Does a substantial amount of your annual budget go toward advertising your business? If so, have you considered enticing your current customers to spread the word about your salon for you?
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Your existing patrons are loyal to your salon for good reason. Perhaps it’s the state-of-the-art tanning equipment, the spotless facility, the luxurious experience, or the superior customer service delivered by your staff? What better form of advertising than to have your valued customers refer new ones?
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Cutting-edge referral programs utilize software to identify referrals, keep track of them, and ultimately, pay out referral rewards. What if you didn’t have to use an external program to accomplish these important tasks, but instead had salon management software that included these capabilities?
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Tracking and rewarding referrals should be a seamless process – not only for you, but for your staff, as well. After identifying how a customer heard about your salon, you should have the ability to electronically track the source by selecting from a list of your different advertising types – which should include “customer referral.” This capability will allow you to determine how many new customers came to you through a referral as compared to other marketing, as well as the overall percentage.
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New customers obtained by referral have a high retention rate; so, how do you go about motivating these trusted sources to advocate for your salon? By giving them a little bonus for doing your advertising for you, that’s how!
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When inserting a referred new customer into your database, you should be able to easily track this and automatically reward the referring customer as a token of your appreciation. The right referral incentive will not only benefit you by gaining new customers, but can also “softly” persuade your existing customers to purchase MORE products and/or services than they might otherwise have.
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You might consider configuring your system to automatically apply a store credit to the customer’s account as a thank you, allowing them to redeem it toward anything available for purchase in your salon. Or, you may want to reward them with “bonus points” for every new customer they refer, and only allow them to be redeemed for certain items, such as equipment upgrades on active services, for example. Doing so will not only motivate existing customers to upgrade to a higher equipment level (and hopefully have them “hooked” so that they upgrade each session to follow, or even better, upgrade their entire membership), but also to recommend your salon to their friends and family.
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Another option: have your system automatically insert a promotion on the customer’s account as compensation for their referral. For example, a coupon for a set dollar amount off a product purchase in a particular retail category, which is a great way to move inventory of a particular product type.
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Generating reports will allow you to determine which existing customers have referred which new customers. Having all of this info tracked electronically and automatically distributing rewards will surely increase efficiency within your salon. With that being said, in addition to the automated reward process, taking the time to also send your referring customers a short, personalized thank you note will go a long way. With today’s technology, everyone is walking around with some sort of “smart” device in hand, so the added personal touch will be especially unexpected and surely result in additional referrals.
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A strong referral program will prove to be a cost-effective method of marketing to new clients. If you don’t already have one in place, don’t delay any longer and implement one today!
What better form of advertising than to have your valued customers refer new ones?
