The beauty industry is fast paced and highly competitive. As a business owner you have many priorities and attracting and retaining customers is key. SMS marketing can help you to:

1. Create a simple campaign to acquire new customers
2. Target offers to retain your existing client base and grow sales during quiet periods in the business
3. Provide better service by text messaging appointments to your customers
4. Provide a substantial return on investment compared to traditional forms of marketing – email, newspaper ads or radio.

SMS marketing is great for busy business owners to target their busy customers. A short and ‘to the point’  message takes seconds to read and can generate a response just as quickly, whereas traditional means of marketing communications; emails and newspaper advertising, even a telephone campaign, take a great deal of time to organise and can be costly too.

From around 4p per message, texting is also by far the cheapest means of communicating with your customers. Take email for example. It will take someone time to create a great email marketing campaign. Unfortunately, only 25% of emails are read compared 95% of text messages.

As well as generating more people into your salon, you can also use the 2Ergo Broadcast system to manage your appointments. The benefits of this are that it looks very professional, and you can reduce the number of costly no-shows to your business.

Is texting right for my business?

The simple answer is that SMS/text marketing can be beneficial to any salon business. The real advantage of SMS marketing is that it’s cheap and scalable; anyone can do it and to any number of contacts so it really doesn’t matter how big or small your salon business is, texting can benefit you.

Acquire more business

 

• SMS your current database, offering  discounts  for any treatment
• Offer extra incentives to fill up your appointments, such as a free manicure with every facial
• 10% off all treatments for Mother’s day
• Send birthday messages to lost clients offering a discount on any treatment
• Take advantage of cancelled appointments by texting your database offering a 20% reduction of any treatment if booked within 24 hours
• Run a competition asking clients for referrals. Send out a discount text message and tell your clients they can pass it on to friends and family

Improve your customer service

• SMS appointment reminders to give that extra service and reduce no-shows
• Generate feedback and measure service – give your customer the opportunity to fill out a feedback card and leave their mobile number. This will help you measure service and you could then offer 10% off the next visit for customers who may have experienced poor service.

Knowing what to write

Text messages can only be 160 characters (including spaces) long, so there’s no room for waffling. It’s important that you get to the point quickly and that the client understands exactly what you’re offering them. As a rule, you should make sure that once you have created your message, it answers these three key questions;

 

1) Why you are contacting them – e.g. what offer are you making?

2) When should they act? – e.g. is there a closing date for your offer or promotion?

3) What do they need to do next? e.g. call or visit your salon!

It’s important to keep the style of your messages friendly and chatty but at the same time, your message is clear and concise. Here are a few examples;

 

Example booking reminder message;

Hi Sue, looking forward to seeing you tomorrow at 12:00 for cut & finish with Lisa. Hairplace Salon: 01234 567891

 Example birthday message;

Happy Birthday Jane! Get £10 off any service this week at Hairplace Salon. Call 01234 567891

 Example lost clients promotion;

Hi Laura, we miss you! Get 50% off your cut & finish until 31st March at Hairplace Beauty. Call 01234 567891 to book

 Example one-off promotions;

50% off conditioning treatments when you buy any shampoo until September 30th at Hairplace Salon. Call 01234 567891

Once you have decided on how you want to use texting in your salon, and the content of your texts, you can determine how often you will need to contact clients and what your average usage of text messaging will be.

 How much is too much?

People these days expect to receive booking reminders prior to their appointments, but they may not be so pleased to hear from you if your messages start to become too regular. We recommend contacting clients not more than once per month with offers or promotions in addition to your everyday reminder texts and an annual birthday message. For the majority of salons, one product promotion or special offer per month is enough to satisfy the sales targets set within the business.

For a free trial of how SMS messaging can build your business call the team at Crowd Connect or visit the website for more details on how we can help you today!