How to Get Salon Clients Back After the Summer

Every summer, your salon is in danger of losing just a few clients and not because they were unhappy. So what's going on here? And more importantly, how can we get them back through the door? Hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the internet with another dose of my Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. Nearly halfway through September, my goodness, I even noticed the day is getting a little shorter this week. So what are we talking about today? Well, we're talking about losing clients. This is off the back of an episode that I did a couple of weeks ago, where I talked about trying to get our clients back on track, back in the salon, back into good routines and good habits after the summer holiday. And the implication there, of course, is that if we don't do something to get people back into the groove, back into spending again, either we're missing out and leaving money on the table or more frighteningly, we're going to lose a few clients. This happens quietly every single year in lots and lots of salons. So what's going on here and why on earth does it matter? Well, what's going on is disruption, holidays, weeks away, kids off school, it being too bloody hot to come into the salon. Routines get broken in a way that they don't at any other point in the year, really. And I think it's a little bit easier when we look at disruption, perhaps across Christmas and New Year, because most of our clients are going through the same thing. It's not the same across the summer holidays. It's such an extended period of time. And the experience of your clients is so varied, it can actually be quite hard to get a handle on how we can keep our clients coming through the door. So what happens is somebody ends up skipping an appointment and then they're out of the cycle. Then a bit of time passes and it starts to feel a bit awkward for the client and it starts to feel a bit awkward for you as well to get back in touch. Not because anyone sat down and decided to leave you, not because you annoyed anyone, not because you screwed up someone's service or cocked up somebody's hair. They've just kind of fallen out of the routine and fallen out of the salon family. And of course, that's important because getting new clients is so hard these days. We've got to work so hard to get new people through the door. So once they're here and spending with you, my goodness, let's make sure they remain part of the salon family. And in line with keeping people part of the salon family, this episode is supported by Mead Loyalty. If you've had salon loyalty cards printed and then watch them vanish into the bottom of your client's handbag, Mead is the version that stays put. Your client's loyalty card carries your branding and sits in their Apple or Google wallet right next to their bank cards. There's nothing for them to download and nothing for them to lose. Your customer scans their code when it's time to pay. You decide what earns a stamp and you decide what the reward is too. Free to use for up to 50 members. After that, we have an exclusive code, BUILD25, which takes 25% of your fees for life. Head to meadloyalty.com, M-E-E-D loyalty.com, and sign up to take loyalty seriously today. Thanks again to Mead for supporting the Build Your Salon podcast. So most owners read a gap in somebody's spending pattern as a bit of a judgment, and that's why it can feel a bit awkward for us to start reaching out to people as well. We're worried that somehow they're judging us and that they don't want to come back, and we start filling in the gaps in the customer's story with our perception of what's going on. And I will tell you now, my darling, after 20-odd years in the salon business, I know it doesn't possibly look that way, does it? But after this many years in the salon business, you will drive yourself insane trying to guess what's going on with your client. So reaching out is not admitting that you've done anything wrong. It's not admitting that you've been dumped. What it's admitting is that you've actually noticed. And I had one client, bless her heart, Irene, her name was, and she was one of my favorite clients ever because she would have anything color-wise apart from pink. It's anything she wouldn't have. But anytime we had a new color in the salon, Irene was the first one to try it, and she loved the wacky, outrageous, really vibrant colors. But Irene only came into the salon when she had a special occasion, when she was going on holiday, when she was visiting her husband's family, when she was going to a gig because she really liked music. Then she would come in, and so it was a very erratic spending pattern with Irene. And I didn't notice that she hadn't come in for a little while. It turned out she'd been really, really ill, and she was so hurt that I hadn't noticed that she hadn't been in, that I hadn't reached out to try and get her back into the salon. She gave us another chance, but she could very easily have not done, and I could have lost one of my favorite clients ever. So it's not that you've necessarily done anything wrong, but the client is waiting for you to notice, my darling, especially if they've been spending money with you for quite a long time. So that awkwardness, we need to nip it in the bud. We need to get in there. We need to reach out to our clients and get them back in. Now, lots of you have salon software systems, expensive salon software systems, overpriced salon software systems. Listen to me getting all riled again about software. But lots of you have got these systems in place where something kicks in and it starts to reach out to lapsed clients for you automatically. So there's a problem. And the problem is, particularly for you beauty guys, not so much for hair, because your pattern of spend tends to be fairly consistent across your clientele. But for beauty, you have a big variance in the returning rate for your clients. So you have some clients that come in, let's say for nails, they could be in once a week, once every couple of weeks, maybe once every three weeks. But if they're coming in for facials, they might only be coming in every four to six weeks. If the massage, maybe every four to six weeks. So there's a big variance in place. And the problem with these salon software systems is it applies a blunt rule to all of your clients. So basically you set up in the salon system. If we haven't seen anyone for, I don't know, eight weeks, 12 weeks, it reaches out usually with an email to try and get them back through the door. I have a couple of problems with this. The first is that very blunt rule. And I'll explain how we can do a slightly better job in just a second. And the second problem I have with it is it tends to be one email. And that's not enough. Let me explain why. Let's say you are a hair salon client and you've been going into a salon every six weeks. The salon notices after, say, eight weeks or 10 weeks, I would start with 12. So double their return rate. So at 12 weeks, we've noticed they haven't come back in. And we reach out to them and say, we'd love to get you back through the door. We've missed you. We've noticed you haven't been back. What do we need to do? What did we do wrong? Please come in. Please come in. We wouldn't grovel in that sort of way. But we would notice and invite them to come back into the salon to try and get past that awkwardness that the client might be feeling. Problem is, what if your client went to a salon three days ago? It's not necessarily that they don't want to come back. It's not necessarily they don't want to give you another try. They might hate the salon they went to three days ago. They just don't need another haircut for a while. And if we're not reaching out to them again and again and again, then we're going to miss out on the opportunity to get that client back through the door. So here's what you're going to have to do instead. Two things. Firstly, you're going to have to do a bit of work. You're going to have to find these people in your database properly, not just a blunt people who haven't been in for 12 weeks, a specific list for each of your groups of services. So if you work in beauty, you're going to have to bring up a list of people that haven't been in for three or four weeks for your nail clients, haven't been in for six or seven weeks for a facial or a massage. You're going to have to go through each group of services and bring those people back in that blunt eight weeks, 12 weeks, 14 weeks is not going to work. Problem is, if you've got, let's say, a 12 week client at 12 week lapse rather, and they were a two week client, they might have been somewhere else five or six times. They started to build a pattern of spend somewhere else. They started to build some loyalty somewhere else. It's going to be really, really hard to get them back through the door. So your salon software will help you in pulling those reports. It's probably not going to be able to do it automatically for all of those groups of clients. The second thing is, once you notice that somebody is lapsed, we keep reaching out. They keep getting emails. They keep getting invitations. Basically, until one of two things happen, either they unsubscribe or they die. That's the only way they're going to get off that list. OK, we're not going to lose touch with them again. If you need help with pulling those reports, by the way, reach out to your salon software company. Explain what it is that you're trying to do. The more people that ask for these reports, the more people that ask for this functionality, the more likely it is to get put onto their radar and built in the next round of updates. What will work best is if you reach out personally. And I had an assistant manager, dreadful, dreadful person. But I had an assistant manager who did this really, really well, because what he used to do was bring up a list of lost clients. He would pick up the phone, reach out to them, ask them what was going on, get them booked in. And that's the approach that's going to work absolutely the best for you. So make it personal. If you haven't got the nerve to pick up the phone, do a voice note. If you haven't got enough to do a voice note, send them a message. But my goodness, make sure it comes from you to them with love. Yes, you can copy and paste the text, but personalise it. Make sure you mention something that makes them feel that they're special, that you've noticed that you want them back through the door. You don't necessarily have to discount, but you could. OK, now I'm going to tell you, if you have gone to another salon five times and built up a pattern of loyalty somewhere else, 10% is not going to get you back through the door. OK, it's not enough. If you're using a discount to change a pattern of loyalty, to change a pattern of spend somewhere else, if they're in habits, if they've been going somewhere else five times, that place is not doing a dreadful job. 10% off is not going to cut it. If that client was worth something to you, if the lifetime value of that client was high, 20%, 50%, 80%. My God, give them the service for a fiver if you have to. Do whatever it takes to disrupt that pattern of spend elsewhere and get them back through your salon doors. So what we're not going to do is blanket base everyone who's lapsed all in one go. We're not going to do the we haven't seen you in ages thing. We're going to reach out personally. We're going to tailor it according to the group of services that we lost the client on. And we're going to make sure they know this is a personal note from you to them. Now, this isn't just a September thing. We should be doing this regularly. And I get that it's a lot of work. It's only going to feel like a lot of work, though, because you haven't done it. Next month is probably only going to be two or three of these people. So it's not going to take anywhere near as long. So get into the habit of doing ideally monthly. Certainly check the stats monthly. If you can't do it monthly, then probably every seven or eight weeks is the absolute minimum. If you're getting down to once a quarter, I think you're leaving it too long to reach out to people. So pull the list. Pick 10 people today. Send 10 messages and let me know how you get on. You know, I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. My email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen. What have I missed? What are you doing to make sure that people are coming back to your business again and again and again? Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the Internet again with another dose of my wise hour wisdom. And until then, take care. Bye.