Opportunity knocks but salon owners won’t answer the door
Trick question, if you have a five hundred customers on your salon database, over the next three hundred and sixty five days, how many of them will have a birthday?
Okay, so it’s not a trick question. However, regardless of how many customers you have on your database, over the next three hundred and sixty five days, unless they die, all of your customers will have a birthday.
Let’s state the obvious, birthdays are important to your customer. It’s their one big day of the year, it is their turn to feel special, it is their turn to be the centre of attention. So if it is important to your customer, it should be important to you. Check out this hilarious video from Netflorist that stresses the fact that you should never, ever forget to do something special for your customer on the day of her birthday.
Even better than Valentine’s Day!
I am always telling Salon Management Studio customers to be on the lookout for ‘massive marketing opportunities’ – times when people are more willing than usual to buy your products and your services. In my opinion, birthdays provide salons with even greater marketing and profit potential than Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. While Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day happen only once a year, birthdays happen every month and almost every week. Birthday marketing offers a very high return on investment for very little effort. Not only does it give you the opportunity to increase revenue and boost retail sales, birthday marketing will help you cement unshakable customer loyalty and differentiate your salon from other local businesses.
If these facts don’t get you excited, nothing will…
Aside from the indisputable fact that all of your customers will have a birthday this year, consider the following facts about South African consumers;
a. She (your typical female South African female customer) will go out to dinner and celebrate on the day of her birthday. If for some reason they can’t go out on the day, they will still go out and celebrate the weekend before or after.
b. She will not celebrate alone. She will celebrate with her boyfriend, husband, fiancé, friends, family, peers, work colleagues and loves ones. Your customer is going to be seen by people whose opinion is important to her.
c. She will want to dress up, look good and feel gorgeous. She has aged another year but she doesn’t want to look older, in fact, she wants the people around her to be amazed at how good she still looks!
d. If you own a beauty salon it is YOUR JOB to make her look good and feel great on her birthday If she looks great she feels great. That’s priceless – no business can do more for her on the day of her business than yours can. She needs to help, your expertise and your services, but, will she receive and meaningful, value added communication from your salon on the day of her birthday?
How well are you doing?
Considering all of the above facts do you realise that birthdays present you with a massive marketing opportunity every month of the year? I tell my customers that birthday marketing is like taking candy from babies. It doesn’t get any easier than this!
The problem is, that most salon owners don’t grab the opportunity with both hands, instead they let it slip through their fingers. Here’s the reason why – Salon owners simply don’t have the right tools to get the job done. Sure, they may be using Spa or Salon Software, BUT, Salon Studio CRM is the only Spa and Salon Software that will;
a. Notify you on a daily basis, or even a month in advance which clients are having birthdays.
b. Allow you to send out targeted, personalized relevant birthday SMS’s with only 3 clicks of a mouse button.
c. Save you time with our set it and forget it delivery system. Salon Studio CRM will allow you to setup your birthday marketing campaigns at the start of every month and will automatically deliver your birthday SMS’s sequentially to your customers on the day of his or her birthday.
d. Combine birthday SMS and Email for the best possible response rates.
e. Take all the hard work and thinking out of birthday marketing by providing you with ready-made, done for you birthday marketing email and sms templates. One of the many reasons why salon owners don’t practice birthday marketing is because they don’t know what to say or how to say it when the time comes to send out special offers – with Salon Studio CRM you never have to worry about what to write in a birthday email or SMS.
If you are you serious about grabbing hold of this marketing opportunity
In next week’s blog post I am going to give a complete step by step strategy for birthday marketing using Salon Studio CRM’s complete SMS and Email Marketing solution. Not only am I going to teach you to quickly and easily use Salon Studio CRM’s SMS and Email Marketing system, I am also going to show you how to write SMS’s and Emails that work. I will even give you a preview of our Inner Circle Marketing toolbox so that you can take a look at the awesome value added tools and templates that all our clients get for free. These tools take the hard work and thinking out of getting clients to your salon on their birthday. PLUS, as an added bonus I will also show you how implementing a consistent birthday marketing system will allow you to increase the value of your salon when the time comes to sell it.
Now its your turn. Let us know if you enjoyed this article. Are you regularly using birthdays to boost business in your salon? If so, tell us how you do it. If you are neglecting this amazing opportunity, let us know what your challenges are and why you find it difficult.
Thank you for your article Vaughan. Always inspires me to want to do more in my salon. I do my birhthday reminders regularly and I do take the time to think about what I’m going to say. As I’m a one man show I have a very different rapour with the majority of my clients, so this may not work for the bigger salons and spa’s. When Clients come to the salon we are their therapists, listening to their problems and simpathising with them. I listen to all of this and when I do a birthday sms I always persoanlise it and I always start by saying “for you I wish…….SO for eg I would say VAUGHAN for you I wish prosperity in your business ventures, more time in the day to get to see everyone, less stress and more fun. You have made a profound difference in my life through salon studio and for this I am forever grateful. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
Thats just me and how I do it.
Hi Claire
Good to hear from you again! That’ is some pretty awesome advice you have given us. I love the thoughfulness and the personal touches. Most Salon Owners tend to write birthday wishes that aren’t personal or even sincere and clients can sense it. I think that there are a lot of Salon Owners out there who can learn a thing or two birthday’s from you
Regards
Vaughan