How Allison Everage uses our salon tools to increase holiday business at Ginger Vine Salon
The holidays have kicked off in full gear, and many salons have their eyes set on sleigh-ing end-of-year sales goals. Luckily, this is the perfect time of year to give clients a reason to splurge a little more than usual at your salon.
By now, you probably know that pulling out all the bells and whistles for your holiday marketing strategy is a great way to boost appointment bookings and product sales. That’s how it’s always been. No matter how old it gets, the Christmas holidays will forever stand the test of time as the most lucrative time of year for the beauty industry–and for salons, especially.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is the fact that traditional methods of driving salon business growth have taken a back seat to more advanced strategies that are powered by technology. While salons may still see a significant boost in sales through the use of conventional marketing, small businesses that are playing the digital game are making quadruple the revenue of those that aren’t (according to Deloitte).
Flyers, direct mail, and offline word-of-mouth referrals alone don’t cut it anymore! Prioritizing digital-first sales and marketing activities over the former is now the best move for salons. Aura’s salon tools are designed to set salons up for success with countless cloud-based POS and marketing automation solutions, producing a seamless virtual and brick-and-mortar experience for salon customers. We’ve come a long way from having telemarketing, snail mail, and door-to-door sales as our only options.
“Our team is able to add services to guest’s tickets, pre-book their guest’s next appointment, and check them out right at their chair!”
– Jessica Soler, owner of Salon Red
Additionally, Aura greatly supports the tactics that most salons use to maximize holiday profits. The following tools will surely help you knock your Q4 revenue goals out of the park.
Make Gifting Easier with Gift Cards
Who doesn’t love gift cards? Perfect for any occasion, they’re especially in-demand during the holiday season. It’s a no-brainer pick that doesn’t require much thought for indecisive gifters, and recipients are happy with them since it leaves room for freedom of choice.
Why are gift cards such a highly profitable, revenue-generating item for salons? There’s nothing like gifting someone with a VIP salon experience that they’re able to design on their own, or a shopping spree that will allow them to stock up on their favorite hair products. It’s a total win-win across the board for shoppers, salon owners, and even stylists who can upsell “treating family and friends to a stylist makeover” to client regulars.
Salons that use Aura’s point-of-sale system can provide customers with a hassle-free way to purchase gift cards–both at the salon and remotely. When shoppers purchase gift cards online with a salon that uses Aura’s system, they have the option of sending them to their recipients via email or text. With Aura, you can also create holiday-themed gift cards with the platform’s interchangeable gift card image feature. Plan on hosting any holiday giveaways? You can’t go wrong with awarding winners with a gift card.
Host a Holiday Fundraiser
84% of event-goers have reported leaving branded events with a positive perception about the company that’s hosting it – as well as their products.
Holiday events may require a great deal of planning and execution, but the return-on-investment is priceless. We all know that giving back provides a sense of fulfillment and connection with your community, something that leaves individuals on the receiving end with a memorable impression of your brand.
To produce a legitimate fundraiser, you need to involve a charity. The easiest way to do this is to partner with a charity, accept donations with ticket sales, and make them the beneficiary of donations received. With Aura’s Ticket Fee feature, you can set up a ticket registration page and ensure that donations are received from each recipient, by simply including the donation percentage in your ticket fee.
Sales reports can also be generated with Aura’s analytics feature, which you can use to see a breakdown of all ticket fees and track how much you’ve collected for the charity organization.
Increase Salon Traffic with Holiday Promotions
Let’s say that you do decide to host a holiday event. For one, it’s a wonderful promotional strategy that salons benefit greatly from. And by teaming up with other businesses in your area to collaborate on an event, the cross-promotional efforts of all parties can garner a lot of brand awareness with little spend.
That’s what mother-daughter Allison Everage and Anya Everage, owners of Ginger Vine Salon, accomplished with a recent holiday event they co-hosted. “We partnered with local businesses, who we asked for donations of gift cards, merchandise, or services,” says Allison. The participating businesses pooled their resources together to host a total of 3 giveaways during the event.
All companies pitched in by donating prizes of their own. This, of course, meant exposure for their businesses in exchange. Everage decided to promote her salon’s Aveda gift sets. “In return, we were heavily promoting on social media, through test campaigns, and through email marketing.”
Salons had previously prioritized print ads to spread the word about holiday promotions just a couple of decades ago. If you have yet to incorporate digital into your promotional strategy (like Aura’s SENT Text Messaging feature), you’re missing out on a BIG opportunity to expand your salon’s reach.
Promotional activities are only useful if you’re making a return-on-investment from them, so make sure you’re doing what’s necessary to reap the benefits of them. Building highly targeted holiday campaigns can help you up the ante with results. With SENT by Aura, you can reach specific audiences by narrowing down your targeting to the audience’s last date range of their previous appointment, provider that they booked with, products and services that they booked, or their hair type.
Let Shoppers Order Gifts To Go
While finding holiday gifts in a time crunch may require shopping trips in a local area, not everyone has the time (or patience) to spend hours going store-to-store to make that happen. That’s where curbside pickup can be a lifesaver for many last-minute local shoppers.
Curbside pickup provides shoppers with the convenience of finding and ordering gifts from a local business online, and driving by to pick up the order without having to get out of their car. Aura integrates with your salon’s retail inventory system to make curbside pickups a breeze. Using the Curbside Pickup platform, you can expect seamless communication between you and your shoppers. Offering holiday gift sets (which are customizable with Aura’s Series Redemption feature), creating a “holiday sales” page on your salon’s Aura-powered website, marketing them as grab and go item, and offering the option of curbside pickup is an enticing incentive for customers who value convenience. Customers are prompted to provide details about their vehicle while scheduling their pickup on your site. This way, the front desk already knows which car to go to upon their arrival.
Exceed Holiday Sales Goals This Year With Aura
If you’re serious about boosting profits on a larger scale this holiday season, Aura’s technology-driven automation solutions were created to help salons maximize business growth. Consult with one of Aura’s expert salon specialists for more information. You can either shoot us an email at hello@aurasalonware.com, or call us at 1-844-GET-AURA.
