.
21 Jul 2021
How you can use Social Media in your Salon!
Social media is everywhere these days, from Instagram to Facebook to Tiktok. There are many ways you can use social media in your salon to stay up to date on recent trends, to show people your work and also to attract new customers. We know that this can be a little daunting if you haven’t done this before so I’m here to share my best tips and tricks for you to use social media for your salon.
Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms at the moment with over one billion active users sharing and viewing content each day. One of the best ways to utilise Instagram is to use this as a way to share pictures of your services, whether this be bright colour jobs or some before and afters of clients when they get their services done. Sharing the treatments which you do in your salon on Instagram means customers, both existing and potential can see what you’re capable of and this may persuade them to book an appointment with you. Hashtags are also very useful on Instagram. Every time you post you should use different hashtag depending on what you’re sharing a picture of. For example, if you’re posting a picture of some nails that have been done in the salon use hashtags like ‘#nails’ and ‘#nailart’ this will mean your posts are more likely to be viewed by more people, even if they don’t follow you. Finally, the last way you can use Instagram in your salon is the stories feature. Posting stories are a great way to keep your customers updated on what is going on in your salon and also as they only last 24 hours you don’t have to keep them on your feed, Stories are also a good way to do things such as ‘flash sales’ as they’re only available to view for 24 hours you could do a deal on a quiet day for example ‘Today Only, Buy a 30 Minute Course and get a Free Sachet of Tanning Lotion’.
Facebook
Facebook is another very popular social media site,
especially for salons. Facebooks gives you the opportunity to keep customers
updated, display reviews and communicate with your customers all in one place. Facebook is also a good social media platform
to run competitions on. For example, you could run a competition for a free or
discounted service in your salon and for you customers to enter they should
have to tag some friends and share the post. By asking customers to tag friends
and share your post, this means that all the Facebook friends of everyone who
had shared that post will see your salon. This is a really good way to get more
exposure. Another way to get exposure on Facebook is by using the sponsored
posting feature. This does come with a cost but you can spend as much or as
little as you like on this. You can push your posts to a target audience of
your choice so more people, apart from those who already follow you, will see
your posts. As mentioned before, Facebook is also a great place for
communicating with your customers, whether this be responding to reviews that
they have left you or responding to any messages they have left you. Facebook
gives you the option to do all of this in one place.
Tiktok
There are many other options for what social media platforms
you could use in your salon for example twitter is also a good one but these
are just some of our favourites.
If you’re not already make sure you’re following us on all
out social media accounts @salontrackersoftware on Instagram, Salon Tracker
Software on Facebook and @SalonTrackerLTD on X to keep up with everything
new at Salon Tracker.
If you would like any more tips or tricks on how to use
social media in your salon don’t hesitate to drop us a message on any of our
social media accounts or call on 0113 350 8230.
Salon Tracker x
14 Jul 2021
Salon Tracker Educational Software
The impact of the pandemic on Educational Salon Academies
has been astronomical starting with the limit on face-to-face high-quality
education being restricted to students as well as salons having to shut for a
long period of time, both situations have had a massive impact on educational
salons. Now that they are able to return to face-to-face education and salons
are completely free of restrictions it is important that throughout the academy
and salon, they ensure good hygiene for both staff and students, maintain
appropriate cleaning regimes and keeps the congested areas well ventilated to
decrease the risk of infection spreading. It is important that as an
educational salon you maintain standards to ensure the safety of staff, pupils
and customers another form in which this can take place is by having a booking
management system in place to prevent overcrowding in a confined space.
Within Salon Tracker Software there is an Educational Program
this program is tailored to meet the needs of your salon with a variety of
different features for example we are able to alter calendar titles as well as
adding duplicate calendars to assist you in arranging the different level each
student is qualified to carry out. Day to day tasks is simplified through the
use of our reports and charts section these features allow the financial
department access to the academy’s finances throughout the salon. Through the Siteview application the finance
department are also able to collect data and examine reports to be able to
monitor the progress of each student and the salon in general.
With Educational salons it can be quite busy with new
students arriving and then each student training to achieve a different
qualification this can often become complicated to handle. With the software
you as a staff member are able to create different calendars to organise which
qualification each student is on track to achieve. Features such as groups
ensures that students are unable to carry out services that they are not
qualified to do this feature can be very beneficial from a legal point of view.
Features such as split bookings will allow the salon to book client
appointments with a break in between therefore enabling the treatment time to
develop this therefore enables the salon to create bookings for other clients
in the gap. Additional to this there are features such as post delay which can
be useful for hair treatments as it ensures that when a client from the salon
books online the break between their two treatments will automatically apply.
If you are interested in having a demonstration of the
software or alternatively trialling the software for a two-week period simply
enquire at www.salontracker.co.uk/freetrial.aspx
and fill in the required details or contact us on 0113 350 8230 and you will be provided with your bespoke educational rates.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Salon Tracker X
7 Jul 2021
The end is in sight!
16 months... 16 long months! I know you'll all agree with me when I say I will be very pleased to see the back of this pandemic. It has been tough on everyone, especially those of you with businesses' that have been yoyoing between being closed and open and didn't know whether you were coming or going... I think this time you are set to be open for good, so let's get prepping!
19th July aka Freedom Day brings many great things however one of the things that the British public haven't had a taste of for nearly a year and a half is stepping in a night club and actually dancing! This means one thing, the whole of the UK are going to town on looking good for freedom day - so you Salons are going to need to prepare. I can imagine you will be absolutely swamped with appointment requests and your dms will be full to the brim which can cause you quite a lot of stress. Instead, why not take a look at our online booking system that can take all the hassle away and manage all your clients appointments itself. Simply put an auto respond message on your social media accounts that directs your clients straight to your online booking platform. You can also put this link in your Instagram and facebook bio where clients simply log in with their email and a 4 digit pin number. On here they can view any upcoming bookings, amend or cancel them, view any remaining courses etc. Enquire here: https://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx for a free demo and 2 week trial!
For those of you that have worked in Salon over the past 16 months (for the time salons have actually been open) I really do admire your persistence with wearing PPE such as masks all day every day. Lucky for you, another great thing that comes with freedom day is that Masks will no longer be required indoors - this means you can have your freedom to chat away to your clients all day without the worry of your mask falling down and the absolute torture they bring on a hot day!
I know that this mad rush of custom is what you've been craving throughout all these lockdowns and you're probably chuffed to have little appointments remaining but it is so important to give yourself a break to avoid total burnout! Set aside a couple of days in which you will work longer hours and make this clear to your clients these will be the only days you'll be working late as you need some time to yourself. I know some clients will try to twist your arm and persuade you to work late one day for them but if you did this for one person where do you draw the line? Make sure you have at least 2-3 nights of the week spent entirely on you. Put your feet up, get a facemask and chill out... or maybe it's your time to party and hit the clubs! However you spend your "you" time, it is essential for working these busy next few months, so grant yourself it!
Here's to a more normal future ahead of us, we've got this!
P.S Footballs coming home!
Salon Tracker x
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