While neighbourhood salons offer a more personalised experience, they lack the ability to increase customer footfalls and engage effectively with the customers. Compared to bigger players in the industry, salons next door are yet to be exposed to new age customer outreach programmes. However, it is never too late to start learning about ways to build better brand recall and gain more customers. Here are five points that neighbourhood salons can learn from bigger brands in India, to take their business to the next level.

Setup Customer Engagement Programmes

The easiest way to start with is to wish your clients on their birthday via an email. You can leverage email and SMS platforms to send timely appointment reminders, offers and new service announcements. Text messaging is affordable and statistics show that customers respond to an offer up to 80 per cent of the time. Multi-location med spa Prettislim, strengthened their brand recall and customer retention through personalised communication with their guests with birthday campaigns, anniversary emails and ‘We miss you’ campaigns. With this, they not only engaged with their existing clients, but were also able to nurture new leads.

Collect Customer Feedback

Customer feedback, negative or positive, should be acted upon quickly. However, the first step is to ensure you are collecting enough of it. Make it easy for your guests to submit their feedback by avoiding lengthy surveys, and offer exciting incentives for submitting feedback! With a proper feedback management in place, you can not only monitor and manage feedback, but also take specific actions on the same.

Run Targeted Promotions

By segmenting your customers, you can do targeted promotions to boost your revenue. Cross selling and upselling are the key components for promoting your spa and salon services. For example, if your guests love pedicures, but have never opted for a manicure, send them a discount on this combination for their next visit. Identifying the top selling services combination is key. For example, you could upsell a 60 minute massage to a 90 minute massage by sending a discount coupon! Also, to increase the average frequency, you can send targeted messages to your guests. For example, if they visited you twice a month earlier and currently they are not, send them a ‘Miss you’ SMS clubbed with a discount!

Monitor Stock Usage

Choosing the right spa management software with an in-built inventory management software, would enable you to reduce pilferage and wastage, maintain stock transparency and streamline order management. All of this can be automated, saving you time and money. Conducting stock audits and reconciliations periodically will help you track misuse or over usage products.

Streamline Performance Review Process

Proper and regular review process significantly enhances employee performance and motivation. Automate your staff attendance, measure employee wise weekly or monthly revenue collections, and offer incentives based on performance. Whether managing a single store or a multi-location business, brands are breaking free from legacy systems and utilising cloud-based salon software to increase operational efficiency, drive customer loyalty programmes, reduce IT costs and boost revenues.

The article was originally published in Salon International Magazine May edition

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