Are you looking for ways to increase the number of clients visiting your salon? Sure, you can try to keep up with current trends, offer quality services, and work on creating an inviting atmosphere. But nearly every salon is focusing on these and if you want to make a lasting impression, you need to go the extra mile.
In this blog, you’ll learn simple tactics on how to increase your salon’s client revisit rate and retain your clients!
Why is your salon client visit rate important?
First, let’s take a look at some numbers to see why your client revisit rate is so important.
If your client revisit period was reduced from six weeks and four days to just six weeks, and you complete 95 appointments a week at an average client spend of $99, you would be able to complete nine additional appointments each week. That’s almost $900 extra per week and $46,000 per year!”
So now you know why your client revisit rate is so important and how it can drastically alter your finances, let’s look at some tips to help increase it.
Tip 1: Rebooking and reminders
Most clients appreciate being asked to rebook before they leave the salon or spa, so go on – ask them and help your clients maintain the quality of their hairstyle or skin!
A lot of hair and beauty professionals are scared to ask their clients to rebook because they don’t want to come off as pushy, but there are a range of techniques for approaching the rebooking question. Check out our blog on how to improve your rebooking rates for more ideas.
Many clients shy away from booking an appointment so far ahead simply because they’re worried they might forget about the appointment, so it’s worth mentioning that you send out reminders before.
Use your salon and spa software to check your rebooking rate. For example, you can run your Kitomba Business Summary report to look at your rebooking rate average over the date range you select, and then compare your business rebooking rate to other businesses around you with Kitomba Benchmark. This will give you an idea of how you compare to the industry average. Top salons generally have a rebooking rate of 80% and over!
Tip 2. Loyalty and vouchers
One of the best strategies to keep customers coming back is to reward them for their loyalty. This can be done through a client loyalty program where your clients collect points for every service, and after they collect a certain amount of points they can get a free service.
Gifting vouchers or discounts is another great way to encourage your clients to come back because they will want to use their voucher or discount before it runs out. A great way to introduce vouchers to your clients is by giving them a discount for a service they may have not tried before. For example, to try a new facial. If the client enjoys it they are likely to come back for that service again along with the service they had received from you in the past.
See more about Kitomba Loyalty: Getting started with Kitomba’s Loyalty programme
Tip 3. Send automatic follow-up messages
Once you’re familiar with your average client visit rate, you’ll want to set a goal to help reduce the amount of time between visits. Let’s say you have a visit rate of eight weeks and decide you’d like to get it down to seven weeks.
Setting up an automated email or text message to your clients that haven’t come in for a while is a gentle way to keep your business on their minds and remind them to book. At Kitomba, we find a lot of the time that businesses who set up these simple reminders significantly improve their customer’s average salon visit rate. Link your Kitomba Online Booking page in the message so they can book in straight away.
Tip 4: Let your clients book online
More than 30% of all online bookings through Kitomba occur on Sunday and Monday – days when many salons are closed – and our analysis also shows that bookings are made during all hours of the day and night.
The benefit of setting up an online booking system in your salon is to capitalise on these moments by allowing your customers to instantly book with you whenever suits them. An online booking system needs to be dynamically linked with your appointment book in-salon so that clients are only able to request times that are still available. This reduces any back-and-forth between you and your client and avoids the potential for disappointment.
There are so many ways to promote your online bookings such as email or text campaigns, updating your voicemail to talk about it, and displaying it on social media. By doing so you can drive more bookings and therefore increase your client visit rate.
Kitomba’s Online Booking platform makes it simple for your clients to book at their convenience. With the freedom to make an appointment via your website or Facebook page, you’ll never have to worry about missing salon appointment booking calls again.
Learn more about Kitomba Online Booking here.
Are you a Kitomba customer and want to add Online Booking to your package? Contact us and we’ll get you set up!
Keep what works and lose what doesn’t
This is a team effort, so make use of the stand-outs! Find out which members of your team achieve the best revisit rates and get them to share ideas with the team on how they do it.
Improving your client revisit rate is all about trial and error and seeing what works best for your team and clients. Often, a combination of these methods will get the best results. So give one or two of these methods a go and measure, measure, measure!
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on 25 May 2012 and was updated on 7 March 2023 for relevance and comprehensiveness.
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