Most salon and spa owners agree that they should do a salon newsletter and that they should do it more often. The thing is, sometimes they’re not sure why, how or what to say, so they end up doing nothing.
If you think about what it takes to write a great newsletter, you have to ask yourself, “Is it really worth the time and effort it’s going to take me? Am I going to get anything back for my efforts?” The truth is that is may be a fantastic tool in your marketing toolkit, or it may be a serious waste of your time.
What I’d like to do in this article is help you to get clear about why great salon newsletters need to be part of your marketing plan, and how bad newsletters can be forever eliminated.
Why is regular communication so important?
First, let’s look at why your newsletters are so important.
If you think about all the salons that are out there in your area trying to poach your clients, you’ll begin to understand why it’s vital to stay in touch with your clients on a regular basis.
Keeping them informed and interested in how your salon can continue to help them solve their beauty problems is a fantastic way to cement your relationship with them.
If your salon is the only one that they’re not hearing from, then there could be a chance that they could be lured away to try the services offered by one of your competitors.
How is the best way to deliver your newsletter?
Now let’s look at the best way to deliver your newsletter.
The easiest and best way, of course, is to deliver your newsletter either via email or even through your salon app.
This way you get to remove the high cost of printing and snail mail, plus your clients get immediate access to your fantastic information.
The downside to this is that emails are very easily deleted and that unsubscribe button can be very tempting if the content is of little interest to your client.
Some salons also find it worthwhile to print off some hard copies to keep in their reception areas for new clients who aren’t yet in their database.
How often should you send a newsletter to your clients?
Another how that needs an answer is how often should I send a newsletter to my clients.
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or just now and then. Which is best?
The only answer to this is that it really depends on how much great information you have to share that your clients really want to hear.
For instance, if you have your own salon app, you might want to contact your clients daily with updates about available appointments or last minute specials. This is pretty easy to do because it’s not very time consuming, and you can prepare and send it out in just a few minutes.
A worthwhile newsletter takes much longer to prepare and so it’s not feasible to do quite as often. Years back a quarterly or seasonal newsletter was the done thing, but times have changed and so has the need for more contact.
Only making contact every three months could allow other salons to lure your clients away, so to avoid this you need to send out quality information at least once per month.
When you do this you have a good chance of staying uppermost in the minds of your clients.
What information should you include?
Well, the first rule of thumb when it comes to content is that it must benefit your clients in some way.
A newsletter that’s nothing but a salon sales pitch will quickly find its way into the trash.
If you’re not sure what to write, then consider what your clients would like to learn more about. If the weather is cold and the major problem your clients are facing is dehydration, then share some good information about how they can care for their dehydrated skin more effectively between salon visits.
Be generous with your knowledge to show your clients that you actually care about their well-being. Once you’ve done this, you can offer some suggestions about what salon treatments they could have or retail products they could use to alleviate their dry winter skin.
Stop thinking about what you want to sell to your clients and start thinking about what your clients want to know more about.
Consider ways you can help them to overcome a current issue.
You may be concerned that if you give too much information away that they won’t need your services as often, but that won’t be the case.
By highlighting the need to care for their skin, you will actually trigger the idea to have a professional service more often.
So, to answer the question posted in the heading of this article, I believe that a quality newsletter that is focused on benefiting your client (rather than benefiting just you) is truly a marketing friend.
It’s a well known saying that people do business with those they know, like and trust, and if you can strengthen these things by staying in touch with your clients on a regular basis and providing them with worthwhile information and tips, then you are achieving one of the most difficult things in any business and that is good client retention.