Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 27. 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 27
Some of the most popular topics among our blog readers for the month of May were ways to get your clients spending more, more often, advice from mother and salon-owner Louise Caithness on how she has managed to balance work life and family life, and details on 2018’s Salon Owners’ Summit that have just been revealed. Some new Phorest Salon Software features are also announced, including staff online profiles!
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast episode 27. I’m Killian Vigna-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer.
Killian Vigna: Welcome to our monthly roundup episode.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: This week we’ll recap our most popular blogs in May, and we’ll throw in some marketing ideas for June.
Killian Vigna: We’ll discuss the latest product updates in your Phorest Salon Software.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And as always, we top off the show with our upcoming Phorest Academy webinars.
Killian Vigna: This podcast is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off. Now, let’s get into the show. Zoe, that time of the month or that time … Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, that time of the month. Yeah.
Killian Vigna: That time of the month. Monthly roundup time! The monthly roundup, basically it’s the most popular blogs of the month.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, the four most popular blogs a month based on opens, reactions on Facebook, shares, all that kind of stuff.
Killian Vigna: Then we throw in any product updates or new features that you’ll find on your Phorest Salon Software. Then it’s just kind of the usual stuff, the Phorest Academy and stuff on that. What’re our most popular blogs of May?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: One of them was the blog that we went through actually just a few weeks ago on seven ways to help your clients spend more and more often. It was a blog written by Simon Lotinga. He went through quite a few way, concrete strategies basically, to prepare your team, to optimize your marketing, to change your retail display, all of that made in a way to help your clients spend more in your salon basically. There’s loads of concrete ideas there. I would refer to the podcast we recorded about two weeks ago because we actually went through it all there on that episode. That was the first one.
Killian Vigna: Episode 25.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, correct. That’s the first one that was very, very popular. Then the second one was actually an interview we did with a spa owner, Louise Caithness. She’s a spa owner, but she’s also a mother, and she discusses the taboo topic of balancing work life and parenthood. Because actually when she got pregnant and had her baby, she could not avail of a maternity leave whatsoever.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. This is one where she planned the first three years of opening a salon. First year you’re broke, second year you, I suppose, break even, and then the third year you start making profit. She decided she was gonna have a child then, but couldn’t factor into account that two of her staff members were also-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Would also … Yeah.
Killian Vigna: She went maternity-less. Again, in the last episode, 26, when we were talking to Phil Jackson about email marketing-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: He was also a father as well.
Killian Vigna: He’s a father and it was from working at home that he came across email marketing, which helped him grow his salon. There are pros and cons, mostly pros.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. I can’t obviously go through a full interview with you guys, but it’s definitely something you need to check out if you haven’t had a look at it yet. She goes through really, really honest responses as well. She’s not scared of putting herself out there and what happened exactly and the fact that she didn’t have a salon manager at the time and now she has one, there’s policies in place that weren’t in place… All that kind of stuff. It’s really, really interesting. Definitely eye opening.
Killian Vigna: That brings us on then to announcement time.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yes. Announcement time. If you have been attending the Salon Owner’s Summit for the last three years now, you’ll be excited to know that the 2018 edition has been announced, bigger, better, and bolder.
Killian Vigna: Bigger, better, and bolder than ever indeed. We’ve got pretty much the same date, new location, new speakers, and more tickets too.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. We also have a new format for 2018. That will incorporate a variety of workshops and our usual line-up of key note speakers obviously.
Killian Vigna: That’s actually getting you guys involved. It’s not just sitting there for three, four hours listening to great speakers, but you actually get up, get involved. It’s more engaging this year, isn’t it?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh yeah definitely. It will all take place at the convention centre in the docklands in Dublin. It’s 15 minutes away from the airport. Really, really central. Really easy to access. The theme for this year is “great starts here”. It’s a lot of inspirational things, but also very concrete topics as well. It will all take place on January 8, 2018. The early bird tickets are already on sale. They’ve been on sale since last Monday. Our first known speaker is Steve Martin. One of your favourites.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. Science of persuasion.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: For people who don’t know about Steve Martin, just a little quick recap.
Killian Vigna: Okay, so he’s the best-selling author of “Yes! 50 Secrets for the Science of Persuasion”. That book alone has sold over half a million copies and translated into 26 languages.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You’ve read it.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. I have read it. Yeah. It’s kind of a big deal, I would imagine most people in this company have read it. Basically, it’s another one of those things of how to effectively listen to your clients. I suppose-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Changing tiny little things, but that have massive impacts as well.
Killian Vigna: Yeah like I don’t want to give too much away. If you wanted to check, you can check him out on YouTube. He’s brilliant and interesting to listen to. It’s stuff that we’ve talked about in the show before like reciprocity and stuff like that, so I buy you a bottle of Coke at the start of the day Zoe and then I come back to you at the end of the day and go “hang on there, would you buy a few raffle tickets?” You’re gonna be more inclined. It’s just little things like that. Again, don’t want to give too much away, but he is gonna be brilliant.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh yeah. Definitely. The venue, like I said, Convention Centre in Dublin.
Killian Vigna: World class conference venue.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It is huge. It’s beautiful down there. That should be really interesting. If you want to request a call back for tickets, you can just simply go to the blog, type in Salon Owners’ Summit 2018, you’ll find the blog straight away. Request a call back in that blog. There’s a button there. You can just click on that. You need to be a Phorest client. This is a Phorest client exclusive event. So that’s that. For any other info on accommodations, speakers, tours and activities, and everything surrounding the event, just keep an eye on the Salon Owners’ Summit website. Salonownerssummit.com.
Killian Vigna: I know it feels like we’re talking about it quite a bit. We are because we did early, early birds a while ago and there were a lot of salon owners come about upset that they actually didn’t get tickets. There was something like only 50 tickets sold. Sold out nearly straight away. This is all just to avoid disappointment. They are going quick.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: They are going quick. They’re the early bird tickets.
Killian Vigna: Cool. That brings us on to our final one, final blog, Phorest blog.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah it always goes up into the favourite ones I suppose because it simplifies everyone’s life.
Killian Vigna: There is a bit of a trend with these ones. Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s the monthly marketing ideas. This month is obviously the June marketing ideas. In there, you’ve got loads of low budget and simple ideas. In this toolkit basically, you’ll find Father’s Day graphics, SMS templates, email templates. You’ll find some other graphics surrounding other events throughout the month. There’s the International Donut Day.
Killian Vigna: Donut day?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yes! That happens on June 2. It’s a fun one. You know? You can just team up-
Killian Vigna: Well I’ve never heard of anyone that hasn’t like doughnuts, so yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Right? Yeah. You can just team up with a local shop. A few months back, actually two months ago, we had an email template for you to try and approach a local business. You have an email template there.
Killian Vigna: It’s like a little outreach email.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah exactly. It simplifies your life. If you want to do that, that’s there. That’s available. Other than that, on the blog itself, you have loads of little ideas that you could just implement in your salon that doesn’t take too much time. There’s some for SMS and email marketing, but there’s also some for your social media, to run contests, competitions, and any kind of things that could help you add value to your marketing this month.
Killian Vigna: Cool. Just on those ones for any Phorest Salon Software clients, the Father’s Day email and SMS templates have both been uploaded to the system as well. They’re ready for you to send out, too.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Speaking of which, for Phorest clients, I think the Grow team has introduced the monthly marketing campaigns as well.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. It’s just another way of… we completely get that you’re busy, and summer is gonna be another busy time for you, so we’ve tried this new thing, it started in May. You’ll see emails coming in in the next week or two now for the June ones. What we started doing is monthly marketing campaigns for you. It’s just another time to save that little bit of time for you to go do marketing. You can focus more on your clients and stuff like that. What we do is, you’ll see it in the form of an email and an SMS, all it does is it asks you what service you want to promote this month. We’ll create an email that will go out to your clients and we’ll do a follow-up SMS that will go out to your clients. The best bit is we’ll actually identify the best time of the month to send those out for you.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: To recap, say I’m a salon owner, I get this email from Phorest and it just basically asks me to choose a template that I’d wish according to the service, I believe. Correct?
Killian Vigna: Yes. We have a couple of screenshots of email templates for services that you can promote. You just pick one of those templates. When you pick it, it will take you to this small, interactive little questionnaire form, and all it does then is ask you what SMS you want to follow up with that email.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s very, very simple. Takes about five minutes to do.
Killian Vigna: Not even five minutes. Like literally less than a minute. We’re trying to get it as streamlined as possible because, again, we just don’t want to be taking up your days. We just want to create little things that we can do to help you.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I think we also have new features on the Software.
Killian Vigna: Yes. Quite regularly enough now we’re getting a lot of product updates and new features. I suppose the latest feature, and you’ll see, again, we’ve notified you by email and stuff like that, our first one, rebooking SMS. What is the rebooking SMS? What’s the purpose of it? We looked into a bit of data in the Phorest Salon Software and we noticed that only 21% of your clients are actively rebooking their next appointment before they leave your salon. 21. Out of 100 clients that have come into your salon today, only 21 of them have rebooked again, have made a commitment to come back to you. So we’ve created rebooking SMS. What the whole purpose of this is … Zoe, I go into your salon. I get my hair done. I haven’t rebooked. I go home.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Say you tell me “I’ll rebook online!”
Killian Vigna: I’ll rebook online, or I’ll give you a call or whatever. 24 hours after my appointment it’s given enough time for everyone to compliment my hair and whatnot, to keep you in my mind because you did such a great job with my hair. 24 hours after my appointment, I get an SMS asking if I want to rebook. At the tap of a button, literally tap of a button, I’m into your online booking page and I can secure a spot.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s amazing. It simplifies your client’s lives basically. Just two seconds, done.
Killian Vigna: Exactly. We have the online bookings staff profiles. It sounds like a bit of a mouthful, but basically it’s just your staff profiles on your online booking page. What that is, is … What’s the point of staff profiles? Well, they allow you to highlight your team’s individual qualifications, list their unique professional qualities, and even share some personalities that they might have, some quirkiness or something like that.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: A lot of clients love to know who they’re going to, especially if it’s a new salon that they’ve never been to. They want to have a relationship with that hairdresser or stylist or therapist at some point. They’ll go to someone they feel comfortable with.
Killian Vigna: It’s like you and your barber. You never mention the salon. You always just mention the guy who does your hair. Instantly that’s branding for him. I go check him up. I find out he’s working at your barbers. Where do we get this information? It’s the staff profiles. Let your staff open up a bit. Don’t keep it too formal I suppose. Here’s my qualifications, here’s my certificate. Relax it a little bit because you’ve got to bear in mind, I know for me, last haircut I got was about 45 minutes. I’m gonna be talking to this guy for 45 minutes. I want to make sure I’m gonna have something in common with him. We’ve added staff profiles for anyone who books through your website on their mobile. That’s what that is there. The desktop version will be rolled out across the summer. Basically, it gives your clients even more information on their stylist or therapist and about the services before they choose who they wish to book in with.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Makes total sense.
Killian Vigna: That all goes towards your client retention too though because now they’ve built a bond, not only with your salon or with your barber, but they’ve also built a bond with your staff member. Keeping in tone with online booking and mobile, we see that 75% of people that go onto your online booking section do so via their mobile. So what have we done? We’ve introduced one tap rebooking. If I come across your online booking page on my mobile, it will actually highlight in green just on the top right-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You’d have to be logged into your account, obviously, for that.
Killian Vigna: Once I’m logged in, it will actually have a little rebook button on the top right, and I don’t have to go through your services, your staff…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You just rebook in your last service. That’s it.
Killian Vigna: Again, that’s just instant because if your clients are leaving your salon … It happens to everyone. You’re too busy to … You need quick client turnover when you’re busy. You can’t keep remembering to ask everyone to rebook. That’s where your message and your one tap rebooking comes in. Then finally, we just have some performance tweaks. Little improvements under the hood, as we say. Basically, we’ve done someone engineering to upgrade the availability engine. That’s just gonna make it faster and more accurate to give available times and dates to your clients. Again, if I’m on your online booking page, the availability section, it’s more accurate now. On top of that, we’ve also eliminated any log-in errors. Some of you may be aware, you might have heard from some of your clients or whatever, that they tried to log in to their online booking page for your salon, but they were getting an error with their email address. Don’t worry about that. That’s done. They can log in with whatever email address they’re registered with you now. There are the little updates and tuning and features.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: As always, these ideas, these updates, they all come from ideas that come from you, the Phorest clients.
Killian Vigna: Oh yeah. They’re not from us at all. Even though a lot of staff here have experience in the salon industry, we’re now more tech-side. It needs to be you telling us what you need. We can come up with all these great features and stuff, but if you’re not gonna use them, what’s the point?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. Ideas can always be submitted to us. If you go onto your Phorest system and go into “Manager”, you’ll have a little section there, in utilities, you’ll have a little section saying “User Voice”. That’s where you can drop any ideas that you’d like to see up-voted, and eventually, possibly, built.
Killian Vigna: Any opinion in there or any idea, it could be anything, throw it into User Voice. Get your voice heard and I suppose, let your peers up-vote it. If it gets enough upvotes, you’ll see it in the next product update email.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly.
Killian Vigna: That could be you.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That brings us on to our Phorest Academy webinar section, I suppose, already. The next one that we have is on June 7th. That’s the monthly retail masterclass. If you haven’t done it yet, jump onto that. It’s an hour long. It’s from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM UK Ireland time. 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM US eastern time.
Killian Vigna: That’s with yourself.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. That’s with myself. Yeah. Exactly. We go through tips and concrete ideas to create and integrate a retailing culture within your team. Breaking down the barriers of selling retail as something not as fun as doing the treatment.
Killian Vigna: Then the next one.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: The next one will be the Phorest Academy Facebook masterclass. That’s on June 12th. Same time. 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM UK Ireland time. 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM US eastern time. That is also a monthly webinar. That’s led by Chris Brennan, our content manager here in Phorest. It’s always a really, really interesting class. Loads of questions. Very interactive. Jump on board if you haven’t attended that yet, or if you even just want a refresh on new insights and new platforms that Facebook has updated. Last and not least, we will be at the Professional Beauty Show in Belfast on June 11th. We will be on stand 221. We’ll also have Chris Brennan giving a seminar from 1:00 to 1:30. It’s all about client retention. If you are around in that area and you want to come attend the seminar or even just come chat to us on the stand, register through Facebook. We have an event there. You just have to register for free tickets in advance.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. That’s your opportunity to, I suppose, get face to face with some of us. If you are floating around that trade show and you do have any reservations or queries about Phorest Salon Software, build up all your questions now and just hit them with them. That’s your chance.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Exactly. That’s pretty much it in terms of the Phorest Academy webinars. Do you have anything to add onto this?
Killian Vigna: I think that is essentially our round-up. Done.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That is our roundup. Enjoy your week and we’ll catch you next Monday.
Killian Vigna: All the best.
Thanks for reading!
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