It’s that time of the year, when salons, spas, and fitness centers are booming with soon-to-be-graduates (and their families!) Graduation time can be one of the busiest times of your business year. Here at Vagaro, we’ve compiled a few tips to help you make the most of graduation season.
Maximize your earnings with ease and maintain client relationships as they enter a new phase of their life—it's graduation time!
Make Business Hours Anytime
Don’t miss an appointment or a sale because you’re not online! Your clients need an easy way to book their graduation services with you—outside of normal business hours. Studies show that most college students prefer booking online. In fact, 96% of college students routinely shop online as a matter of convenience. Vagaro’s 24/7 online booking lets them schedule with you anywhere from the library to their dorm room—whenever and wherever it’s most convenient.
At graduation, it’s never been a better time to use our Get Featured option, which, coupled with the Vagaro Marketplace website and app, helps new customers discover you. This way, your business will be at the top of the page, ranked higher than other local competitors!
Daily Deals & Packages = Extra Dollars
So now that you've got online booking and you’re a Vagaro Featured Business, things are looking pretty peachy. As a Featured Business, you’re making sure new customers take notice—but what if there were a way you could entice them to act?
Vagaro Daily Deals are an easy way to bring in new business. Promoting discounts on services, memberships, classes, or packages has never been easier. A Featured Business + Daily Deal = a force to be reckoned with!
Bright Ideas!
Not sure how to start? Here’s a few ideas to drum up business from grads and their families:
- Use Daily Deals to market to customers who may only be in town for the graduation and don't know where to go for last minute services & pampering
- Use Daily Deals to allow grads to take advantage of discounts on services they'll need as they transition from school into the workforce, or from high school to college
- For Fitness studios: Use Daily Deals to offer short-term reciprocity with other fitness studios, or offer low-fee guest passes so grad families can keep their routine even when they're out of town
- Graduation Packages: Let the parents come in & get pampered while the graduate prepares for their big day. Think haircuts for dads & grads, styling for mom & grad, mani/pedi services, facials, or massage for stressed-out students & their families
When it comes to Daily Deals, the sky is the limit! Customize your Daily Deals to run for as long as you want, and easily validate them at check-out. But best of all, we don’t take a percentage of your Daily Deals—you keep all the profits.
Maintain Relationships with Your Grads
Graduation can be bittersweet, because you’ll be saying goodbye to some clients who move away afterwards. You’ll need to be ready to transition with their changing needs (and budgets.)
Vagaro’s Email Marketing makes it easy to stay in sync with your graduating clients. You can keep personal notations in their customer profiles to alert you to who’s graduating. You can also use this information as a filter to send targeted congratulatory emails and thank-you notes to your grads. You’ll appreciate the automation Vagaro provides at this time of year, when you may have clients advancing from high school, college, and beyond.
Bright Ideas!
A few ideas of ways to maintain client relationships as their lives change might include:
- Use automated emails to send out a note of Congratulations—it's free and provides the personal touch
- Use Vagaro Points to build a loyalty program that works for college students (and grads just entering the workforce)
- Create package deals for the things they need: Haircut packages, color memberships, student discounts for fitness memberships and classes, etc.
- Thank graduating clients by offering a free service, class, or product—you can even personalize the gift, using details from their Customer Profile
- Create a referral program or promotional code for graduating clients to pass along the benefits of the relationship you’ve built with them to their friends and family
- Offer to create a standing order for them, so your client can have their products shipped to wherever life takes them next
At this special time in their lives, it’s important to let your clients know how much their business means to you. We make it easier to add that personal touch effortlessly & easily.
In the words of Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the places they’ll go!" Make sure that wherever they go next, they take a part of you with them.
What are your best business strategies? Tweet us @Vagaro & share with us how you’re taking care of graduates and making the most of Graduation Season!
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