Looking at an empty appointment book is scary for any business owner, and makes it difficult to plan and budget for the future. Filling your appointment book in advance will help secure future revenue and make it easier to make the right decisions for your business.
But how do you achieve that?
Here are six proven ways to fill your appointment book and secure future value for your salon, spa or clinic.
1. Rebooking
It’s an obvious one, but rebooking clients does wonders for filling your appointment book and securing future revenue. In Kitomba, rebooking is when a client books a future appointment within 24 hours of their previous appointment, preferably before they leave your salon, spa or clinic.
Making rebooking a habit for your team will help to increase your rebooking rate. The rebooking prompt that appears when completing a client invoice in Kitomba should remind your team to rebook, but it’s up to them to communicate to their clients about the ideal time for them to return for their next visit and encourage them to secure their next appointment before they leave.
Consider running a training session or adding an incentive for your team to help turn rebooking into a habit.
2. Repeat appointments
If you have loyal clients that book regularly, creating recurring appointments in advance will help to secure future appointments with that client, and future income. Because you can customise the frequency of the appointments, it’s also an easy way to reduce your revisit period, which equals more secured revenue for you.
For example, let’s say a salon completes 95 appointments per week with a client average spend of $99. If they reduce their revisit period by four days (from six weeks and four days to six weeks), they can complete an extra nine appointments each week. That’s almost an additional $900 extra per week, or $46,000 per year!
Kitomba Repeat Appointments makes it easy to create multiple appointments for a client at once. It’s perfect for booking all the visits required to complete a treatment plan, or for booking your regular clients in for an entire year of appointments. Whether you need to make five appointments or 50, you can do it easily in Kitomba 1.
To find out more, check out the Kitomba Repeat Appointments support guide to find out how to create a series of appointments to your specifications and resolve any scheduling conflicts.
3. Concessions
Selling concessions means taking payment for a number of the same service in advance. This secures future appointments with that client, while also developing client loyalty.
With Kitomba Concessions you can easily offer your clients the opportunity to purchase a number of services in advance. You may want to offer a discount as an incentive to your clients to purchase concessions.
To learn how to set up concessions in Kitomba, visit our support guide: How to create a Concession.
4. Vouchers
Vouchers are a great way to guarantee future appointments, often with clients that are new to your business. If you’re looking to increase your client list, encourage your existing clients to purchase vouchers for their friends and family members and you’ll be filling your appointment book with new clients in no time!
Make sure you’re telling your clients about vouchers in person and through email and SMS marketing. Add online voucher sales to your online booking site so you can even sell vouchers in your sleep, without needing to lift a finger.
You can sell vouchers easily through Kitomba Online Booking. Find out how to set up online vouchers in Kitomba, and tips for selling more gift vouchers online.
5. Memberships
Creating a membership programme for your salon, spa or clinic will help to secure future revenue, fill your appointment book and develop client loyalty. Memberships allow your loyal clients to become VIP members with access to bespoke concessions and packages that they can pay off over time, as well as special offers.
Kitomba enables you to achieve this by using Salon Pay. To find out how you can offer memberships to your clients, read this article about Kitomba and Salon Pay memberships.
Watch the video below to find out how to secure future revenue with memberships from Salon Pay.
6. Fill your appointment book automatically
Kitomba has exclusively partnered with REACH.ai to help automate your client communications and fill your appointment book by sending personalised text and email messages automatically.
REACH.ai continuously scans your appointment book to look for any openings and last-minute cancellations for your bookable staff members. When a gap is identified, REACH.ai will look at your client database to see who is the best fit based on their history.
Once clients are identified who match the criteria for the time and staff member available (and they don’t already have a future booking), REACH.ai will send them an email or SMS informing them about the available appointment with a link to your online booking site.
Once the client books through your Kitomba Online Booking site it will show in your appointment book as usual, and you can accept or make changes to the appointment.
You’ll be able to see all the messages that have been sent to your clients at any time, including how many were opened, booked and the revenue gained, using your REACH.ai dashboard
Sign up to try REACH.ai free for 30 days or click here to learn more.
How to find out the value of your future appointments
Now that you know the best ways to fill your appointment book and secure future revenue for your business, you’re probably wondering how to find out what the future value of your appointments is for a given time period.
Luckily this is easy to do using Kitomba Salon and Spa Software. To find out the value of your future appointments and see how your team members and business are tracking, you can use the Appointment Value report in both Kitomba and Kitomba 1.
The Appointment Value report tells you the value of all your future appointments that have been booked within your selected future date range.
For example, you could choose to see the value of all the appointments you have booked in for the next week, or month, to provide a snapshot of your expected income for that period. You’ll be able to see where your appointments are coming from, and all important information on appointment value and average lead times.
Use these methods to fill your appointment book and secure future value for your business
Using a combination of these five methods will help to fill your appointment book, regulate your income and secure future revenue for your business.
If you want to discover more ways of growing your salon, spa or clinic, download our free ebook 100 ways to grow. It contains 100 actionable ways to grow your hair and beauty business and drive more revenue.
Software is a key component for every successful hair and beauty business, and Kitomba has an extensive range of features available to assist you with managing and growing your business. If you’d like to find out how Kitomba can help you, book your free demo or contact us.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on 19th January 2021 and has been updated for relevancy and comprehensiveness.
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