How to use Birthdays and Anniversaries to market your Salon
Every year, you are presented with hundreds of opportune moments to market your Salon to your customers. In these moments customers are more open than usual to receiving your message. Two of these moments include your customer’s birthday and anniversary. Consumers buy products and services from Salons and Spa’s like yours because they want to feel good about themselves. Now here are three facts you need to pay attention to when practicing birthday and anniversary marketing.
Fact # 1: Everyone wants to feel good on their birthday and wedding anniversary.
Fact # 2: Almost all people want to celebrate and share their birthday and anniversary with other people.
Fact # 3: Marketing studies tell us that more than 50% of people go out eat on the day of their birthday or anniversary.
Considering the above facts, if a woman (or man) is going out to celebrate with her friends and family, she wants to look good and feel good. For a marketer it doesn’t get any better than this! So if you are prepared for your customers birthdays and anniversaries it is like taking candy from babies! From the personal experience of many of our customers we know that if you can get a consumer to your Salon on the day of her birthday, she will spend money and you can increase your revenue with ease!
Principles on creating irresistible money making birthday & anniversary offers:
When you create your or Salon’s unique birthday and anniversary promotions, keep the following three principles in mind.
- What could you provide for free (use the word complimentary) that has a high perceived value in the customers eyes but is not a discount, is not expensive to deliver and is not too demanding on your time? The goal here is to give away something to entice the customer into your Salon. Once she is there, you can upsell, cross-sell and rebook the customer. The key here is high perceived value from the customer’s point of view.
- Whether your offer is sent via sms, email or even old fashioned snail mail (which by the way works extremely well because of its personal touch) always include an expiry date in your special offer. Limitations in terms of dates and quantities create a sense of urgency / loss and are the best ways to drive customers to take action and respond.
- Offer the client a treatment where she can see a visible / tangible difference by the time she walks out of the door.
How to setup a birthday offer in three easy steps;
Step number one: Start with the customer
Marketing begins with your customer. Most Salon Owners make the mistake of starting with their treatment menu and services but good marketers start with the customer for whom the offer is being created. Before you create the offer or send it out, you are going to need some critical information about your customer, more specifically you will need….
a. Their Email address
b. Their Cellphone number
c. Their full date of birth – Knowing the clients age allows you to target them more accurately. Whatever you do, don’t send the same birthday offer to a 20 year old that you would to a 50 year old. They are two different markets that have different needs, wants and desires.
d. And most importantly you need to know what they like to buy and why. To find out what specific customers like most, use the Service History Tab found on every customers Client Card in Salon Studio CRM. There is a lot of psychology behind this, but trust me when I tell you to offer the client something she likes instead of enticing her to come in for something she has never tried before!!
Remember that your customer database needs two things, quality and quantity. Make sure that your customer information is;
- Accurate – You better not send out a birthday offer when it is not the customer’s birthday! Even worse, imagine sending out an anniversary offer to a client who is now divorced or bereaved!
- Detailed – your marketing is only as good as the quality of your database. The more information you have on your client the more control you have over the purchasing relationship. If your marketing sucks chances are you have a lousy database.
Step number two: Create an irresistible offer
This is the part that most Salon Owners struggle with. They know they should be marketing their business but they just don’t know how to do it. Here are the five must have elements that your offer must have if you want your diary full. Your offer must start off with an attention grabbing headline. It must have valued added bonuses, not a discount. (A discount is not a compelling offer!) It must have a customer testimonial, a money back guarantee and a short customer testimonial.
If you have ever sat down in front of your computer and stared at a blank screen with no idea how to write a compelling Birthday or Anniversary offer that gets your phone ringing, your scheduler full and promotes brand loyalty then you are just going to love the ready-made Birthday and Anniversary templates and sales ideas inside of Salon Management Studio’s Salon Owners Marketing Toolbox. It is like having your own Marketing Consultant working for you. Our Sales and Marketing tools and templates are based on sound Direct Response Marketing principles that work. It takes the hard work out of marketing your Salon and frees you up to do the work the work that you do best. Click here to see our ready made birthday offers and promotions…
Step number three: Use technology to make your life easier
In marketing, timing is everything. But the truth is that most Spa’s and Salons waste these wonderful marketing opportunities because they don’t have a CRM system that automatically helps them contact customers at the right time. The right promotion to the right person at the wrong time will not generate sales. So make sure that you use a Salon Studio CRM’s automated Birthday and Anniversary functionality. Our software system will make it cheaper, easier and faster to setup your marketing pipeline.
If you need any help with your Salon Marketing, don’t hesitate to contact Salon Management Studio at info for tools, training and advice. Remember, it is our job to take the complicated, scary world of business and make it fun and profitable.
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