When you’re looking for ways to boost your salon business and bring in more revenue, look no further than your salon management software to help you reach your goals. The best salon software goes beyond online booking and salon scheduling to help you build the successful beauty business you’ve always dreamed of. With it, you can improve salon operations to better allocate resources, increase ticket averages and product sales, and gain valuable insights into every aspect of your business so that you can make confident decisions at every stage of growth. We’ve put together a list of ten great ways that salon and spa management software can boost your business for fabulous outcomes.
1. Use Task Automation For Higher Productivity
It’s no secret that higher productivity equals higher revenue. When your staff is less bogged down with tasks that can be accomplished with software automation, they can focus on revenue-driving efforts. Instead of spending their time on the phone booking and confirming appointments, they can spend more time suggesting new retail products that your salon carries or encouraging add-on services. For salon managers and owners, automation saves an incredible amount of time with employee management features such as customized scheduling, time cards, and payroll processing that can even account for complex pay structures that includes rate tiers, commissions, and bonuses. This recovers precious time that you can devote to things like staff development and support that requires a human touch and also drives employee retention and satisfaction. High employee turnover can be a drain on your resources, impacting customer satisfaction and your salon’s reputation – which directly impacts your revenue potential.
2. Improve Efficiency With Better Resource Management
Resource management is critical for keeping your salon, spa, or fitness center running efficiently. Managing your salon resources well will ensure that the right resources are available for every appointment booking. If multiple customers book appointments for hair processing that requires a dryer and there aren’t enough dryers available, it can not only be embarrassing for the stylist but can be very frustrating for the customer who may not be able to receive their service at the time they booked. And having to wait too long for a shampoo bowl to rinse out a hair treatment can lead to over-processed hair and a very unhappy client. Massage rooms, pedicure spa chairs, and fitness equipment rooms all require resource management as well. Using a salon management system will eliminate issues with resource management, ensuring that your salon runs efficiently to boost customer and employee satisfaction.
3. Use The Best Salon And Spa Marketing Tools
Salon software with built-in marketing tools is a huge boon for spa and salon owners; it makes it incredibly easy to create SMS or email marketing campaigns. The software will typically come with templates to get you started, and then you can tailor your campaigns to your salon’s specifics or to meet the goals of the individual campaigns. You can use drag-and-drop tools and list-building tools to create the perfectly customized marketing messages and send them to all clients or just to those most likely to take action. You can even create campaigns in advance and set them to deploy at a later date. Since you have all of your client data in the marketing software, these marketing features will save you a ton of time. You can also easily share your campaigns across your social media for even further reach without a bigger time investment.
4. Create Loyalty Programs With Salon Management Software
Customer loyalty programs are hands down one of the easiest ways to boost business and bring in some extra revenue. Fortunately, salon software for beauty and wellness businesses supports customer loyalty programs by making them easy to create and doing the work of managing them for you! You can customize your loyalty programs to offer reward points on nearly anything you wish: services, retail products, referral points, and more. Reward long-time customers with bonus points each year on their anniversary of joining your membership program. The salon and spa software will track each customers’ accumulation of points, points spent, and points remaining, so your staff doesn’t have to do it at the check-out desk. Loyalty programs are a great way to encourage higher sales and add-on services without cutting too deeply into your bottom line. And customers who participate in the programs will feel (and be) more invested in your salon.
5. Attract More Customers With Convenient Booking Software
Today’s salon customers want convenience only secondary to fantastic services. The best way to attract a strong client base and retain those customers is to meet these two very important customer needs. Once you have your talented salon professionals in place to provide standout services, you need an online booking system to allow the customers the convenience of booking appointments from anywhere at any time. Salon booking software empowers your clients to handle nearly every aspect of their own appointment management, from booking to rescheduling when necessary and even including notes and important service-related information such as reference pictures or product allergies/sensitivities. When appointment management is this easy and convenient, clients are more likely to book, and book often. They are also more likely to refer your salon to friends, family, neighbors, coworkers and more if they have a great booking experience. The automated appointment reminders and confirmations are also a great way to protect your revenue by virtually eliminating no-shows and significantly reducing cancellations.
6. Increase Your Revenue With Online Sales
Great salon software solutions will have support for online sales where you can boost your business. The software helps you set up an online store, through your salon website, where your current customers can order beauty products and other retail items for themselves or even as gifts for others. Having an online store will also help expand your reach to a bigger audience with more potential customers. In addition to selling products and retail items, you can sell gift cards in your online store. Gift cards for salon and spa services are always welcome for birthdays, Mother’s (or Father’s!) Day, or other special occasions. Your current loyal customers might even boost your business for you by bringing in new clients with gift cards, and do some customer-driven marketing for you. Your salon software helps keep track of the gift cards sold, amounts used, and remaining value just as it does for loyalty and membership programs.
7. Optimize Salon Scheduling For More Revenue Opportunity
Powerful salon software enables you to optimize your salon scheduling for more revenue opportunities. Use the data you collect to make sure that you have the right amount of staff on the schedule for the most in-demand booking times. This can increase bookings and reduce the likelihood of customers going elsewhere because they can’t get a booking at the time they want. And, in reverse, you can make sure you aren’t overstaffed during the slower times and wasting your resources. You can also tell the software to allow intentional double bookings of brief services during the down time that occurs during some longer services. If you notice that your stylists are completing services well before the set service times in the software have been told to block out, you can adjust the service times to enable your stylists to fit in another appointment – making more money for them and for you.
8. Leverage Business Reporting That Supports Small Business
Don’t overlook the business management reporting tools in your software platform. While reviewing business reports might not be your favorite part of running a small business, they provide you with invaluable data. Use your reports to learn more about your client base and how they’re spending money at your salon. How are your retail sales going? Which services or classes are getting the most bookings? How effective was last month’s marketing campaign? Is it time to hire more staff? Get real, actionable data from reporting that draws directly from the integrated tools in an all-in-one salon software.
9. Streamline Your Inventory Management
Cash flow is a critical balance for your small business. When you purchase inventory, you’re spending money that you need to recover before you can make a profit, so it’s imperative that you support the balance of money coming in and money going out. With great inventory management, you can minimize loss or shrinkage and increase the amount of money coming in. Salon software features inventory management tools to streamline your inventory purchasing and track usage and sales. This will help you optimize your cash flow so that you can direct investments where you need them most to make the best returns. Purchase ordering will also benefit and be simplified with automation features that will notify you when it’s time to reorder inventory based on metrics that you set.
10. Accept A Variety Of Payment Methods With Your Salon Point Of Sale System
There’s no better way to boost your business than by making it as easy as possible for people to pay you. Cash and checks used to be the standard, but today’s salon customers primarily use debit or credit cards and digital e-wallets. Salons that do not accept these payment methods are at a real disadvantage, and accepting as many forms of payment as possible will open you up to a bigger prospective market of customers. When you’re choosing the best salon management software for your business, you want to make sure it has a point of sale (POS) system that can support as many payment types as possible. Equally important is ensuring that the payment processing and storage is reliable and secure, especially if you will be asking your customers to keep a method of payment on file for deposits, pre-payments, or to cover a no-show or late cancellation.
Boost Your Business with STX Salon Software for Salons, Spas, and Fitness Centers
If your salon needs a business boost, start with this list of ten ways to make the most of your salon software. From scheduling software to client management to back office support, a salon management solution has everything you need to run your business efficiently, increase sales, and grow your business with confidence. And if you’re looking for an award-winning salon software platform, reach out to STX Software today to learn even more about how our salon software can help you manage your business while giving you back more time to do what you love most.
You can give us a call at (800) 766-4778 or visit our website to book a live demo with our team. Contact us today to learn more about STX!