Once upon a time in a city far far away,
there was a little hair salon that decided to do the unthinkable.
They decided to actually follow up with
their clients to check in, not only on customer satisfaction, but also to
increase their sales frequency.
Here is how they did it;
First, they made sure to give every client a
client number and a simple loyalty card. This started as a stamp type
loyalty card, very simple, and it had a place to write by hand, the clients
name, and their ID number on the card.
Once the customer visited the shop 10 times, they were
entitled to one of many free services, which included a protein treatment, a wash dry and set,
a bottle of shampoo, or a root touch up.
In order to prepare the customer card, the
little hair salon had the client fill in a simple survey of questions pertinent
to a hair salon, including the customer's phone number and email address. They also offered all new clients the chance
to opt-in to their weekly newsletter, and if they did, they would be placed in a draw
for a monthly free $50 gift certificate at the salon.
The owner was very progressive and set up
some simple sales automation in order to follow up with the customers over the
next few months.
As customers have enough cards to carry
around, this little hair salon decided to keep the loyalty cards at the front
desk for the customer so they never needed to remember it, they simply needed
to give their name.
Every time a customer came in, the
receptionist or a stylist found their card and confirmed their number.
After the client was done, the stylist
pulled up their information in the sales automation, filled in what service the customer
had done in the notes field, as well as any other pertinent details that would allow
them to better service this customer the next time they came in, AND reset
their email campaign.
The email campaign was a big key to the
increase in sales. It was structured in the following way.
The Day AFTER the appointment, they sent an
email from the owner checking in on the previous days service and asking for
feedback if anything was wrong, or outstanding.
This surprised the little salon as the owner got both GOOD and BAD feedback
about the stylists they employed. This allowed them to rectify errors and
retain good customers even in the event of a mishap.
2 weeks AFTER the appointment, they sent an
email letting the customer know they could pop in for a professional wash, dry,
and hair set for just $30, a way to get that just been to the salon look, at a
fraction of the cost for a special occasion.
4 weeks after the appointment, they sent an
email asking if it might be about time to come and get a haircut again.
They were stunned by how many responses
this email got, and VERY positive ones, actually thanking the salon for the
reminder stating that the customer often forgets to book, and this email
reminded them to get it done and it was simple, as they just replied by email, to book the time that they wanted. This system made it EASY
for the customer.
Now the cool part of this for the hair
salon was, this took the average rebooking time from 7 to 8 weeks, to averaging
6 weeks, which meant a MASSIVE increase in annual sales.
Here's the math (yuck);
Let’s say your average sale is $65 and your
customers come in every 8 weeks.
This means your customer comes to see you
about 52/8 = 6.5 times per year.
So your average annual sales from a client
is 6.5 x $65 = $422.50
If you got them back an average of 1 time
each 6 weeks instead, it would be 52/6 = 8.67 times.
Your average annual sales form a client
then would be 8.67 x $65 = $563.33.
This is a WHOPPING 33% increase in Annual
Sales!!!!
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At 6 weeks, an email went out re-suggesting
it was time to re-book as they were likely getting pretty shaggy.
Then at 8 weeks, an APOLOGY email went out,
YEP, that’s right, they apologized for not doing a good enough job to have the
client come back and they offered at 10% discount with the apology email if the
customer rebooked within 3 days.
At 12 weeks, an extension of the apology
re-offering the 10% off went out, and tossing in a free bottle of shampoo, or
free protein treatment if they booked again in the next 3 days.
This wasn’t as random as it sounds, they
knew that their average time of rebook was 7 weeks, so at 8 weeks it was likely
frustrated customer, or a super cheap one that would wait 10 or 12 weeks to
come back. By offering the 10% the made
the unhappy client feel cared for, and often coaxed the cheaper customer to
come again to chase the discount. This
again drove annual sales up dramatically by increasing customer frequency.
Once the salon had collected its customer
database including email address, it also started to implement a Web Special
page on its website that it email blasted out each 2 weeks as part of their bi-weekly
newsletter.
The web specials page contained super
amazing deals, sometimes as much as 50% off, but ONLY FOR SPECIFIC stylists and
time slots. They used it to fill their
empty seats, this decreased dramatically their sales vacancy and once again
increased their profits.
If they ever got in a real bind with empty
seats, they did an instant blast to everybody offering a great deal on a super
short time frame to fill that spot.
The results were out of this world. Empty seat time vanished. Staff made more
money in tips. The owner made more money as a salon. Other stylists started to
want to work there as they heard how always busy the salon was.
Another benefit the salon found as it
implemented its simple CRM product to track and follow up with its customers
was the ability to track Customer Preferences to increase customer satisfaction.
One of the final things the salon put in
place was a reminder phone call, text (SMS), Facebook message, KiK message, or
any other method of communication the customer had indicated they preferred for
all appointments the next day.
This simple action de-creased no-shows
significantly, and made the customer feel extremely cared for.
In Today’s online world, the likes of Yelp
and others are making it more and more important to have at least a simple web
presence for those sites to link to.
This gives all the ranking sites for Hair Salons the ability to send
their interested parties to a site to learn a little about you in order to make
the decision to make a reservation.
As a result of this and the web-specials
concept the salon put together a simple website and even started to use their
new found cash flow the little salon started to do super focused advertising on Facebook
and Google AdWords.
This traffic simply was directed to the
website which had the ability to sign up to the newsletter for the possibility
of winning that $50 salon gift certificate.
This drove engagements, and the ability for the email follow up series
to be employed to convert this look and see traffic to an actual customer.
The final thing the little salon that DID
implemented was a referral program. They simply offered that anybody who had
their friend signup to the newsletter would earn one draw per person they
referred into the draw for a $100 gift certificate at the salon. This turned happy clients into referring
ADVOCATES or FANS! It grew their list dramatically, which converted to new
customers over time.
It is simply amazing how simple it can be
to increase a Hair Salons sales with some simple techniques and Sales
Automation Software that costs as little as $30/month.
Small Biz Dream is exactly that software
and for $30/month, it can handle all the automation mentioned in the above
article.
1 The ability to make a Simple
website and web specials page
2.
The ability to have data
collected and used for an email blast like that for web specials or weekly
newsletter.
3.
The ability to collect data on
prospects generated by Facebook and Google, and follow up with them
automatically over time with a timed series of emails to convert them to a
client.
4.
The ability to make a calling
list of all appointments the next day easily and take notes as you make the
calls.
The best part is, we have a template of the system, so you simply
need to make minor tweaks to the content and you should be up and running in a
very short time reaping the rewards of good sales automation.
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