There are many vital elements to consider when looking at reopening your salon. But let’s say that you have your new schedule organized, your new opening hours set and your health and hygiene plan ready to go. Now it’s time to look at how you are going to contact your clients and get them back through your doors the right way.
Your reopening marketing strategy
Who do you contact first?
If you’re in an area where your salon is still closed, this will be the first step. We know that there will be a high demand when your doors open. But who should get the first chance at securing those bookings?
There are a number of options you can go with:
● Clients that you had to cancel when the salon was temporarily closed
● People who purchased gift cards during the lockdown
● Your most loyal clients
● First come, first serve
Talk it out with your team and see which one is best for your brand. There’s no right or wrong answer here. But many of the salons that have already opened up started by contacting the clients that were cancelled due to COVID-19. Once they were booked back in, they sent a message to their most frequent clients, to ensure they had a chance. After that, they introduced a waiting list and eventually opened their online booking portal to the public.
Email & SMS
Once you’ve decided on who your first audience is, then it’s time to look at creating the reopening marketing content. Let’s first put the focus on contacting clients already in your database. The best way to do this is through email & SMS (download our Back in Business email templates for free).
Here are a few emails & SMS that you can create now:
● The reopening announcement email & SMS
● The confirmation email & SMS
● The waiting list email & SMS
The reopening announcement email & SMS
You’ll want to pitch this as a celebration, good news that you want to share. You want to thank clients for their support during the lockdown, as well as share with them the new way your salon will function: new opening times and the best way to book an appointment (using online bookings or your salon branded app).
Confirmation email & SMS
Once you have your announcement email created, you’ll want to rewrite the confirmation messaging. Of course, this message should contain a thank you for booking and the time and date of the appointment. However, it’s important that you add two new elements to it: your new health and hygiene guidelines as well as information on what the client should do if they are feeling unwell (reschedule their appointment for two weeks later).
The waiting list email & SMS
We know that you will have a backlog of clients looking for an appointment. That’s why many clients have set up a waiting list so that people can submit their request to secure the next available booking.
One of the main reasons why we should have a waiting list is to try to promote loyalty and retention. Clients may be impatient and look elsewhere for their service or treatment. This messaging should highlight why they should wait and stay with you instead. So be sure that it contains:
- a thank you for their patience
- a broad estimate of when the next booking may be available (if possible)
- perhaps an incentive for waiting (this incentive could come in the form of loyalty points, a complimentary add-on service or maybe a goodie bag)
Got feedback? Let us know either in the comments below or tweet us @ThePhorestWord! (Pssst! We’re on Instagram too!)
Thanks for reading! #LetsGrow
This article was originally published on SalonToday.com.
