Premier Software

We know how important it is to keep in touch with your clients, which is why we provide various methods of communication within your Premier Spa, Spa+ or Style product.   However, we know that sometimes you want that extra level of control that emailing through Outlook just can’t give you.

Mail..chimp?

No, we don’t know why they’re quite so infatuated by our simian friends, but what they are good at is providing a mail service, which lets you track what’s happening with your email marketing.

If you happened to be watching Channel 4′s rather enjoyable ‘The Hotel’ over the Christmas break, you’d have seen a situation occur that you might have come across before.

The hotel owner proudly boasted that the hotel bookings were all made manually in a well-worn book, using “lots of coloured pens and lots of tippex”.  Why was he so proud of his archaic system? Because, in his own words “we never have to say ‘sorry, we can’t book your room because the system is down’ or ‘please wait while we update our system’”.

The reason why he was defending the practice of a scribbled on paper pad?

Because he’d just overbooked one of the guest rooms for a wedding party, much to the anguish of the bride-to-be, and had no clue how to rectify the situation.

If the hotel had a computerised booking system, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about situations such as overbooked appointments, as their system would have alerted them to their mistake.

We’ve heard a lot of common concerns when computerising your business, and in most instances they’re generally unfounded.

The Main Myths – Busted!

Why struggle with tatty paper client cards and barely legible scrawled history notes?  Spa and Salon software is swiftly taking over as the best way of helping

While we’re obviously (and deservedly!) biased, here’s some tips on what to look for when selecting the software for your salon.

In these times of increasing competition, it’s always worth testing new and interesting ways to provide an incentive for your client to return back to your spa or salon.  If you fancy taking advantage of peoples natural tendencies to turn things into games as part of your retention strategy, then geolocation services might just be the answer.

If you’ve ever seen Facebooks ‘places’, or used the foursquare app on your phone, then you’ve probably already used geolocation.  Essentially, when your client is at your spa or salon, they can ‘check-in’ to their location, which (at least in foursquare) gives them points.

So How Can that Help Me?

With foursquare, there’s a naturally competitive element built in (sometimes called ‘gamification‘).  Each time you check in, you score points, which you can then check against your friends.

Whenever somebody checks into your spa or salon, they’ll gain points against their friends – but, more importantly, it’ll usually appear on their Facebook wall or their twitter feed.  Why is this useful? In these instances, it means that your clients friends know about your business, and it also acts as a kind of automatic recommendation: my friend is at The Beauty Spa?  Well, if they go there, it must be good!

King of the Hill

With foursquare, there’s a couple of other interesting elements as well.

If the client checks in a number of times, they can become the foursquare Mayor of the business.  In realistic terms, it’s just another way to keep people playing the game – you want to keep hold of your position against your friends – but if you claim your foursquare venue page, you can set up special deals to reward people who consistently return.

If you have a number of sites, you might want to go a step further and create a foursquare business page, which allows you to control a number of venues - check out Mashables guide here.

Thanks to Guy Christian for the original idea for this blog post.

Years ago, in the days of our youth (stop laughing at the back), there was an advert where Bob Hoskins infamously used to say “it’s good to talk”. It’s still good to talk, but now nearly everybody has a mobile phone, sometimes it’s just as good to text.

It’s hard to ignore the familiar buzz / beep of an incoming message, so here are our quick tips for getting the most out of SMS within your Premier Software.