Gone are the days when all that mattered in running a beauty and wellness business was full appointment books and a relaxing experience for guests. If you operate a salon, spa, or medspa brand today, you’re dwelling on questions like these: How much business comes from online booking? How much retail are my stylists selling? How well is my membership program working?

The answers live in your business data. Whether you’ve never worked with business data or are far enough along to have your own data lake, here are key pointers on making your data work for you. These takeaways are from an insightful panel session during Innergize 2023, the premier beauty and wellness summit hosted by Zenoti.

The experts:‍‍

Ryan Abud, VP of Technology, Tricoci Salon & Spa
Manish Goomar, CTO, Options Medical Weight Loss Clinic
AnneMarie Krainich, Founder & CEO, Ottalaus Salon
moderator Anand Arvind, CTO, Zenoti

First, identify how and why you’re using data

Collecting data is the easy part, especially if your software platform does that automatically. Knowing what you want to do with your data is harder.  

Start by thinking about why data is important to your salon, spa, or medspa brand.  

Here are four reasons to consider.

1) Data provides a better understanding of your business.
Measuring and tracking what matters to your business helps you stay objective. Educated guesses can only take you so far – especially for setting goals and guiding your business.  

“It’s very important for us to view the data not only at the individual salon level, but at a consolidated level as well,” says Ryan Abud from Tricoci Salon & Spa with 13 Chicagoland locations. “We are consistently working on developing data and insights so we can analyze our business and see where there’s room for improvement and opportunities.”

Manish Goomar from Options Medical Weight Loss Clinic talks about “tying data with your purpose” and then using data to achieve that purpose. The company seeks to address the obesity epidemic in the United States, with business and client data helping drive successful outcomes for patients.

At Ottalus Salon, teams are using data regularly to understand the business’s needs. Founder and CEO AnneMarie Krainich says her managers check the numbers daily. “But every Monday,” she says, “we’re all sitting down together and brainstorming as management: Where are we falling short? Which strategies can we put into place based on what the numbers are telling us?”  

2) Data can add customization to improve the client experience.
By using data to better understand customers, you’re better equipped to serve them. Businesses using Zenoti can refer to guest data – like visit history, desired results, services – to tailor marketing messages, create service packages, and make product recommendations.  

Manish Goomar from Options Medical Weight Loss uses client data to help patients achieve their weight loss goals. Additionally, after a visit, Options brings each patient’s body composition into a company data lake that connects with Zenoti data like the patient’s membership plan and particular weight loss program.

“We’ve tied outcome data with transactional data to understand which services patients redeemed within the time period of their program,” says Goomar. The results inspire the team to see if a health coach is a better choice for the patient than a medical clinician, or which aspect of the program may be helping the patient experience.

3) Data delivers insights to better control your business.
Using Zenoti for multi-center management, the Tricoci team tracks bookings in advance for every department, one to three weeks ahead. Running those numbers through their data warehouse delivers a forecasting accuracy that astounds Ryan Abud, Tricoci VP of Technology.  

“Through historical data, we can get within probably a few thousand dollars of where we're going to land on that day, two weeks in advance – it’s crazy,” says Abud.

Booking insights within Zenoti software also help the Tricoci team adjust staffing. “If a holiday’s coming up and we see that our nail department is already at 80% utilization, there’s a chance we’re turning away business,” says Abud. The booking insights allow the Tricoci team to add staff to a busy location or move providers with a lower utilization rate.  

Sometimes, the data insights can lead to significant moves – and growth. When AnneMarie Krainich saw Zenoti consistently tracking an 80%+ utilization at her Ottalaus salons, she decided to add another location.

Use data to empower your staff and drive more revenue

1) Data helps your leaders make informed decisions.
It’s easy to think your business is doing well based on your own observations or verbal reports from managers. That’s really just anecdotal. Keep it real with data – you’ll help your team progress toward company goals.

The leadership team at Tricoci uses sales targets to drive daily operations, making their data readouts invaluable. The brand saves time for its general managers by pushing essential data to their phones.  

“The general managers can see how they’re trending to last year, how they’re trending to their budget for the month, for the day, for the week, whatever it is,” says Ryan Abud. The GMs can also pull additional data from the system.

When Zenoti tracks high utilization at Ottalaus Salon, the software AI automatically triggers demand-based pricing. CEO AnneMarie Krainich says the higher prices during high demand help Ottalaus generate more revenue. “Although I don’t have time to maybe bring in another provider, I am getting more revenue from the providers I have available,” says Krainich.

2) Data can give your team a shared goal so everyone is invested.
It’s easy for team members to become wrapped up in their own days, doing their own things, even closely focusing on their own performance numbers. Inspire your team to pull together by giving them a common goal. As an example, if last year’s data shows $X in service invoice totals in the two weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, shoot for a 15% boost this year.

At Ottalaus Salon, a key data metric is the salon’s daily service total, which AnneMarie Krainich calls “a big one” for staff.

“We have goals for the year, which iron down into a daily amount. Managers reach out to staff with ‘Hey, we're short $150 per chair today, so let's find some ways for you to drive that revenue in daily goals that you’re already working toward.’”

With that specific data point at hand, staff might then use marketing tactics to bring in guests at a discount or sell more add-on services to potentially meet their goal. By reaching the daily service total, staff score more in tips individually, too.

3) Data empowers service providers to take charge of their performance and earn more.
When service providers can see how they’re doing in real time on their phones, it motivates them in ways their managers just can’t. This is especially true for Gen Z with their implicit trust in technology.”

AnneMarie Krainich saw results using ezPulse from Zenoti to help her team run their own numbers. One of her technicians achieved a $13,000 increase in annual add-on sales. The tool: a form to track daily service and retail goals along with game plans to boost both. Krainich notes that the technician became fully invested once she realized she was driving that revenue and that increase in her cashflow.

Ottalaus Salon recently incentivized all staff to complete the form three weeks in a row. In addition to earning the $100 bonus, the techs ended up giving themselves a 15 to 20% raise in those three weeks.

4) Data can offer easy ways to incentivize competitive staff.

There’s nothing like some friendly competition to motivate your staff to sell more gift cards, especially during busy gifting periods like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and the December holiday season.  

Tricoci runs contests during the holidays, rewarding staff who sell the most gift cards. “We can send reports midday of who’s winning. It’s a cool gamification tool,” says Ryan Abud, with participants seeing results in real-time, for both team and company goals. Giving prizes to recognize the winners helps with employee retention, he adds.

You can also gamify retail sales efforts – or really any sales-driven metric for which staff can compete. “We have a scorecard to see which techs are really converting,” Abud says. “Not just overall with ‘X amount of dollars of retail,’ but how many opportunities were missed and how many are out there. It’s really great from an opportunity standpoint.”

Find a data solution that fits

Whatever the size of your beauty and wellness business, choose a data solution that’ll scale as you grow. For brands just starting on their data journey, the dashboards in Zenoti Analytics Express and Zenoti Analytics Plus are intuitive and easy to use. Businesses with more extensive reporting needs tend to use Zenoti Analytics Dedicated Redshift. Whichever option they choose, every Zenoti-powered business can use data in the platform to improve the guest experience, satisfy staff, and drive revenue growth.

See how to streamline your data management with one software platform for all your locations.