How the beauty industry can use SMS

Beauty salon SMS marketing

The beauty parlor has long been a place for women to gather. They sit in a beautifully-decorated salon, relax, and enjoy being pampered as they chat with their beauty therapist/best friend/psychologist. And as for salon owners and therapists, time is money. They can ill afford to be waiting for clients to arrive or, even worse, have their clients forget to arrive at all. That’s why the beauty industry and SMS go hand in hand. It’s essential that those in the beauty industry are able to communicate with their clients quickly and easily.

So, here are some of the ways SMS marketing can be used in the beauty industry.

SMS Reminders

We all lead busy lives. There’s often so much to remember, a couple of things can easily fall through the cracks. And that often includes appointments for haircuts or manicures. But the reality is that those in the beauty industry can lose plenty of money due to no-shows. Implementing two-way text messaging makes it easy for customers to make, cancel, schedule or confirm appointments. This will help every salon owner improve productivity and profitability.

Scheduling

By using SMSes together with scheduling software, salon owners will be able to set time frames to automatically send reminders to clients who are due to come in for their next appointment. In the same way, customers could be enticed to come in for another appointment with a voucher.

Promotions

If you’re having a slow day, and let’s be honest, every business experience this once in a while, salon owners can send SMSes to clients letting them know about a one-day special offer. Because these messages are opened and read pretty quickly, it won’t take long before clients are lining up for their special treatment.

SMS marketing for the beauty industry

Send discounts and special offers to encourage more people to fill salon seats. After all, if you’re running a special offer on facials or pedicures, your clients won’t know about it until you tell them. SMS is the most effective way to reach clients and be sure messages are read. With a near-perfect open rate of 98 percent and the majority of messages being opened within 90 seconds, an SMS is without a doubt the best way to reach your clients.

Competitions

Everyone loves to get something for free. And everyone loves the idea of winning a competition. Bonus, it’ll get clients excited and talking about the salon. Encourage clients to enter the competition by texting a number and the winner can be notified via SMS.

Staff rosters

There’s not much worse for a business owner than finding out a staff member won’t be able to work that day a few hours before their shift was due to start. That’s where SMSes can be useful. They can be used to fill all last minute openings by sending one SMS to all staff members at once. SMS can also be used to remind staff members about their upcoming shifts, something that could be particularly useful for salons that operate from multiple locations. And by implementing a two-way messaging system, staff members will be able to reply to the SMS to indicate their availability.

Regular beauty tips by SMS

Encourage clients to register to receive weekly beauty tips. This will keep the salon top of mind and will be a weekly reminder that they should book their next appointment. There will be no doubt in every client’s mind about who they should speak to about sorting out their most pressing beauty concerns.

Let’s be real. All of your clients, both existing and potential, are already communicating via text. Many, in fact, would far rather SMS a business than make a phone call to book an appointment. So, why not speak to them in a way that they prefer.

If you’re interested in learning more about how other industries are using SMS messaging to communicate with their customers, read our recent article. It demonstrates how everything from retail to real estate can benefit from sending text messages to customers.