For any beauty and wellness brand to stand out and thrive in the sea of competition, the importance of effective marketing strategies cannot be overstated.  
 
While your staff is the face and pulse of your business, marketing is what really sets your organization apart from others. The right marketing strategies play a critical role in customer engagement, brand visibility, and business growth.  
 
Here’s the challenge: Marketing and marketing tactics are continuously evolving. With advancements in marketing technology and the integration of automation and software, keeping up with strategies that work for your business – and speak to your customer base – is vital.  
 
As part of Innergize 2023, the landmark beauty and wellness event from Zenoti, three industry leaders joined an insightful marketing masterclass to discuss the strategies that fuel their business’s growth.

Here are the key takeaways on how these experienced leaders use marketing to operate more efficiently, personalize interactions at scale, and make data-driven decisions for more effective campaigns.  

The experts:‍

Jack Bachinsky, CMO, Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa
Chase Hanson, Chief Information and Technology Officer, iCRYO
John Wheeler, CEO, Alpha Aesthetics Partners

1. A mobile app in customers' hands is a powerful marketing tool.

Today, there’s a mobile app to do just about everything, and interacting with salons and spas should be no exception. Apps can enhance the customer experience but can also serve as an extremely effective marketing tool.

For salons and spas, mobile features such as push notifications, loyalty programs, personalized marketing, and appointment scheduling can reduce no-shows and improve guest engagement.  Beyond these obvious benefits, offering a mobile app simply “adds credibility to your business,” says Chase Hanson, Chief Information and Technology Officer at iCRYO.  

Although iCRYO guests can use the app to book an appointment, manage their iCRYO lifestyle pass and track their service packages, the iCRYO team primarily uses their app as a guest retention tool.

“Our goal is just to get clients through the doors and then onto the app,” explains Hanson. “If we start to see consistency in a user, we really push the app and then start to train them that ‘this is part of your lifestyle now’.’”

With this strategy, the iCRYO team sees tangible results in not only guest retention, but also what guests using the app are likely to spend.  

“Once guests are on the on the app, LTV (lifetime value) goes up, price per invoice goes up. It is actually incredible. It changed our business.”
- Chase Hanson, Chief Information and Technology Officer, iCRYO

Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa – whose app has over 100,000 downloads and counting – also sees a higher ticket value with bookings that come in through the app. As CEO Jack Bachinsky confirms, these results are the perfect example of the classic adage ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get.’

“On phone calls, if spa associates don’t ask for the upgrade, we’re not going to get it,” Bachinsky says. “With the app, users are asked for the upgrade every time.”

2. Analyzing user behavior on your app and online store is a must.

As mentioned above, a mobile app for your salon or spa serves as a powerful marketing tool. But if you’re not tracking the app’s analytic data, you’re missing an opportunity to make it even more powerful.

Understanding how your guests are using your app or navigating your online store lets you make informed, data-driven decisions to boost engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.  

By analyzing user behavior, you gain insights into customers’ individual preferences, usage patterns, and interactions with your brand. This is where data allows for the customization of the user experience – a personal connection that guests not only want from businesses today but expect.

The iCRYO team tracks valuable data by connecting the Zenoti consumer mobile app and Zenoti webstore to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – the latest version of Google Analytics. This integration results in customer insights that can make a difference.

“Connect Zenoti to GA4 and you’ll understand how users are actually going through the webstore,” says Chase Hanson, referencing the variety of touchpoints a customer can access via an online storefront, including booking an appointment, checking gift card balances, and purchasing a retail product.  

With the Zenoti platform's analytics capabilities, business performance data is easily accessible – with key benchmarks including leads, sales, conversions, social media promotions, and campaign results.  

Read expert tips on making your data work for your beauty and wellness business.

"Whether it's the app or the marketing, Zenoti gives us the ability to really get to know our clients on a granular level and truly be able to market to them."  
- Adel Farhat, Executive General Manager of Technology, SILK Laser Clinic

3. Loyalty and rewards programs can boost revenue and drive customer retention.

Loyalty and rewards programs afford even more opportunities to create a personalized experience for your guests, while encouraging them to spend more and keep coming back. Through a well-structured program, salons and spas can increase revenue while guests can earn and redeem points on services, products, and more.

If you’re unsure whether your existing rewards program is working, here’s a tip: Ask your customers if they are aware of your loyalty program. Hand & Stone added this simple question to their customer surveys and found that most customers didn't know about the rewards program.

This one question gave CMO Jack Bachinsky marketing insight into just how successful the program was, as out of the customers aware of the loyalty program, 68% were likely to recommend it.

"We could tie that right back to $38,000 a month in additional revenue from those spas that had above the halfway score of ‘likely to recommend’”, Bachinsky explains.  

Hand & Stone has also found that the rewards program is helping to boost conversion of their membership program, further driving customer retention and recurring revenue – two of the biggest benefits to membership models.

“We convert better when our spa associates are talking about the rewards program. It's something tangible,” Bachinsky says. “A customer sees that they're getting rewarded, and they want it.”  

“We use a points program through Zenoti, and they really worked with us to make it a very seamless experience between what the technology offered and what we wanted the program to do.”
- Jack Bachinsky, CMO, Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa

4. Aim to keep your marketing budget within the industry ‘sweet spot’.

If you find yourself questioning exactly how much of your gross revenue you should allocate to marketing, you probably know there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

The right number can vary based on the industry category, business size, stage of growth, and specific marketing goals. Despite there being no exact ‘right’ figure, the industry average is a good place to start.

John Wheeler, CEO of Alpha Aesthetics Partners, analyzes hundreds of med spas and their financials and says the average marketing budget sits “right around 3-5%” of gross revenue.  

“When we set a budget for our partners, we try to keep it around 3%, which is really good digital,” says Wheeler. “So, if you're kind of in that ‘3 to 5’ wheelhouse, I think you're in a good spot."

While this average is a good marker, it's important for salon and spa owners to regularly review and adjust their marketing budget based on performance data and evolving business goals. Flexibility and adaptability are key in ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to achieve the desired marketing outcomes.

Related read: One of the most effective promotions in your spa or salon

5. Using an integrated marketing system makes it all easier and faster.

Investing in an all-in-one software system for your business means that you don’t need to spend millions to create an effective marketing tech stack.  

With a complete platform like Zenoti, businesses like iCRYO and Hand & Stone are managing marketing from one place. This allows brands to create campaigns at the corporate level, customize by location, and effectively target guests with promotions based on demographics and visit history.

Chase Hanson from iCRYO extols the “functionality and effectiveness of keeping it all inside one system.”  As an example of available marketing tools, he mentions the simplified email builder inside Zenoti, saying he supports iCRYO franchisees by uploading a variety of custom email templates for their use.  

With an email builder in the same system as marketing analytics, customer analytics, and every other facet of business management, brands have everything they need to optimize and automate their marketing efforts.  

For those that prefer integrations with third-party software or apps – like John Wheeler from Alpha Aesthetics Partners – the open API gets high marks.

“I love Zenoti for the open API and its ability to play with everybody else in the sandbox.”
‍- John Wheeler, CEO, Alpha Aesthetics Partners

Summary

Although marketing is constantly evolving and advancing, personalization is one strategy that we know will stick around – and get, perhaps, even more personal.  

Effective marketing today demands greater specificity and detail. Businesses need to have the technology, tools, and strategies in place to target and segment their market effectively.  

Today's industry leaders are relying on having a mobile app and digging into user behavior analytics to help meet those demands. With an all-in-one platform like Zenoti – the industry’s most complete software – you can build an impressive and effective marketing tech stack without breaking the bank.  

Learn how Zenoti software helps make personalized marketing simple for growing brands.

‍