Staff at Premier Software, the worlds leading suppliers of Spa and Salon software, were told to keep their wig on this Wednesday as part of a fundraising event for a national charity.

Wig Wednesday, a national event organised by childrens cancer charity CLIC Sargent, took place earlier this week, helping raise funds and awareness for the charity.

You can donate directly to the charity via website, or by texting  ‘WIGS85 £5’ to 70070. 

Pictured, L-R: Louise Crane (Sales Co-Ordinator), Jack Page (System Configurations) and Leonie Wileman (Training Supervisor)

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…So Why should your Spa or Salon be Blogging?

There’s various reasons why you should blogging for your business – here are a handful of reasons, along with a few ideas to get you started.

Demonstrate Your Skills

The best way to prove your knowledge is to teach somebody else – so use your blog to demonstrate your skills and show off your best work or talk about your favourite products (take a look at BritishBeautyBlogger here for a good example).

Boost Your Site on Google

If you run your own site, you’ve probably heard a lot of mentions of SEO as a way of getting extra visitors to your site.

As Google themselves like to say: Content is King, and regularly updated, relevant information is one of the biggest boosts you can do.

It Acts as a Cornerstone to your Social Media

Twitter is great to pass on quick, short messages, but it’s hard to really add any depth in 140 characters or less.  This is where your blog comes in – add your content, and post a link to your new article on your Facebook and Twitter accounts so your followers can see something new is ready to read.

It’s Easy to Do

These days setting up a basic blog is a relatively simple process.  Using tools such as WordPress or Tumblr, you can have your own business blog set up within minutes.

Be Part of the Conversation

All kinds of people blog these days, at all kinds of levels, from ‘Girl Behind the Scissors’*, where one blogger posts about her experience as a mobile therapist,  to Liz Earles expansive blog*, involving numerous writers blogging relentlessly about their areas of expertise.

Getting Started

The most difficult part of regularly blogging is consistently coming up with content.  Here’s a few quick ideas you can add to your blog:

Featured Treatment

Take a treatment you want to promote and detail how it works, and the kinds of benefits the client would get from it.  Take lots of photos (pictures are always importing in blogging), and add lots of lavish, luxuriant detail.

Featured Products

Is there a product you want to highlight?  Let your reader see what it can do, and use your industry knowledge to pass on tips as to how to get the most out of their purchase.

‘Meet the Team’ 

Let your client get familiar with your staff even before they’ve walked through the door by doing a quick profile of a member of staff.  Explain a little about their personality, and tell your reader about your staff qualifications in the industry to demonstrate your skilled team.

Set up a blog or already running one? Tell us about it – we’d love to see what you’re writing!

*please note that we aren’t responsible for the content of external sites

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Over the last few years, we’ve recognised the development of apps such as Instagram, which takes your high-res, beautifully coloured pictures, and allows you to apply a retro theme to make your image look like it was produced in the mid 70′s.

So, taking design cues from all of these, we are happy to announce the arrival of our latest, most cutting edge product to date: The appPad™ .

Taking its design cues from years of traditional printing press designs, the appPad™ is a complete, printed diary – in trendy Moleskine – allowing you to completely customise your schedule by drawing in your own lines and dates.

Some of the incredible features of the appPad™

Write Direct With a Stylus

Tablet computers are great, but they’re sometimes infuriating to write with.  We’ve introduced a Stylus, which we call the appBiro, which allows you to write directly onto the surface of your appBook.

Easy Undo

Made a mistake?  Don’t worry about deleting. Instead, simply use your appBiro to scribble over the name of the client you accidentally booked in.

Multi-Coloured Appointment Scheduling

Appointments can be easily highlighted dependant on arrival, departure, type of appointment, or just because Mrs Smith really needs to be a fluorescent shade of green!  Simply move your special highlighter stylus  over the appointment repeatedly.

Easily Customisable

Want to add your own company logo? Easy, just print out your Company logo, cut it out and stick it to the front of your appPad™

Alternatively, if you’d like to purchase a product that manages your diary for you, and leaves no residual marks on your reception desk, please contact our Sales team to request details of our current software packages.

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Our offices will be closed on the 29th of March and the 1st of April, plus the weekend as usual.

Please note that if you hold a Premier support contract, our out of hours service will be available between 8am – 8pm for the holiday period should you encounter any business critical issues.

The team will be returning on Tuesday, 2nd of April, probably still feeling slightly sick from too many chocolate eggs.

Premier Software - Spa & Salon Software from Premier

Gift Vouchers are a perfect present and, with the gift voucher tracking module of your Premier Spa or Premier Style software, they’re easy to track.

As a special gift to our clients, we’re slashing the price of our Gift Voucher Tracking system from £395 to just £149 – less than half price – until the 31st of March, 2013.  Just call our sales team on 01543 466580, or email sales@premiersoftware.co.uk.

Premier Software - Spa & Salon Software from Premier

Premier Software clients got treated to a free expert training session from our dedicated training team, while potential clients were shown how our software can help them bring their business up to date. Visitors were impressed by the new features, from online booking for clients to a free, cloud based scheduling system for smaller businesses in the form of Salonlite.

We even got people to join in with our ‘fish face’ competition, where visitors to our stand reproduced our now-infamous advert in a bid to win either free training or a free software package (winners still to be announced!).

Premier Software - Spa & Salon Software from Premier

This year, after launching our advertising campaign, we want to see your best fish faces when you visit our stand (W40).  Simply take a snapshot on your mobile phone from our stand, upload it to Facebook and tag us to be in with a chance of winning!

Want to know how to take part? It’s easy.

Head to our stand (W40) at Professional Beauty

Come check out our stand, take a look around, talk to some of our staff.  They’re all very friendly!

Recreate our now infamous ‘Fish Face’ advert

Our advert has proven controversial, even in the office – so we like to have a little fun with it.  See some of our staff practising their best ‘fish face’ at Premier Towers over on Facebook to get an idea.

Feel free to be inventive!

Tag Us!

Make sure you tag us in your photo, otherwise we won’t know about it.  To make sure, ‘like’ our page in advance by clicking here.

If you’re using Instagram or want to post your pic on twitter, why not use our #pollocks tag (but bear in mind, you won’t be entered in the draw from your Instagram / Twitter post – it’s just for fun).

Please note that by taking part, we may wish to use your image for further promotional advertising – but if we do, we’ll ask for your permission first.

Premier Software - Spa & Salon Software from Premier

According to research, loved-up UK citizens will bolster the economy with a potentially massive £880m spent on gifts for their partner (potential or otherwise).  A day of relaxation and pampering might just make the perfect present, so why not check out our promotional tips to help your clients enjoy their day.

Messages for Him

Many men will be looking to find their partners the perfect present and, like most males, they don’t want to shop around.  Make it easy for them by letting them know about your services by sending out a bulk SMS message via the Marketing option in Manager:

Messages for Her

If you’re looking to introduce more men to your business, here’s the perfect opportunity to remind your female clients of your male-specific treatments.  For those single ladies trying to captivate a potential partner, set up a promotion on your best aesthetic treatments to tempt them into your spa or salon before the big day.

Promote Couples  Treatments 

Buying presents for each other is one thing, but the truly romantic couples will want to  relax in each others company.  Make sure that they’re aware of your services by sending out a mail merge directly from your Premier software well in advance, promoting your best couples treatments.

A Special Gift From Premier Software

To make this Valentines even more special, we’re offering our very own gift to all Premier Software customers.

Gift voucher tracking allows you to monitor and track gift vouchers sold through your system – and this Valentines day we’re reducing the price from £395 to just £149.

Contact our sales team on 01543 466580, or email sales@premiersoftware.co.uk for further detail.

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We take these matters very seriously, and we have spoken with the company who manage the hosting for Salonlite in order to ensure that this matter does not occur again.

Please accept our apologies if you were affected.

Premier Software - Spa & Salon Software from Premier

Two decades later, and SMS is one of the most popular forms of communication available.  Quick, low-cost and instantaneous, text messaging is a brilliant way of keeping in touch with your clients and ensuring a full appointment book over the festive period.

Want some tips on getting the most out of SMS in your Premier software?  Click ‘read more’ below!

Set up Reminders

Most of your no-show clients haven’t purposefully missed their appointment. Like most of us with a busy life, it’s easy to forget about something you may have booked weeks ago.  To combat this, your Premier Spa or Premier Style system can be configured to automatically send out a friendly reminder by text, without you having to even touch the keyboard.

If you don’t have text message reminders setup yet, get in touch with our support team for further assistance.

Promote Empty Space

Had a cancellation, or is there an empty white space in the diary you’d like to see filled up?  Using the marketing tools within your software, you can quickly send out a text message to potential clients.  If it’s for a specific staff member, or you’d like to use it for a specific treatment type, then you can use the Marketing Selection to specify particular clients.

A Personal Touch

One of the best things about SMS is that it’s easily personalised – unless you tell the system not to, your messages will automatically have the clients name attached.  You can even send single messages to specific clients, straight from the client card.

Don’t forget – messages that you send from your system are charged at just 4.9p per message, which gives you plenty of room to experiment and see what works best for your business.

We’d love to hear how you used SMS in your spa or salon – get in touch via the comments below!

Image by Esther Gibbons on Flickr, used under licence

Premier Software - Spa & Salon Software from Premier