It’s tough out there! Here are 10 quick ways salons can deliver a significant boost in revenue using minimal investment of time and money, with the help of Kitomba Salon and Spa Software features and reports.
1. Create an irresistible new client offer
To get new clients in the door, provide an offer they can’t ignore, such as a ‘$50 off their first colour service’ voucher. This will help to attract new clientele who you then have the opportunity to retain.
Direct visitors from your website and social media to your Kitomba Online Booking site to claim the offer by making a booking, and their contact details and permission to send marketing materials are automatically synced to your Kitomba database when they create an account. This means with no time investment on your end, you can start growing your client database.
Learn how to create a promotion or discount in Kitomba.
2. Make rebooking a focus
Secure future revenue by rebooking your clients before they leave the salon. Create a business-wide rebooking target in Kitomba Targets so they work together to remind each other to rebook their clients’ next appointments before they leave. The rebooking rate to aim for depends on your target market and clientele, but a rebooking rate of over 80% is excellent.
To see the power of rebooking, look at your Appointment Value report in Kitomba 1 and change the date range to the future to see how much service revenue you have secured.
If you’re struggling to increase your rebooking rate, we developed a handy feature called Repeat Appointments. This allows you to book a series of appointments for a client at once.
This means that whether you develop a 6-visit plan with a client to get their hair to the level of lightness they want, or you want to book an entire year’s worth of appointments for your favourite customers to make sure they get the times they like the best, it’s a great way to secure that future revenue, and they can always change their appointments later if other commitments arise.
Learn how to set up Kitomba Targets for your business and team.
3. Reduce your revisit period and increase your average client visits per year
When rebooking a client, ensure their revisit period is optimal for maintaining their results (the period of time before their next appointment). A shorter revisit rate means clients are visiting more frequently. Reducing your average revisit rate by even a day can have a significant impact on your revenue, and it also works the other way around; if your clients are pushing out the time between appointments this will drastically affect your revenue generation as they will have fewer appointments each year.
Therefore, it’s important to educate your team about the power of revisit rate and for them to educate their clients on when they need to visit again to best maintain their results.
For example, 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!
View your average revisit rate and your client average visits per year in your Kitomba Business Summary report, and set a business goal to improve it by a couple of days to start. Get your team on board and provide a joint reward, like a team lunch, for when you reach it!
4. Increase your client retention rate
Are you retaining the clients you already have? The client retention report in Kitomba will tell you all the details, right down to the nitty-gritty of patterns and behaviours, and where the holes are in the leaky bucket that you need to pay attention to. Client retention is all about creating loyal clients.
They’re the ones who are going to generate a large portion of your annual revenue, and tell their friends and followers about how great their experience with your salon was, so retaining clients is essential for business success.
Your Customer Retention Report in Kitomba looks at clients that have had an appointment within the period you’re running the report, but this report tracks how many of those clients have a future booking. The future booking could be 2 weeks away, 6 months or 1 year away. If there is a future appointment against that client, they are considered retained.
The average client retention rate for hair salons in New Zealand and Australia is 70-75%, which is a good benchmark to aim for. If you’re above this figure, great! But if you’re below average it’s important to ask yourself why, and what you can do to help keep your clients coming back.
5. Set up deposits for online bookings
Not only does charging a deposit increase your clients’ commitment to their appointments and help to reduce last-minute cancellations and no-shows, feedback from our customers suggests that clients are actually more likely to spend more during their appointments because they have already paid for part of their service.
Learn how to set up deposits for online bookings. You’ll need to sign up for Kitomba Pay to take online payments. If you’re currently using PayPal for online payments, switching to Kitomba Pay will save you money in transaction fees.
6. Set up automatic Everyday Marketing messages
If you want to create systems that will continue to earn revenue in the future, Kitomba Everyday Marketing is your secret weapon. You can set up SMS and email marketing messages to be triggered automatically whenever a client meets the criteria you’ve set.
For example, you can set up an automated text message or email to be sent to clients who have had an appointment within the last six weeks but haven’t yet rebooked. It can tell the client that it’s time to book their next appointment to maintain the best results, and include a link to your Kitomba online booking site so they can make a booking easily.
Learn how to set up Everyday Marketing messages with Kitomba and download our free automatic marketing eBook for salons with templates you can use.
7. Retain new clients with an irresistible offer
If you’re getting new clients in the door, you want to retain them. Set up an automated SMS or email to be sent six weeks after a client visits for the first time with a special offer to entice them to make a second booking at your salon, like a free treatment with their next colour service.
When setting up an automated marketing message in Kitomba, you can choose for the message to be sent after a new client’s first appointment. Learn how here.
8. Send a one-off SMS marketing campaign
Have empty spaces to fill in your appointment book? SMS marketing campaigns are one of the most powerful tools for salons to get a boost in bookings and sales.
In fact, studies have found that an SMS marketing message gets opened and viewed an average of 98%, and on top of that, the average user takes action based on a text message within 90 seconds (SMS Global, 2021). That means if you want to fill your appointment book fast, SMS is the way to go.
The great thing about marketing with Kitomba is that you can get targeted with your marketing lists, leading to optimal results. Whether you want to target clients who haven’t visited in a while, your biggest spenders, or clients of a particular staff member, it’s easy to create and send a text campaign from anywhere, at any time. Learn how to send a text campaign in Kitomba 1.
9. Increase your retail attachment rate
Increasing the percentage of clients that purchase retail will give you a healthy boost in revenue. 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. You can easily set personalised retail targets for each staff member or a business-wide goal using Kitomba Targets.
Two great Kitomba reports to help you with retail are:
- Your Product sales report in Kitomba 1 to help you identify what retail products are both well-loved (sold the most) and that are the most profitable (high-profit margin).
- Run your Stock Turnover report in Kitomba to identify which products are just sitting on your shelf doing nothing, and the ones that are moving on and off your shelves the fastest.
10. Increase your prices
If you want to increase your revenue, consider increasing your prices. Raising prices in your salon can feel scary, but it’s essential so that increasing costs don’t eat away at your profits. View this guide on how to increase your salon’s prices (without losing your clients).
Bonus tip: Use artificial intelligence to fill your appointment book automatically
You can harness the power of artificial intelligence to fill last-minute cancellations and gaps in your appointment book automatically with Kitomba’s exclusive new integration with REACH.ai in Australia and New Zealand.
Integrating with Kitomba Online Booking, REACH.ai uses artificial intelligence to identify gaps in your appointment book and send personalised messages to your clients who would best fill the available slot. This helps to ensure you don’t miss out on revenue lost from last-minute cancellations or gaps.
If you have Kitomba’s Diamond package and Online Booking set up, you’ll be able to get started with this integration straight away. Learn more and try REACH.ai free for 30 days here.
