Customer acquisition is an ongoing concern in the spa and wellness business. How can we attract new people into our spaces? What can we do to keep a steady stream of new guests coming in?
The list of methods is virtually endless, and some are heavier lifts than others.
Along with those that do take more work, you should also be employing any and all available low-effort and effective customer acquisition strategies.
Fortunately, these days a great spa management software will take care of a lot of these for you. Here are five easy ways to use your spa management software for customer acquisition.
Ask for referrals. Most people know this is a good idea, but many stop short of actually doing it, sometimes out of fear of seeming pushy or demanding. That’s understandable, but if your customer experience is as good as it should be, people should be eager to tell their friends and family about it – not as a favour to you, but as a favour to friends and family. Use your software to send a customer satisfaction survey first, to be sure the guest is, indeed, happy (don’t ask for a referral if they’re not! Instead, find a way to turn things around). And offer an incentive, like the gift of a product, service, or upgrade. If you and your team have done your job it will be a pleasure for guests to make a referral, not a chore.
Solicit reviews. At the same time that you are asking for a referral, don’t forget to ask that same ecstatic customer for a review. Your spa software should facilitate this and allow you to direct guests to the review website of your choice. Do not ask them for a specific type of review, like a positive one. Just ask for the review. If you’ve done your work and sent the survey, we can fairly assume the review will be positive. People rely heavily on online reviews when choosing a business to patronize. Among the available research findings are that 97% of people read online reviews for local businesses, 90% of those say that positive reviews have influenced their buying decisions, and 86% said their decisions were also influenced by negative reviews.
Market your gift cards. The holidays are upon us and this is an amazing time to get your gift cards out there, though any time of year is really a great time for gift cards. Spa management software should allow you to easily create and sell your own gift cards to increase brand recognition and market penetration, and have a central system that makes it easy to manage your gift card program across all locations. Be sure that your guests are aware of your gift cards and get your whole team on board with marketing them in your spa. Consider offering them as gifts for referrals and loyalty points and encouraging customers to offer these as gifts. This solves a problem for them and for you.
Manage your yield. Yield management is the process of adjusting the price of a product or service in response to market factors like variability in demand or competition. A successful yield management system optimizes intake, increases revenue, and improves efficiency. It can also attract new customers. Offering lower rates during lower occupancy times can attract customers you might not have otherwise and fill time that would otherwise not have been filled. And if people are impressed with your guest experience at a lower rate, they may be all too willing to spend more next time for a different time slot. A spa management software that offers yield management capabilities will automatically adjust prices based on parameters set by you.
Track your turn away. Turning away customers is probably costing you more revenue than you realize. Spas lose an average of about 15% of a day’s business from turning away. That might not sound like much but if you lose 15 out of 100 appointments a day at $150 dollars on average, that’s $2250 a day, or more than $800,000 a year. If turned away, a regular customer might come back, but first time customers probably won’t and you will permanently lose that business. Tracking reasons for turning away and making appropriate scheduling or facility changes manually can be really difficult. But spa management software can collect this data for you, so you can optimize your scheduling and facilities to accommodate the clients you’re losing.
Don’t let new customers slip through your fingers. Book4Time can help. Get in touch today book4time.com.