Why Salon Email Marketing Gets Ignored (And How It's Costing You)

Everybody's obsessing and fighting for attention on social media, which means there's an opportunity there because they're ignoring one channel, which might actually make you some money. Hello my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the internet again with another dose of my Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? I hope achingly well, here on the 5th of October. How's the month looking? I'm hearing some really good stuff in my group coaching program. We've actually come through a fairly good August, which, you know, let's face it, we can't always take for granted, through a strong September as well. And now October looks really good as well. I'm excited for the rest of this year. It's my favorite marketing time of year. I love that. I don't love that it's getting colder, but I love the kind of coziness that comes with the marketing this time of year. I love the intimacy of it. I love the warmth. I love the pumpkin spice. Let's face it, Phil, you're that gay. Anyway, what are we talking about today? We are talking about marketing, but we're not talking about social media. I know. Shocker, isn't it? Imagine marketing without social media. Well, God, we're in love with it, aren't we? And I get that, you know, it's kind of fun. We're personally addicted to social media. Therefore, we feel that it has to be a feature of our marketing. And then we get to kid ourselves if we're spending an hour and a half scrolling on Instagram that we're doing some kind of research or that we're marketing our businesses. And then we wonder why actually none of that is converting into money in your business at all. In fact, we might do an episode about this because I think social media is not just a kind of zero something. I think it might actually be hurting your business, but we'll keep that for another day. I want to talk instead about a marketing channel that actually puts money in your bank. Gosh, I sound old fashioned, don't I? Nobody has a till anymore. Who carries cash? But unfortunately, email marketing gets treated as kind of the boring, neglected cousin of marketing. And I think that's a real shame. I think this love affair that we have with social, where it does feel more exciting. It feels more now. But that feeling has got nothing to do with results. And social media is bloody hard. It's a lot harder than it looks. And it's a lot harder than it looks because clients aren't on social media looking for a new salon. And I've said for a couple of episodes now, your marketing needs to be much more fearsome in terms of stealing clients from other salons. And I don't think social media is a great space to do it. I don't think clients are there looking for that opportunity. They're there looking for dogs doing stupid things. They're stalking their friends and quietly judging them on their fashion choices when they're on holiday. They're following their favourite influencers. They're looking for thirst traps. They want to watch people shampooing rugs. God damn it. And interrupting all of that noise with some really good information that you might have about your salon is really, really hard. And it's not a failure if you're struggling on social media. But the problem is not only are we struggling, not only does it not put money in the till, but we're not doing anything fucking else. And that's really got to change. Imagine I built a table and gave it one leg. It's not going to work. We want more than one pillar in our marketing and building a business on one platform is wobbly and a bit dangerous. Building it on a platform that you don't own. Well, that gets really, really risky. And we've all heard stories of people's accounts getting hacked, of people's accounts getting locked so they can't actually get in and do anything. Algorithms changing overnight. Your reach can vanish. Heck, I've even heard of some people having their accounts closed down altogether. And there's nothing you can do to get that information out of Instagram or out of Facebook or out of TikTok because it's not your information. You're renting that information. You provide the content. They get all the contact details. Email is a bit different because this is the list that you actually own and you can take anywhere. And if one day a new social media platform comes along, you can populate it with your email list because it's the list that you've got somewhere else outside your socials. Also controversially, I'm going to say outside your salon software as well. Yes, I know your salon software can do a passable job at helping with email. Personally, myself, I would want that list living somewhere else just in case. So why is email actually good? Well, the first thing I like about it is it's trackable. We know that what we're putting in the emails either works or doesn't work. And we can make it trackable by creating special packages, bundles, discount codes, links that nobody else is going to find anywhere else. So we know what emails are actually putting money in the till, but we can track how many people receive the email. We can track how many people open the email, how many people clicked on the link. It's much more trackable. That journey through the buying process is much more trackable. It's cheap, not free. Nothing that takes your time is free. And if you're using a free email software platform, honestly, I think this is one where you should stop being cheap and put your hand in your pocket and spend a little bit of money on a decent platform that you can use. It's very, very flexible because we don't necessarily have to follow a trend in order to stand out. We don't have to do what everybody else is doing like we do on social media. We can change the flavour. We can change the variety of stuff that we send out. It can be promotional one day. It could be amazing information for your client the next day. And it could be, you know, in three days' time we send out something from behind the scenes or about your team. It's a little bit friendlier and it's a little bit more intimate. So what I really like is that it's a more intimate conversation. What do I mean by that? Social media to me is like a nightclub. Trying to get someone to listen to you in a nightclub is really hard because it's loud, it's busy and there's lots and lots of distractions. At some stage, we want that quieter conversation. We want to slip outside with that person and start whispering in their ear. That's where email comes in. And again, I'm going to reiterate this point. It's the one list you've got that nobody can take away. So, OK, email might not look as sexy. It doesn't mean it's less effective. It doesn't mean it's not worth your time. It doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve some effort and some attention and maybe some investment as well. And it's hugely underused. And I think that's an opportunity. Beyond sending the odd confirmation email, I don't think many salons are taking this seriously at all. And don't go thinking it just has to be newsletter style stuff. We can send our confirmations with a little cheeky upsell. That works. We can automate things like aftercare advice. And I used to do this all the time for my hair extension clients because I know I'd covered aftercare when we were doing our consultation. And I know we'd gone through it again while I was fitting the hair extensions. Do they listen? No, because they're too busy pawing their beautiful long hair. The aftercare automation, though, made sure that I could say you were told that you needed to use this shampoo and conditioner. So then when I'm detangling, I can charge them extra. And then, of course, we've got our lost client reengagement. You try and get in touch with somebody who's unfollowed you on social media. That's not quite so easy getting in touch with somebody who stopped coming into the salon, though. There is your opportunity. And also what I really like is email as a positioning tool. It shows people we know what we're talking about. It shows that we're the experts. All of those opportunities are sitting in your opportunity box. And they're all there. We're starting to collect lots of email accounts by virtue of online booking, apart from anything else, and we're not doing enough with it, and I really want today's episode to be a bit of a call to arms just to make sure you're thinking about email in a slightly different way. Seeing the opportunity, maybe getting a few emails out there. I don't think it's really a choice. I think you need to be looking for these opportunities to make more money in your business and doing the stuff that maybe not everybody else is doing. I do have a little cheat sheet to help you. If you head over to queenofsalons.com, there's a page called links because I'm inventive like that. I put a cheat sheet together called get a grip on email free. All you do is submit your email address and I will send it over to your inbox. And just a few short days until I'm coming all over the Internet again with another dose of my weekly wisdom. In the meantime, if there's anything you'd like to raise, or if you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast, please reach out and let me know via the email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen: phil@buildyoursalon.com. And until next time, please take care.