SMS & Email marketing tips and tricks!

With SMS open rates being 98%, there is no better time than now to push SMS marketing! Which is why we've put this blog together to demonstrate how you can effectively use our marketing suite.

If you are on our Professional and Enterprise package, you're probably familiar with our marketing suite where you can target a specific range of customers and send them either a text directly from the software or use mail chimp to upload this list of contacts and send them an email! Either way, I bet you wasn't aware of the exact filters you can use on the software to precisely target your customers.

Alerting your customers their booking services are due to expire

The software has a clever way of monitoring your clients booking services such as tanning minutes remaining or beauty packages remaining. As a result of this, you can send out a text directly to those whose minutes are due to expire in any set time frame, whether that's the next month, 3 months or 6 months!

This will then encourage your customers to come back in the salon and use up their minutes thus resulting in them purchasing more and so on!

To use this filter go to:

Marketing > Filters > select 'Alert customers their bookable services will expire' > select dates to what you would like it to be e.g next 3 months or next 6 months > change the 'next month' to the time frame you would like also > apply filter > send SMS. 

The text is already pre-written for you but if you want to change the next please be aware it will need to be under 160 characters for it to be classed as 1 SMS credit. You can also preview the text to your own phone using the 'Preview Mobile Tel' box to input your number then press the phone mail symbol on the right hand side to make sure you are happy with the text!

Push your online booking for those customers who haven't booked online yet!

Moving from making bookings manually on the phone to using an online booking system can be a drastic change for both Salon owners and Salon Clients. Some may resist to the change and prefer to ring up themselves and do it which as you all know, can be very time consuming! So for those customers you're struggling to get using online booking, we've got you covered with a marketing filter!

Offering a simple gesture of just 10% off or £5 off can work wonders for encouraging your customers to book online, once they've done it they'll find it easier to continue doing therefore saving you time and utilising your online booking to its best ability!

Go to:

Marketing > Filters > select 'customers not online' > apply filter.

Give something back to your best spending customers

Whether you want to send it to your Salons best spending customers in general or for your self employed staffs' own customers the extensive filter selection has both covered!

That way your loyal customers will feel appreciated and will be more inclined to return whilst encouraging them to recommend you to other people!

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'Custom - create your own marketing campaign' > select 'best customer by spend' drop down > select your preference e.g 'best 10' then click apply filter. If you want to use it for your self employed staff then use the + button to add another filter row and use the dropdown to select 'customer by bookable item' then use the other drop down to select the correct booking item.

Birthday texts

Everybody loves to receive a birthday text, especially when it has an offer in it! The software has 2 types of pre-made filters for your customers with birthdays coming up. 1 is made for all customers called 'birthday gift message' and the other is for your high spending customers with birthdays coming up called 'birthday gift message for high spending customers'. It's up to you which you choose - whether you're feeling generous or extra generous - we've got you covered with this filter. 

A birthday gift doesn't have to be a lot either, it could be small voucher or even a percentage off but if your clients get that extra personalised touch - big or small it's bound to work wonders for you. You can even get extra personal and categorise the texts for genders, e.g men could get a free haircut for their birthday and women could be given a free manicure.

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'birthday gift message' > change the 'next month' drop down to what you would want it to be > apply filter. 

For customers who haven't visited in a while

Life happens, things get in the way and self-care becomes a thing of the past for some people. Well why not give them that gentle reminder to say that you miss them and would love to see them back in the salon? 

You have probably forgotten about half of the customers that you've had in the salon once and haven't been in again yet. Lucky for you - the software cleverly recalls these for you, down to the exact date they were last in. So if you're having a bit of a quiet period and need that extra push, use the 'for customers who haven't visited in a while' filter and go for the 'last year' or 'last 2 years' filter which will then provide you with a list of people that haven't visited the salon in that time frame. Entice them in with 10% off which will bring them in and encourage them to return, therefore boosting revenue and keeping you busy!

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'for customers who haven't visited in a while' > change dates to your preference (1-2 years normally works quite well) > apply filter.

If you would prefer to use email marketing, all these filters can still be used but instead of clicking 'send SMS' you would click 'send email' which will then export the list of clients into a .csv file which can then be uploaded directly to mail chimp! 

Learning new things can be quite daunting and we get that, that's why we offer free training with your monthly software subscription which can be booked whenever you need it! Just call us on 0113 350 8230 or alternatively drop us an email at info@salontracker.co.uk.

New to our blog page and want to give the software a go? Register for your free demo and 2 week trial here: FREE DEMO & TRIAL

Salon Tracker x

  

Feature of The Month - Online Tanning Payments

We know a lot of our customers have been waiting for this feature for a little
while, and we’re happy to announce its almost here! We recently released our online deposits feature for hair, beauty, clinic and spa deposits and have since been working hard to get our release ready for tanning salons. The salon world is ever changing and the post-Covid era is making online payments one of the most popular forms of payment for customers.

How Will Our Online Payments Work?

As with our online deposits, our online payments will work through our seamless integration with Stripe, allowing customers to pay with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna.

When a customer goes to book, they will see any remaining minutes they have in a services drop down and any available to purchase for that bed. If a customer wishes to purchase some new minutes, they can select the course or minutes package they want to purchase from the drop down. This will then take them through to Stripe where they will pay with their chosen method, once the payment has gone through, they will see a payment successful screen and then have the option to continue with their booking.

Once they have completed their booking this will show in your Salon Tracker system as an online booking, with the customers purchase being stored on their account. With online payments being activated for tanning, customers won’t be able to create a booking without purchasing minutes, helping to boost your sales!

Why Should You Implement Online Payments?

The main benefit of introducing online payments into your salon is that it makes
the customers salon experience much more seamless! Giving them the ability to book and purchase minutes online not only improves their customer journey, but also makes your lives much easier in the salon with reduced waiting times.

Customers are now using cash a lot less frequently, and it’s estimated that in
2026 the UK will become a cashless country. Many people prefer the convenience and ease of use of being able to pay for a service online. By integrating with Stripe, we have been able to offer a secure and safe payment method, so you and your customers are able to use our payment platform without the worry of information being at risk.

Revenue generated from online payments goes directly into your bank account through Stripe, and with any customers that opt to pay through Klara the full amount is sent directly to you. So, you don’t have to worry about following up on any payments, as there are all dealt with through Klarna.

How Do I Get my Online Deposits Set Up?

Our online payments feature is expected to be released for tanning salons shortly. If this is a feature you are interested in, we are looking for a handful of customers to test this for us, so feel free to give us a call or email on info@salontracker.co.uk and we will be happy to add you to the waiting list.

The feature is only available for our Enterprise Customers, if you wish to upgrade, please contact us and we will be able to arrange this with you.

If you would like to see this feature in person, we will be exhibiting at the Professional Beauty London Show on the 3^rd and 4^th of April on stand Q32! Feel free to come down and visit our stand for an in-person demo and to meet the team, we look forward to seeing you there.

Salon Tracker x

Our New Release

As Salons start to become busier going into Spring, we have some new features in our latest release that we hope you’ll be able to utilise. Hopefully these new features will help to improve the day to day running of the Salon and generally increase overall efficiency.

Salon Tracker Solo

An exciting new edition to Salon Tracker is our BRAND NEW package ‘Solo’. This package has been tailored to suit the needs of those who are a single person Salon. Within this package, you will be able to have one Bookable Item whether it may be a single Technician or a single Sunbed. For information on this package, feel free to give our Sales Team a call on 0113 350 8230 or drop us an e-mail at info@salontracker.co.uk.

Clocking-in

Clocking-in is a popular feature on Salon Tracker to enable employers to track and monitor hours worked by their staff members. A basic version of clocking in is available in which you can simply clock in by clicking on your username within the system, and also a more enhanced version can be used in which you can clock-in with secure ID. Previously, the forms of secure ID that could be used included Fingerprint and Barcodes. However, we have added an additional form which is clocking in by password. Each employee can be assigned a password which they require to clock-in, ensuring that it is definitely them.

 

Virtual Timer

Another new feature we’ve added for our tanning customers is for use with a virtual timer. For Salons who use tokens to operate their sunbeds, it can be difficult sometimes to determine the wait time for any customers who come into the salon. With the addition of this new feature, you’ll be able to improve the accuracy of your wait time because if you can see that a customer has started the bed before the end of the dress down time, you can click to say the bed has begun.

 

Salon Holiday Feature

The final major feature we’ve added is the ability to add in whole Salon Holidays. Previously you would have had to add in holidays for each different technician/sunbed, which could be very time consuming, especially for national holidays such as the Christmas period, and also for our colleges who have long periods of time off such as the Summer Holidays. Now you can add in a whole salon holiday and it will block out that time period out for the entire salon.

 

If you have any questions regarding any of our new features, please feel free to drop us an e-mail at info@salontracker.co.uk and of course as always if you want to chat to a member of our sales and marketing team for a few extra tips, we are always on hand to help you with any marketing tools, or simply to offer further advice on using our software functions!

Salon Tracker x

The Salon Magazine Edit with the Sun Centre - Ormesby Bank

As some of you may remember, we ran a festive giveaway in December of which one of the prizes was generously given to us by The Salon Magazine - a free editorial in one of their Magazines! One of our lovely clients - Kev Conway @ Sun Centre won this and we wanted to give you guys a sneaky peak of the article before it is published in their next release!

Kev Conway – Sun Centre Ormesby Bank


When did you open your popular Tanning shop?

We opened on the 9th of March 2002 at our location on Ormesby Bank, Middlesbrough. We opened a second location 28th of October 2019, which may have been one of the worst times to open with the beginning of COVID in 2020. Luckily for us, Salon Tracker froze our payments for the duration of all lockdowns so we weren’t paying for software in such a difficult time. We were however still able to use the software to gather things such as reports and rearranging bookings.

Over the years we have been involved in many charity fundraisers. We have jumped off of the transporter bridge, jumped out of a plane and completed in sports activity days to raise money for a local charity called Zoe’s place baby hospice. As well as this, we regularly raise money for Children in Need and Christmas jumper day, which raises money for Save the Children charity. Salon Tracker have helped raise donations by generously donating text messages to notify our customers of upcoming charity events.

What inspired you to open your tanning Salon? 

I set up the business when I was 16 with my dad. He had been in the home hire tanning business since 1981 and I was keen to open a shop. After a lot of searching, I found an ex NHS clinic which was to be auctioned. My dad was happy to ‘have a go’ at setting up a tanning salon, as if it didn’t work, he would have sold the equipment and rented the building. We went to the auction and the bids just kept going higher and higher. The winning bid was our last bid and I was over the moon. It took a lot of work to set up, as I was at college and had to juggle my studies with setting up pricing structures, finding equipment, a lot of internal demolition and re-building. The business worked and we grew from strength to strength over the years. As we grew, I invested in the newest and best equipment I could find. We started to get a reputation as the best and the cleanest in town. We work hard to maintain that reputation to this day.


Why is the charity Zoe’s place close to your heart? 

The charity work started after a visit to Zoe's place baby hospice which is a local charity that provides palliative, respite and end of life care for infants 0-5 years living with life limiting or life-threatening conditions. We have worked with them many times over the years, as well as extended our fundraisers to include Christmas jumper day for Save the Children and Children in Need. We have a great sense of community in our business, they have become like an unofficial hub. Charity work such as this means our customers and the community can be a part of helping those who need it most.

How long have you been working with Salon Tracker? 

We’ve operated with Salon Tracker since 2008, back when it was Studio Tracker. We originally moved to a software-based system to try and speed up our customer service time. It helped massively with this. We were not only able to serve customers faster but also had a large amount of information instantly about each individual customer; such as their preferred tanning unit, their usual session time and usual package purchase. This allowed us to provide a more personal service to the customer.

What can you tell us about your experience with Salon Tracker? 

We’ve watched Studio Trackers functionality grow and eventually rebrand to Salon Tracker. We have taken advantage of Salon Tracker's increasingly updated and additional features over the years. Features such as the customer signature pad mean we can store a legal digitally signed document for every customer who signs up. This means we do not have to store endless amounts of signed paper documents, should we have any liability issues the customers' documents are available at the touch of a button.

What are your favourite features in Salon Tracker?

Other features we have taken advantage of are the addition of the HQ. The HQ provides me with an office-based point of access to each of my salon locations. This means I can monitor, amend and manage my locations without having to be physically on site. My staff also have the comfort of knowing if they have an issue, they can call me and I can help resolve over the phone.

Any other general thoughts you’d like to share?

When I first decided to move my customer database to a salon management system, my main concern was, what if I had an issue with the system or database and weren’t able to serve my customers? My mind was eased with Salon Tracker because their customer service and technical team are always just a phone call away. With the addition of the cloud-based database, I have comfort in the knowledge that should any of my operational PC’s have a physical issue, my database is intact and can be moved to another PC.

In summary Salon Tracker has helped to streamline my business and allowed us to serve more customers quickly, which results in more sales overall.

Salon Sustainability

Sustainability is a hot and very important topic right now. In this week’s blog we’re going to share with you some of our tips on how you and your Salon can operate in the most sustainable way.

Small Changes

I know making changes to the way you run your business may seem daunting but one of the best things you could do to make your salon more sustainable is to make small changes in the day-to-day running’s of your salon.

Hair Foils

One small change you could make in your hair salon would be to make the switch from one use foils when doing colour treatments to an alternative which could be reusable or biodegradable. One company doing this which we love is Paper Not Foil UK | Sustainable hair foils | Order Online

Tan Pots

A similar change you could make in your tanning salons is instead of selling sachets of cream, you could sell ‘tan pots’ in reusable containers. They way this would work is instead of sachets you could sell your customers a reusable container which they would be able to pay for topping up from larger bottles if they would rather do this than buy a full bottle. By encouraging customers to bring back the tan pots and just refill them, this would create a lot less waste than if they were to buy a sachet every time they came.

Washing

We know that for many salons, washing things such as towels, cloths and other reusable equipment is a vital step in making sure your salon is clean and runs efficiently. One small thing that you could do is ensure that when you’re putting a load of washing on, make sure you’re doing just one full load rather than multiple partial loads. As well as this making your salon more sustainable, this will also save you money.

Paperless System

 As well as these small changes, one of the simplest and most effective changes you could make is moving from a paper-based system to a computer-based system such as Salon Tracker. Making this move saves waste from things such as client cards and also paper agreement forms. When you move to a software from a paper-based system everything will be stored electronically in one place meaning your salon will not only be greener, but also more organised and easier to run.

One feature that Salon Tracker has in order to help you reduce paper waste is the option for your customers to electronically sign your agreement which will then be stored in the customer cards as a PDF rather than you needing to print off your agreement for them to sign.

Also, if you’re thinking about implementing a paperless system but are apprehensive about the cost to do so, the UK government are currently offering a 50% funded discount for your business to get software with the new digital software grant. If you would like more information on this either contact us at Salon Tracker or click the following link: Help to Grow: Digital - Diagnostic Tool (learn-to-grow-your-business.service.gov.uk).

If you would like any more information on any of these tips or if you would like to get signed up for your free demonstration and two-week trial of Salon Tracker, please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 0113 350 8230 or email us on info@salontracker.co.uk.

Salon Tracker x

Feature of The Month - Online Deposits

As a Salon Owner is there anything more frustrating that a customer not turning up to their booked appointment? Especially during those busy periods.

Well, that’s where our new Online Deposit feature steps in. It’s the perfect feature for reducing your no-shows and making sure you’re never left out of pocket if a customer doesn’t show for their appointment. Did you know that an estimated £1.2 million is lost each year due to customers not showing up to their hair appointments?

How Does It Work?

Working alongside Stripe we have been able to implement a seamless payment system into our Online Booking, allowing customers to pay with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna.

Within Salon Tracker you can set the deposit amounts you wish to take, whether this is a percentage of the total value or a flat rate, and these can be different depending on the treatment the customer is booking in for. You can also set a maximum deposit amount; in case the customer is booking in for multiple treatments. 

When the customer makes a booking on your online booking system, it will automatically take them through to the payment screen, and then a confirmation screen of what’s left to pay when they come in for the treatment. Then on your Salon Tracker system the booking will show as the deposit paid and the deposit amount will show on your reports.

Why Should You Implement Deposits?

The main reason is to get those No-Show bookings reduced! If customers are paying a deposit for a booking, they will be a lot less likely to just not show up as they won’t want to lose the money they have already paid. Introducing deposits also shows your customers that booking slots and your
technician's time are valuable, so this can increase the respect from your customers as they won’t want to waste your time.

Taking online deposits can also help to cover your costs in advance, such as the cost of supplies, tools and your employee’s time. Whereas, if you don’t take deposits and the customer doesn’t show for their appointment this could end up being time wasted, as it can be hard to fill last minute appointments.

How do I Get my Online Deposits Set Up?

If you're wanting to introduce online payments into your Salon, all you need is to be setup on our Enterprise Subscription and we can help from there! Our payments are taken through Stripe so these are very secure, all you need is to create a Stripe business account but again we can help guide you through this setup!

If you are interested in getting set up on this please call on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk and we will be happy to discuss this with you.

Salon Tracker x

Planning for the year

January is often a quieter period in Salons after the mad rush of Christmas, so there is no better time than now to plan for the year ahead. At Salon Tracker, we believe that the best way to approach marketing for the year is to plan around the different holidays and target these periods specifically.

The first few months of the year are always the cold ones, and there’s no better time to visit the salon. Often this can be a quieter time for tanning salons so why not offer some special courses during this time and build your client base ready for the summer. For beauty and hair salons, you may have seen an increase in gift voucher purchases over the Christmas period, so why not encourage your customers to use these now. Also, customers will be trying to fulfil their new year’s resolutions, so what better way to have a ‘new year, new me’ moment that by getting a new hairstyle or having a pamper.

Other major events to center your promotion around during this time are Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Before you start advertising around these days, why not look at previous years and see which of your treatments are most commonly purchased around these periods, and create special packages featuring a few of these at a reduced price. Also, why not create some hampers featuring some of your retail products as well as a gift voucher. You may even want to do a little complimentary fizz with all services booked in the week leading up to, and week after Mother’s Day, to make the client’s service seem a little more luxury!

The next period is filled with bank holidays (1th April, 18^th April, 2^nd May, 2^nd June, 3^rd June) which means customers will be going out and need to be booked in for their pre-outing pampers. This is prime-time for salons, so now may be a good time to push your service packages, for example; if you are a hair and beauty salon you may want to do an ‘Bank Holiday Bundle’ consisting of a couple of mini beauty treatments and maybe a hair style? This year we’ve gained an extra bank holiday due to the Queen’s Jubilee. It’s a great marketing technique to promote the extra Bank Holiday date, as believe it or not there will be a lot of your clients who are still unaware of the Bank Holiday change, so make sure you get in there first to get your calendars booked up.

Going from Spring to Summer, Wedding season will be approaching, as well as proms and graduations. All of these events will drive customers into your salons, whether it be for a fresh tan (spray or real), or for a makeover. Targeting your audience is essential to ensure that your diary is filled to the brim, so why not try something new. Maybe offer a raffle entry for every treatment purchased with the winning prize being a free makeover for their special day. Alternatively, you could offer a trial day at a reduced cost so customers can see how they’ll look at on the big day and minimise the stress on the actual day. This would mean they’re visiting the salon more often and may be more inclined to do so again in the future.

Also, during the summer period, people will be jetting away on holidays after being limited so much over the past two years. What better way to get their tans started than by offering special courses to encourage them into the salon before they go away. Soon enough we will be back around to the autumn/winter period and then it will be time to start looking at Halloween makeovers and Christmas party prep.

Hope this has given you a few pointers to think about, and of course as always if you want to chat to a member of our sales and marketing team for a few extra tips, we are always on hand to help you with any marketing tools, or simply to offer further advice on using our software functions!

Salon Tracker x