Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 6. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, this show is a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, roundups of our most recent salon owners marketing tips & tricks, all the latest in and around Phorest and what upcoming webinars you can join. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Phorest FM Episode 6
One of the best ways to engage clients through an email is by using call-to-action words.  We discuss the different types of these, and how to use them to effectively to get the attention you want from your audience.  Next topic covered is best send times for holiday email marketing campaigns. We then review of some of the most popular blog posts and topics from the month and give you a look at some of the things Phorest has been doing around the office to boost morale for this time of year.
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast, episode six. I’m your host Killian Vigna, and today I’m joined Zoe Belisle-Springer. This week we’re gonna go through the top blogs so which call to action words will help grow your salon client list. And we’ll give you the best holiday send times for salon email campaigns. To wrap up the podcast, we’ll have a special guest talk about some really cool goings on here at Phorest. And how your salon might be able to benefit. Zoe will also give us a quick recap of some of the most popular blogs online in November. This podcast is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your days off. Now, let’s get into the show. So Zoe, let’s kick it off with your two blogs. So, we’re only gonna go through two today because we want to do a monthly round up here to finish off November.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. So the first blog that was published this week was about call-to-action words. It’s kind of a subject that some people don’t really know what it really involves. So CTA’s, call to action, is basically just that little button at the end of an email or it’s even just an incentive on social media. Just click here, book a demo or book an appointment. It’s those kind of like ‘here’s what you should do next’.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Kind of thing for the client.
Killian Vigna: It’s usually like your goal.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly.
Killian Vigna: Or kind of your stepping stone. So if someone’s opened your email, it’s not just getting them to open or read that email. You actually want them to click your action to maybe go through to your website.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly.
Killian Vigna: Maybe even a booking link.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. Yeah yeah yeah. And because salons send so many emails out to get appointments in or even sell products, at this time of the year it’s really important to get the most out of your emails because, and we’ll get to that in the second blog, but this time of years email campaigns just clutter people’s inbox’s. And so these words can really help a client get into what you’re trying to get them to do.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So you’ve got many categories. You’ve got the power words. So let’s say just amazing, bonus, latest, save big, those kinds of things, right. Then you’ve got the action words, download; so that’s all the like click here or discover now.
Killian Vigna: Do.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, do.
Killian Vigna: Eventually.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, make an action now. Then you have the ones that kind of imply rarity. So limited offer, only five left. It usually puts a time frame on it a little bit.
Killian Vigna: Now with those, you’d want to be careful not to keep throwing out limit or limited or ending soon because people get used to that. So you want to make sure it is actually …
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Limited.
Killian Vigna: Actually limited or has a time scale.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Don’t just throw it out willy nilly.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Another category there is exhibiting. It kind of ties into the one just before but this one can actually be really useful for if you’re promoting events and such. So we have an exclusive offer for VIP clients or we have a VIP event, ask for an invitation, things like that. And then you’ve got the urgency words as well. So it’s basically like today, hurry, now or never. Those kind of things where it’s just like-
Killian Vigna: Act now.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Act now, or you’re gonna miss out. And obviously these categories you can all mix the call-to-actions words together and make it more powerful. So it could be like download today. So you have an action, but you’re also saying do it now.
Killian Vigna: Now I know you’re saying you can mix the words together and make a real powerful sort of statement and stuff. Yes, you can. But you also kind of want to be careful that you don’t saturate.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Like the example of and email or a landing page on a website. If you see like five different call-to-actions, what is your call to action. You can’t have five, six, seven different ones.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So what you basically recommend, normally, would be on a landing page, social media, or email, or any place where you’re going to put those kind of buttons or incentives. You want to have one message and one call to action. Don’t try and put like three in the same place because then your client is going to be like what do you want me to do.
Killian Vigna: And even if they did go ahead and click one, for them to come back, it’s very rare. Usually, they’re just going to keep moving forward. And that’s what call to actions are; you’re creating a journey. You want to put your client or your customer on a journey. You don’t want them to go back, forward. You don’t want to go forward one step back to, do you?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: There you go. Yeah. So that’s pretty much it for the call to action blog. It’s basically a listing of the best ones that tend to work. It’s based on some research marketing companies did, and so it’s really interesting. It’s a bit like the salon hashtag blog that we had where we listed all the most performing hashtags. is is the same thing but for call to actions.
Killian Vigna: And then that moves us on to what everyone is dying to hear now coming up to Christmas. How to get out of the noise and the clutter. So go on, Zoe, what is it?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So there was some research done on best holiday send times for email campaigns specifically. So if you haven’t yet sent out your email campaigns for Christmas and New Years, the research found that people were most active say December 22nd, 26th, and the 29th. There’s kind of a drop where the actual holidays happen, so Christmas day and then Christmas Eve and New Years, New Year’s Eve. There’s a really low drop because obviously, people are in their family, they’re not going to check their email. OR if they do, they’re probably just going to put it into their spam or trash. They’re not actually going to click on it, and that’s what you want to do.
Killian Vigna: I was literally just about to ask you why does it flatline at Christmas. It basically flat lines like Christmas Day but then it spikes on January the 5th.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so January the 5th, if you think about it. It’s the start of most businesses.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s the week, the debut back from holiday week. So people get back at their desks or even just you’re in the salon, you’re automatically going to try to catch up what happened when you were away on holidays. So there’s gonna be a spike there. So if you need to send a campaign around New Years, try to send it before the holidays, even maybe Christmas.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: But if you do need to send something else, later on, the best would be like the Thursday. The research found that the best would be the first Thursday coming back from holidays.
Killian Vigna: Yeah it’s kind of, when businesses start getting back in. I mean, so you’re all marketing to clients but, for people like us, where we’re marketing business to business, you are in that Monday to Friday window.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, yeah.
Killian Vigna: But for you, you have the full seven days, essentially.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Because they’re personal emails.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, yeah. They’re also saying that overall in the week, the best time to send an email would be around 11 am. It’s like a window frame between 10 am and 12 with a peak at 11. So that would be from approximately Monday to Saturday-ish. But if you were to send an email on the weekend, then there is a huge difference between Saturday and Sunday. And it is better to send it off on … Let me check to just make sure I’m not saying something stupid here. But the weekend would be 9 pm and the Saturday would be 11 am. But the Sunday would actually get better engagement.
Killian Vigna: So is that because a lot of people are settling down, they’re starting to relax on a Sunday evening. They’re getting the laptop open. They’re just bursting through that little bit of emails before work.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Well, to be honest, that’s something I do, personally.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So I’m not really surprised by this. On your Saturday, you just finished your week, for most people who work like say 9 to 5. And that’s probably many of your clients as a salon owner. So people aren’t really going to check their emails on a Saturday. But come the Sunday, they kind of want to check what’s going on in the Monday morning so they kind of catch up a little bit.
Killian Vigna: Yeah and I’m just looking here you’re saying peak times between 10 am and 12 am. Or 12 pm. I mean like when you just think about your own kind of daily routines and activities, that falls around your break time.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, pretty much.
Killian Vigna: So you’re essentially talking to yourself and go well when am I on my phone. When am I opening my emails, my social media. Again, we can give you this marketing advice and research and stuff like that. But you still have to go back and check your own analytics.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh, definitely. Yeah yeah yeah. And these are generic analytics obviously. They’re based on data from over thousand and thousands of emails and different people. So, of course, your clients aren’t… From salon to salon, it’s not gonna be the same thing. And from person to person, even if the generic time, the peak time would be 11, that client of yours might just open their emails at 9 pm. Because that’s what their day looks like.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, exactly.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s just an overall thing you know.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So it’s a good idea, it’s a good thing to have in mind when you’re creating your campaigns. But obviously, you need to look at your analytics as well.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, at the end of the day, it’s a good guideline, it’s a very good guideline looking at this, the images here. But it’s not a plan, don’t take it for gospel.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. Yeah.
Killian Vigna: Take your guidelines Zoe has given you and then check your own analytics and kind of co-align them there.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah and you can always adjust every now and then and try things out. Don’t be scared to try things out. Sometimes we send emails, sometimes we don’t get as better as good a response as we would like to but you know.
Killian Vigna: And it’s really obvious in the office too when you get a good hit, and everyone’s excited and when you get no hit, and the campaign gets forgotten about. No one mentions it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: There you go. So it’s all about readjusting week on week and month on month. And eventually, you’ll find a formula that works for your salon, basically.
Killian Vigna: Cool. So just that we’re talking about Christmas here. We’ve a special guest in here today. We’ve Siobhan McCaffrey, and the idea of this is, so you’re coming up to Christmas, your staff are very busy. They’re gonna start getting stressed. And we always talk on this podcast show about how we talk about the goings on in and around Phorest. And today is actually the first time we get to give you that inside peek of what is going on. So without saying any more, Siobhan, what has gone on here in the last few weeks.
Siobhan McCaffrey: In the last few weeks we’ve been doing a few things to up moral. It’s a stressful time in the lead up to Christmas. So without a doubt, everyone is feeling it. So we’ve been doing a few little things to take the edge off and-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: We’re drinking champagne right now.
Killian Vigna: That’s what all the noise is I signed.
Siobhan McCaffrey: That’s not always what we do, but sometimes it is. Because it’s a stressful time, personal life and in a work environment, particularly in the salon industry, and we are very much part of that. It’s the busiest, without a doubt, time of the year. We have introduced a wellness week that we are currently towards the end of now.
Killian Vigna: That’s what the champagne is for.
Siobhan McCaffrey: That’s what the champagne is for. Very good for you. So we were doing yoga one of the evenings this week to do an unwind. We did a smoothie morning. We had to get fruit in because of course, it’s good for you. We did a nutritional talk as well. We had an expert come in from the leading gyms over here in Ireland, EducoGym. We had somebody in giving us nutritional information. All these things, they’re not just important at work, they’re important at home as well. So it’s nice to be able to bring it full circle.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So how did the social team come about in the first place? Because the wellness week is right now, but the social team has actually been around for a little bit of time now.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah, the company is growing enormously, which is excellent. But as it grows, people do quite literally grow apart. We’re on different floors, and it’s really to bring us back together. If you’ve happy staff, you’ve productive staff. And that works regardless of what your industry is in. So it’s certainly something that can be taken on in a salon environment. I’m ex-salon. I worked in a salon for nine years, and I know the importance of getting on with your colleagues. And it’s nice-
Killian Vigna: Especially when you’re in that close environment.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Absolutely, yeah.
Killian Vigna: Because like, we’re five floors here and nearly 200 people. But a salon, you’re dealing-
Siobhan McCaffrey: Seven people maybe on a day.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, exactly. So you want to make sure you’re getting on with them and someone you can actually talk to and stuff like that every day.
Siobhan McCaffrey: And your last memory of the day, you don’t want it to be God that was hectic. You want to be able to say oh, we had a-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Had a wonderful day.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah, we had a great… We went to Pilates all together or wasn’t it really nice one of the girls ran in and grabbed us all smoothies. And it’s little things like that that are really good for your head.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, because like most people will kind of think oh, team activities, let’s go out for a drink, let’s go out for dinner. But there are so many more options that you actually do and can place.
Killian Vigna: It did start off with the pizza and the beer, didn’t it for the first one.
Siobhan McCaffrey: It did.
Killian Vigna: And that just had to go very quickly. So it was a lot of expanding waistlines and a lot of giving out to Siobhan saying we need something healthier.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Well there’s always a place for some pizza and beer. It was nice to be able to branch out a little bit. We have some people that are working outside of Ireland, so they’re not in the office all the time. They were always missing out on Domino’s. So we said that we’d make it kind of full circle and this week, as part of wellness week, everyone knows you get a bit stressed. We got some stress balls in for everybody-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I really thank you for that by the way.
Killian Vigna: Which and, I can’t emphasize enough, how those stress balls arrived on the most perfect day. Everyone in the whole building was running around with a purple stress ball.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah we here on the Phorest team, we all bleed purple in here. So we decided we’d go purple. Which is really nice but because we have a lot of people that aren’t in-house, we have people that are on the road. We have people all over the world working for us. And we wanted to make them feel part of the team too because they have a stressful day as well. So we did up little stress packs which we sent out to people, and they had some incense, some chamomile tea, we had little scented candles.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s really cute.
Siobhan McCaffrey: They are actually adorable. We should take a picture of them and pop them up actually.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah we can definitely do that. Pop them up on social media.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah, they’re adorable.
Killian Vigna: Keep an eye out.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah. So we did that as well, just for people not to feel left out. And that’s something as well. Because very often, in a salon, you have somebody off-site that’s working in marketing. But no doubt they’re going to be having as stressful a day as you. It’s nice to be able to pull those in as well. And something like a smoothie voucher, so they don’t feel left out when all the girls go down to get their smoothies. Or they could meet you after work for Pilates. Something that you can include everybody in is always nice.
Killian Vigna: And it doesn’t even have to be expensive. Because for Halloween, what did we do? We just went upstairs and we all watched … We ended up…
Siobhan McCaffrey: We ended up downloading a movie. Legally downloading a movie.
Killian Vigna: It was Netflix.
Siobhan McCaffrey: It was Netflix. We watched a movie on Netflix for Halloween. We did a vote on it, and we picked the best one that was coming up.
Killian Vigna: That was done by an emoji quiz as well.
Siobhan McCaffrey: And emoji quiz which is actually fun as well. So like, little things like that, it just kind of pulled everybody in together. And it was free. The Netflix that I was already paying for, it was used. So it cost nothing to do it, and it makes such a difference. Like the moral was absolutely boosted that week. And even in the lead up it was good fun. With the lead up to Christmas as well we’re hoping to do just over lunchtimes because we’ve got a really cool office here. Everyone tends to have their lunch in here, and we’ve got a really big screen so we’re gonna pop some Christmas movies up. And it means nothing and it costs nothing. But it’s going to boost moral without a doubt and the stressful period at home and in work, any little helps, without a doubt.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, and it’s no big secret, if you’re staff is happy, you’re clients are gonna be happy. Like when was the last time you walked into a shop and you barely got a hello or goodbye from the shop assistant? And you left that shop feeling, I suppose bitter or vindictive or something. It’s like Jesus, I want to go back and put some manners on him. But that is the case. If you went in and that shop keeper was real happy and jolly, you’d leave there feeling a million dollars like.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh and you’ll go back.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. 100 percent. And you’ll even get chatting with him next time. But we just can’t convey it enough; happy staff, happy client. And it doesn’t have to cost you anything. We did do paintballing and stuff the other day. But that was the staff volunteering to pay it up themselves.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah. And it had a great turn out. Better than I expected.
Killian Vigna: And it was a freezing cold, wet day.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Yeah. But like all that out of it was a positive experience even though a few people had a few bruises and there were a few sniffly noses, it was definitely worth doing. Because it was more to talk about, it brought the team closer together. And like I said, the team has grown so much that we’re over five floors, as Killian was saying. And the fact that we’re like one big family, I think it’s down to the fact that we have these little extras.
Killian Vigna: I genuinely, I don’t know a single person that comes in and doesn’t look forward to going to work. And that’s all down to it. Because everyone seems to get on, everyone helps each other. So it is like just bringing staff together, can’t emphasize it enough.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
Killian Vigna: Thank a million, Siobhan.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It was great having you and…
Killian Vigna: Can’t wait for next months activities.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly.
Killian Vigna: Christmas dinner on the balcony.
Siobhan McCaffrey: I’ll have Elf playing.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Amazing, have a great one.
Siobhan McCaffrey: Thanks a million.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Chat later, [crosstalk 00:17:44]
Killian Vigna: Cool. So, now just to kind of wrap up the show. We’re coming to the end of the month here. Well, we’re actually going into December I suppose, yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Pretty much.
Killian Vigna: So Zoe’s just going to do a nice end to show with a recap of all the top blogs that have been up on the Phorest blog now for November.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. So every month, at the end of the month, we send out an email listing the four top, most popular blogs that have gone out in the month. And during November it was Attitude of Gratitude which we spoke about in episode three if you want to check that out.
Killian Vigna: We had Justin Fiddy, our loyalty man come in for that one
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. And then the second most popular one was The Simple Salon Marketing Mistakes. So that was with Connor in episode three.
Killian Vigna: Yep.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And then we went also to the Christmas DIY Decor Ideas, and that was actually discussed in episode four. So there was loads of little, tiny thing you could do in your salon, just to bring the merry a little bit everywhere and not just your retail display. And the fourth most popular blog was the December Monthly Marketing Ideas. So we usually do those monthly marketing toolkits and their very popular every month. So they kind of always ends up in the top most popular ones. So that’s all available on the blog. If you just look up the titles you’ll find them immediately. So that’s pretty much it for the most popular blogs.
Killian Vigna: Now before we go, if they’re the most popular blogs, what’s your favorite one?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s hard to say.
Killian Vigna: You didn’t expect that question did you?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No.
Killian Vigna: I know my favorite one there.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah the one you wrote.
Killian Vigna: No, it’s actually the simple salon marketing mistakes. The one we had Connor come in and talk about. I actually thought that was one of the best ones this month.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah well it’s really important, and it was a very… It’s a topic that always comes back because it’s just like what am I doing wrong.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Why’s this not working. And he pretty much highlighted the most top five mistakes you can do. So that really helps out. So I’d say favorite, hard to say but really helpful, that one. And then, also for your marketing kind of side, the December Monthly Marketing Tool Kit. Go download that for free, it’s up on the blog. It can really make a world of difference if you don’t have that much time for planning and such.
Killian Vigna: Cool. So that is essentially our show today. So, Zoe, once again, thanks a million for joining in.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No worries.
Killian Vigna: I’m Killian Vigna and enjoy December, guys.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Enjoy. Catch you next week.
Thanks for reading!
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