It’s tempting to put all your efforts into getting new clients to walk through the door of your salon, spa or clinic, but ask yourself this: are you maximising the potential of the clients already walking in?
Acquiring new clients is considerably more expensive than keeping the clients you already have, so it’s in your best interests as a hair and beauty business owner to keep your client base happy, loyal, and visiting more frequently.
But how do you achieve that?
By using client metrics, of course! Whether you’re a number person or not, understanding your key client metrics can be the difference between success and failure. To move forward and grow, you’ve got to take a step back and see how you’ve performed in the past so you can use it as a benchmark to create goals for the future.
There are plenty of metrics worth measuring in our industry, but we’ve put together five key client metrics that you should be looking at regularly and aiming to improve, as they’ll help you to maximise your client base and drive more revenue for your business. We’ve also included some examples to show you how you can use these key metrics.
Here five key client metrics you should be measuring as a salon, spa or clinic owner, and how to improve them.
1. Rebooking rate
Rebooking your client immediately after their appointment secures future income that allows you to make business decisions with confidence. If your staff earn commission, they are also securing their own future income by rebooking their clients, so it’s in everyone’s interest to get that client coming back.
According to industry rebooking data released by Kitomba Salon and Spa Software, as of Q4 2020 the average rebooking rate is 52% for Australian hair salons, 57% for New Zealand hair salons, 43% for Australian beauty salons, and 47% for New Zealand beauty salons.
With Kitomba Salon and Spa Software, rebooking is counted as a future appointment if it’s made within 24 hours of their previous appointment.
That means approximately half of all clients walk out of a salon without rebooking a future appointment! However there are some savvy salons that achieve rebooking rates of more than 95%.
So, before spending money on marketing to attract new clients in order to try and fill your appointment book, try setting a rebooking target for your staff and focus your team’s efforts on achieving it.
Here’s how to improve your rebooking rate:
Give them a reason to come back
Whether you’re doing a cut, colour, beauty treatment or something else, you’re the expert! So let your clients know when they need to see you again to ensure their look is maintained. Don’t forget to mention your loyalty programme and rewards to keep your client in the habit of coming in to see you.
Give them a date
Provide your clients with available dates for their next appointment, not an option as to whether or not to rebook. For example ask “Does Tuesday the 15th or Friday the 11th work better for you?”
Pencil them in
If your client can’t commit to a date offer to pencil them in for an appointment. That way you get your appointment and they can confirm later.
2. Revisit period
The revisit period is the average period of time between appointments with a regular client. The regularity of your client revisit period has a huge impact on your annual revenue. Make a small change to the revisit period (i.e. reduce the length of time between visits and get clients coming back more often) and you’ll see a massive jump in your revenue.
Not convinced? Here are the numbers:
If your annual revenue is $400,000 and your average revisit period is eight weeks, by reducing this to seven weeks and six days (that’s an easy one day improvement), you will increase your annual revenue by $7,200.
Move it by one week and your annual revenue will increase by a massive $56,000!
Here’s how to improve your client revisit period:
Follow up with clients that haven’t rebooked
You can automate email or SMS follow-ups with all your clients that have not rebooked. If your average revisit period is eight weeks and you’d like to reduce this to seven weeks, you can set up automated marketing in Kitomba that will automatically text or email clients that came in six weeks ago and have not rebooked, reminding them they’re due for an appointment.
This is a gentle way to stay top of mind – and they’ll probably appreciate the booking prompt and book their next appointment with you.
Reduce the revisit period for each client during rebooking
When rebooking a client, reduce the revisit period by bringing their appointment forward, rather than pushing it out. Use your salon software to easily achieve this – Kitomba knows the average revisit period of every single client and tells you this at the point of rebooking.
If a client usually comes in on average every eight weeks and six days, try reducing this to eight weeks and five days. Or if they prefer a Thursday appointment, reduce their revisit period by a week and offer them the earlier Thursday appointment rather than the one a week later.
3. Retention rate
Client retention is all about creating loyal clients. They’re the ones who are going to tell their friends and followers about how great their experience with your salon was, and retaining clients is great for business.
Here’s how to improve your client retention rate:
Enhance the client experience
Make sure your clients have the best experience! Create a truly amazing experience where your clients feel special and can’t wait to return. The secret weapon to create a memorable client experience is to have all your staff get behind it. If your staff are behind you then you will see success!
For more tips on providing an exceptional client experience, read our blogs How to create an exceptional client experience in your salon and How to wow your hair and beauty clients for free.
Offer a loyalty programme
Having a loyalty programme in place gives your clients one more reason to keep coming back. It’s important that your loyalty scheme is simple, easy to understand and track, and clients can automatically gain points on services and products and get rewarded.
With Kitomba, you can customise your own loyalty programme – select clients, set earning rates, record points and redeem rewards. Read How to build a client loyalty programme that works for experts tips, and find out more about how to set up a loyalty programme in Kitomba, visit our loyalty support guide.
Offer rewards:
You need to create loyalty rewards that are appealing and encourage your clients to come back so they can redeem and earn more loyalty points. For example, you could create a reward system that encourages clients to come back and earn more points – let’s say that after earning a specific amount of points, your client could receive a free treatment or voucher to redeem on anything they want.
4. New client rate
While it’s important to look after your current client base, new clients are the lifeblood of any business! Take a look at your key business statistics to see where your new client rate is sitting. If it’s close to 10% you need to make acquiring new clients a focus.
Why?
Because natural attrition sits at around 10%. Your clients could move away or choose another salon, for example. So to balance this you need at least 10% new clients stepping through your door.
If your new client percentage is low and you regularly have gaps in your appointment book, maybe it’s time to kick off some marketing activities like running an ‘introduce a friend’ promotion! Read our salon marketing guide to get inspired.
If your new client rate is low and you’re fully booked for weeks in advance, your business has reached capacity. Time to grow! Look at growing your team, and if you don’t have the space, you might need to move to a bigger premises. Get advice from your accountant or business coach.
5. Client retail attachment
Increasing the percentage of clients that purchase retail will help to bring up your bottom line. Helping your clients understand what products are best for what they want to achieve, how much to use and how to apply it goes a long way to reinforcing the fact that they should be walking out the door with the product.
Being successful in attaching retail to your services has to do with the overall approach of your team, so training will be required to give them the skills needed to successfully upsell retail to their clients.
Remember that you’re the specialist, and your clients are looking to you for guidance and direction on how to keep their hair or skin healthy and looking fabulous.
For example, when your client is getting their next cut it’s the perfect time to say, “We’re using [brand name] shampoo and conditioner today because it’s fantastic for hydrating your hair, which would also be great to use at home to keep your hair looking healthy and hydrated between appointments, too.”
The client now understands why you’re using a particular product and how it could help them to maintain their look, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise near the end when you ask if they’d like to purchase the product.
Improve your business with these 5 key client metrics
Now that you know what the five key client metrics are for retaining clients and growing your salon, spa or clinic, it’s time to run your reports, see how you’re tracking and choose which metrics you want to focus on in order to grow your business!
If you’d like to find out how Kitomba Salon and Spa Software can help your business to become more successful and easily track and analyse your client metrics, book your free demo.
For more tips on growing your business, download our free guide, 100 ways to grow your salon, spa or clinic or visit our salon business management guide – it covers everything you need to know about running a successful hair and beauty business!
Want more articles like this?
We recommend the following blogs:
- Three ways to grow a successful salon, spa or clinic
- The top 10 client messages you could automate now
- 8 ways to get more referrals
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on 29 May 2015 and has been completely updated for relevance and comprehensiveness.
