Kitomba blog

Are you finding it difficult to get clients through your door? Email marketing could be the answer you’re looking for.  

In today’s competitive salon and spa market, you have to find ways to “cut through the noise” as consumers are bombarded everyday with tonnes of messages.

You’ve got to get creative with your marketing to stay ahead of your competitors. There’s no one thing that’s going to get clients coming through your door. It’s more of a combination of things. But one of the best places to start is email marketing. 

According to DMA Insights, 99% of consumers check their email every single day. With the right strategy, email marketing allows you to inexpensively stay in touch with current, potential or lapsed clients. It’s got the ability to work wonders for your salon!

Not sure where to start? 

We’ve got five simple steps that will get you up to speed on how to successfully implement an email marketing strategy at your salon or spa.

1. Collect email addresses

What’s a beautiful email without someone to send it to? You should be collecting as much information about your clients as possible, because a complete database it’s an extremely valuable asset for a business.

Start collecting client email addresses with these ideas:

• Make sure you’re recording emails every time someone steps foot in your salon, spa or clinic. You can do this easily using a tablet and Kitomba customisable digital forms. 
• Whenever a client calls you, immediately add them to your client list.
• Hold social events at your salon and get people to sign up to your mailing list using a tablet or iPad.
• Ensure you add a sign up form to your website so clients receive your monthly e-newsletter.

2. Choose your audience

It’s near impossible to create a single email that all your clients will love. The key is segmenting your audience so the messages they receive are relevant, timely and personal. They’ll be a whole lot more likely to open and read your emails if they can relate to them.

Using salon software, like Kitomba, you can easily segment your client database with a range of different filters. 

Here’s an example: you’ve got a new beauty therapist at your spa who specialises in skin care. Filter all those clients who have had an appointment in the last year for the service category “skin care” and haven’t booked a future appointment. 

Choosing your audience and sending messages that speak to those clients should increase your email performance and conversions (a conversion is when your reader takes the action you wanted the email to achieve).

3. Plan your message

Your clients want to be educated, inspired or even have a laugh when they open an email from you. 

They don’t want to be bombarded with sales emails or emails that have no point or offer no value.  

Make sure you make it about the clients and get them to realise what’s in it for them. This is where the 80:20 rule comes into play: make sure 80% of your email marketing is useful for your clients without being salesy, and no more than 20% is offers or discounts.

Here are some ideas of what you could include in emails to your clients:

• Share some of your top beauty tips.
• Invitations to fun or educational salon events.
• The latest salon news that is relevant and helpful to your clients.
• New beauty products, services or staff.
• A monthly newsletter filled with all the above!

4. Craft the perfect email

You need to make your message stand out from the crowd. Here’s a few ideas on how to create compelling email subject lines, design and copy that will help your emails get noticed.

Subject line and sender 

What’s the first thing you see when you receive an email? It’s the subject line and sender. It may seem really obvious, but make it clear the email is being sent from your salon. According to Campaign Monitor, 68% of people decide whether to open an email based on the ‘from’ name.

Subject lines are often the only chance to grab the reader’s attention and get them to open your message. According to MailChimp, the Beauty and Personal Care industry has an email open rate of 16.65%. 

That means about one in every six people won’t open their email from you. Your subject line can make or break your email, so here are some tips to get it right:

• Keep it simple – use less than 50 characters so your subject line doesn’t get cut off.
• Make sure you set the expectation for what your email is about – why should they open it?
• Use your client’s name as part of the subject line to keep it personal.
• Avoid: Exclamation marks, and capitals letters for EMPHASIS, it can look spammy.

Email design and content

Getting someone to open your email is only half the battle. How do you get them to take the next step and read your content? There are some tried and true email marketing techniques that work. 

Here are the key things to keep in mind when designing your email: 

• Less is more – readers tend to scan, so make sure everything is easy to digest and interesting.
• Include a call to action, e.g. a “Book now” button that links to your Online Booking page.
• Your email needs to clearly explain the value of your offer. Remember to keep it relevant, timely and personal.
• Keep your emails on-brand and beautiful. Using MailChimp makes it really easy to create amazing looking, mobile responsive emails using the drag-and-drop template builders.

5. Measure your results

Planning how you’ll measure your success is the most important element in actually having success in your email marketing efforts. 

Here are the top three metrics you need to track:

1. Deliverability: It’s a simple question – did your email arrive at its destination? Using MailChimp it’s easy to see if it arrived, and if they don’t be sure to ask your client next time they’re in for their correct email address.
2. Open rate: Take a look and check out your average email open rate – the industry benchmark is 16.65%. You should aim to beat that!
3. Click-through-rate (CTR): The ultimate goal of every email should be to get your reader to click through on the link you provide, e.g. Online Booking button. A high CTR shows that you hit the right people with the right message in a compelling way.

Utilise the power of email marketing

We hope these email marketing tips will help you get more clients through your door. 

To find out more about email marketing, read the key elements of successful marketing emails, and learn how to automate your emails with the top 10 client messages you could automate now. 

For more marketing tips, read our ultimate guide to marketing for salons, spas and clinics. 

We’ve integrated Kitomba and MailChimp to help you send out your own beautiful, targeted email marketing campaigns. They complement each other perfectly to give you the very best in features and functionality to reach out to clients where they are everyday – their inbox.

Read next:

• 6 essential automated marketing ideas for salons, spas and clinics
• Salon Marketing – How to promote your salon, spa or clinic
• How to advertise your salon, spa or clinic online

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on 14 April 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and relevance.