Do You Struggle With Rebooking Hair Salon Clients?

If you are like a lot of hairstylist or salon owners, you may struggle with rebooking hair salon clients.

I understand this entirely and have a solution that will increase your bookings and retention by 10X in 2019.

I don’t claim to be a guru when it comes to growing a clientele, but I have tested many methods, and this one simple method has kept me booked solid for the past three years.

It’s no secret that a fundamental requirement of staying busy behind the chair is a steady stream of clients.

Now I preach all the time that it’s essential always to have 20% of your monthly traffic come from new clients.

This is where our online marketing comes in.

It’s imperative to have your marketing plan in place to help with this.

However, what about the other 80% of traffic where does this come from?

It starts with the clients you are already servicing every day in the salon.

The easiest way to stay busy year-round as a hairstylist is rebooking hair salon clients after each visit. It’s just that simple!

I know it can be difficult sometimes to reschedule your clients next appointment when things get hectic.

You finish the client’s hair and need to ring them up, sell them products, clean your station before your next clients show up, etc.

Before you know it, the client leaves the salon without booking their next appointment.

3 Important Reasons To Prebook Hair Salon Clients?

1. Prebooking builds client loyalty and keeps them coming back. Statistics have shown that customer drop off is more likely to happen if you don’t rebook them.
2.  It helps with FOV (frequency of visits). You are more likely to see a client twice as much a year by rebooking them.
3. Retention will increase by rebooking hair salon clients. If you don’t ask the client to return, they may not. A business needs to retain clients to continue to scale and keep your salon chairs filled.

Where Should You Start When Rebooking Hair Salon Clients?

Before I get to my powerful solution for consistently rebooking hair salon clients, I want to share with you a few other ideas to try as well.

So where should you start the conversation with your clients? Most hairstylists wait till the very end of the salon visit, and WHAMMY hit the client with a bill for their services, buy my products, and hey let’s rebook your next appointment. It can be a bit overwhelming for the client and only to hear the famous words “let me check my schedule and get back to you.”

Here are a few ways to eliminate push back from your clients when rebooking them.

• Start the conversation with a new guest inside your consultation. Suggest the service they will be receiving will need to be maintained every 4-6 weeks.
• Offer them, an APPLE 😉 meaning you can keep an iPad at your station with your hair salon appointment online booking app open. While the client is processing offer to rebook their next appointment while they wait.
• Just after the service is complete and right before you remove the cape recap your work and get the final “LOVE IT!”. Throw out there “what days work best for you for your next visit?” It’s important here to keep the cape on until they answer the question. The service isn’t over till the cape comes off. Book em kid!

When asking the client to rebook their next salon visit, keep it to an open-ended question. The last thing you want to do is ask them do they want to rebook. An open-ended question requires the person to answer in something other than just yes or no. By doing this you eliminate the awkward “I’ll just call you!” situation.

Skyrocket Your Professional Hair Salon Business in 2020

Start by joining the professional hair salon community. Like-minded hairstylists, salon owners, and cosmetology students just like you sharing with each other online.

BUSINESS – TRENDS – TOOLS

Ready To 10X Your Hair Salon Rebooking Percentage?

So let me start by giving you a little bit of my history. Back in 2009, I owned two hair salon locations with close to 30 employees.

I had a responsibility to make sure I kept things moving and chairs filled for my team. Back then advertising meant print in local magazines and it worked pretty well.

I was using Saloniris as my booking software, and we would collect the client’s info so we could direct market to them regularly.

Send them promotions and product updates etc.

Doing mail outs would serve us well, but it was costly and time-consuming.

One day while looking through the software at client history and FOV.

I realized we had been doing well-collecting contact info for our clients and we had over 3000 email addresses for our clients.

I also thought to type up one email and sending it to these clients was a way more manageable and less time-consuming.

Doing email outreach wouldn’t cost us a penny, and everyone checks their email. Rebooking hair salon clients was important to us as a company and we needed to increase our numbers.

So long story short email would serve to be the key to communicate with our guest and helping boost sales monthly.

In the slower months, we would run promotions using email marketing.

I would set up a yearly calendar and already have my emails ready to go out, so I had to do was send them at the first of the month.

Even in today’s business world, you ask any marketer what their number one most valuable tool is, and you will hear email addresses.

No matter the industry email marketing works. I’ll create another post more specific to email marketing, but for now, let’s look at how it relates to rebooking hair salon clients.

Stay Engaged With Your Clients Even After They Leave The Hair Salon

So let’s say you had an excellent experience with your guest today in the salon and she loved her hair.

You did everything right, but with all the excitement she left without rebooking her next appointment.

No worries I have a solution that will not only get her on your website rebooking her next visit, but you may get a review out of her.

The biggest trick to growing a stable hair salon business is to stay engaged with your clients. Same holds when building a social media following and also with email outreach.

With tools like MailChimp, you can upload your client’s emails and send out a newsletter, promotions, and product updates.

MailChimp has all kinds of templates you can use and even build forms to place on your social accounts and website. It’s also FREE up to 2000 emails.

Most hair salon scheduling systems already have email marketing provided for you which will make it easier as you can just pull up your day, week or month and send straight out from the software.

Start Emailing Clients To Boost Your Rebooks & Reviews

I have put together a simple email template for you to use when emailing clients below. You will need just to add the client’s name and make it personal.

Using either MailChimp or your booking software, upload your email list and make sure you are collecting every client’s email.

Write them an email or use my template I’m providing but make it personal to their visit. Download the email template.

You have two objectives here get the rebook & to boost reviews.

You want to apply this method after each day in the salon. It will only take a few extra minutes at the end of the day and well worth the time to do so.

You want to stay engaged with the client while you are still fresh in their minds. The client is again wooing over their salon visit with you.

Sending out an email the same day reminding them they don’t have their next appointment is a great way to get them to rebook.

Let the client know you enjoyed their visit and add something personal about their salon visit. Maybe they are going on vacation, and you wish them a great trip.

Mention maintaining the hairstyle you would need to see them again in 4-6 weeks or required time frame.

Add a call to action like a link to your booking site or a button for them to click. Offer them an incentive to rebook right now like $5 off their next visit.

People react well to a great offer, and it will increase conversions and retention.

Next, ask them if they enjoyed their visit as much as you did to please leave you a 5-star review over on Google.

Let them know this helps others find your business.

You don’t have to offer an incentive here, but again it can boost reviews pretty fast. Here is an excellent article on how to boost your hair salon reviews.

End the email by thanking the client for their loyalty and invite them to follow you on your social networks and add your links.

Now if you use MailChimp, you can setup up a sequence where if they don’t open the first email you send out another one reminding them they don’t have their next appointment, and it’s booking up around the time they will need to see you.

Create a sense of urgency for them to do so!

Now this shouldn’t be used alone as the other tips I explained earlier should always still be used.

If you apply in salon rebooking and email marketing, your chances of success are higher than just using one method.

Try it! I promise it works like a charm. You will see a huge increase when rebooking hair salon clients