Spa Executive | October 2020

campaigns should contain a personalized
“why you, why you right now” message.
And remember, your emails don’t always
need to be promotional in nature – make
sure you mix in a number of value-added,
nurture emails that don’t have a call to
action that requires your customer to open
up their wallet! If all of your emails contain
offers, your customers will turn blind to
them and tune them out.
3. Local marketplace
promotions for the win
Don’t have an extensive local database to
market to? Tight on marketing funds and
need to see an instant return on every
marketing dollar spent? Still experiencing
downtime during off-peak times? Turning
to Groupon or Travelzoo to capture local
business is a great tactic. These local
marketplaces have spent millions of dollars
building local databases that can help you
to bring in new guests and fill downtime
on a moment’s notice when the spa is not
as busy and give you a great opportunity
to drive trial with new guests, “wow
them” and drive repeat, regular business.
Concerned about getting an influx of calls
or creating lineups in the spa with voucher
redemptions? We recently launched
OpenBooker to help you curate specific
availability (time, date, service, therapist,
etc.) for these marketplace promotions
to help facilitate voucher redemption and
booking online, helping you to free up
the front desk, automate bookings and
avoid the unpleasant voucher redemption
conversations….if you know what I mean!
4. Reputation and
referrals are everything
standards. Spas should encourage positive
reviews and get ahead of negative ones.
This is achieved by sending out NPS
(Net Promoter Score) guest surveys after
appointments. If a customer is a promoter
and rates your service a nine or a 10, they
should be encouraged to write a review.
If they are a detractor, immediate steps
should be taken to intercede and fix the
situation BEFORE they blast you and
your spa and leave a negative review on
Google, Yelp or TripAdvisor. This is crucial.
Research has consistently found that
reviews matter a great deal. Some findings:
• Consumers are willing to spend
31% more on a business with
excellent reviews. They are just
looking for evidence that it’s worth
spending an extra $75-100 for a
massage at your establishment
vs. the local day spa.
• 92% of buyers are more likely to
purchase after reading a trusted
review
• 94% say an online review has
convinced them to avoid a
business.
• Only 13% of consumers will
consider using a business that
has a 1 or 2 star rating.
We also trust our friends to tell us about
their experiences and will take their
recommendations. If you have found
yourself a new promoter, also encourage
that person to refer or bring a friend by
offering them a discount or promotion on a
product or return visit.
5. Ecommerce and
subscription boxes
lock down the economy, that shift became
a sudden wave, accelerating the trend to
where they thought it would be five years
from now. Spas can take advantage of
this trend by setting up their own online
storefront and by leveraging data to run
targeted, personalized campaigns –
Amazon’s recommendation engine simply
cannot compete with the guest preference
and purchase data that is housed within
your spa software!
In addition, subscription boxes are literally
piling up at doorsteps as consumers
increasingly shop from home. Just about
every day, I see two or three meal kit boxes
sitting at the concierge desk in my condo
building. Over the past four months, many
U.S. consumers turned toward the directto-consumer
subscription box market for
the first time, with one in five people buying
subscription boxes during this time period
to have products available to them during
the pandemic. Retail sales often make up
for 10-15% of a spa’s total revenue but
can represent an outsized 20-25% of the
profit – why not incorporate a retail product
element to your membership offerings or
create your own themed subscription box?
Try these strategies to help you survive and
thrive, and you’ll be way ahead of the game.
Reviews and word of mouth play a big
role in new and local customer acquisition.
The first place a customer will look when
shopping for a spa is at reviews. Probably
now more than ever, because people are
concerned with cleanliness and safety
Both Amazon and Shopify have been
aggressively building businesses that have
aimed to take advantage of the steady shift
in consumers’ buying habits from brick
and mortar to e-commerce stores. When
the coronavirus forced governments to
By Sean Anderson,
- 17 - VP of Global Sales Spa Executive at Book4Time | OCTOBER 2020 ISSUE