Valentine's Day and spas are a natural fit, so lose the Hallmark holiday blues and boost your first quarter bottom line!

Join us as we outline effective, easy marketing strategies that generate gift certificate revenue and effectively promote your brand this Valentine's Day.

Reserve your Webinar Seat Now!

Title: Market the Love for Valentine's Day – Webinar
Date: Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Janell showed her fantastic skills as a presenter yet again on the 18th, bringing you up to speed on trends in the market for 2012 that will help boost your bottom line, create new customers, and generally get everyone on YOUR bandwagon.  How can you not love that?

If you couldn't make the webinar, we're sorry to have missed you! But, you can download the presentation and watch the video streaming at your convenience right here. Just block out some time for our next webinar – we always have great Q & A sessions at the end, and a limited-time special that you'll want to know about.

Watch the Video: 3 Trends in 2012 You Can't Afford to Miss

Download and follow along with our presentation [PDF]

Joy of Spa News: The Power of Love edition is now ready for you to customize. It is complete as is, but you are always welcome to make it yours by playing with the introduction, which follows:

This edition will launch over a three day period, January 31st-February 2nd, unless you've opted to change the date it goes out. Be sure to make any changes prior to that date! (And be sure to send yourself a test email after making any edits, and remember that Events that encompass the date on which your email is sent will be included in the email as well.)

Note: The new articles that accompany this edition of the Joy of Spa News will appear magically before it goes out to your clients, even if you can't see them in their entirety when you send yourself a test email. No worries, they'll be in place! We promise!

We highly recommend creating Valentine's-related events and relaxing, soothing, service packages to accompany this edition of Joy of Spa News. Helping people choose a great spa gift package for the occasion provides them a perfect gift solution while increasing the average amount of the gift certificates — a win win!

Remember, the Joy of Spa News is branded with your spa's logo and when your client clicks to read more, the website is branded with your logo, too!

Not yet signed up to send a beautiful, branded newsletter to your clients on a regular basis? Now is your time to get onboard! Go to Setup, Basics to put Joy of Spa to work for your spa!

If you've heard of our amazing Facebook Sweepstakes capabilities but have been hesitant to try it out, we've made it even easier.

First, we have a one-page guide to success for your first (or fortieth!) Sweepstakes using our experience with small businesses all over the country:

Facebook Success Guide

Included on that guide there is a perfectly summarized video you can watch in under 3 minutes that shows you the simple process of setting up a Sweepstakes.

Now, get going and grow your Likes!

Pure Salon & Spa is on a mission to soothe the senses, renew their clients vitality and restore the body and mind to a more beautiful state. Their knowledgeable staff specializes in a variety of relaxing beauty and body treatments including: manicures and pedicures, therapeutic massages, facials, body scrubs and body wraps, and hair services. They truly want to pamper clients and create an unforgettable salon and spa experience every time.

Pure Salon & Spa wanted an updated, modern and fresh website that incorporated crisp lines and sharp, bright colors. They also have a large spa and salon product inventory so they wanted to make it more accessible to online customers. Pure specializes in weddings and needed a section of the website dedicated to bridal and wedding services as well as an image gallery that would give potential clients a sense of their expertise.

The solution was to create simple navigation that carried through the modern theme and resulted in a decidedly crisp and beautiful aesthetic for their website. Our graphic design team used sub-menus for more complex pages, which made the website extremely easy-to-use for online visitors and also added an accordion menu for their wedding and bridal gallery. This new design also streamlined the project development process and kept the implementation running smoothly, yielding a faster result.

Pure Salon & Spa came into the website design process prepared with professional images from one of their partners, Great Lengths. Superior images often inspire a compelling website design, a synergy likely to produce a beautiful and effective website. In this instance, we used these fantastic images and then incorporated movement to draw the eye in and encourage visitors to linger. Pure Salon & Spa was extremely organized throughout the website design process, providing all the critical information in a timely manner and that made for a wonderfully effective partnership.

There are 3 types of promotions that encourage consumer confidence and facilitate spending — Do you know what they are?

Join us as we discuss the mechanics and psychology of marketing trends for 2012 designed to drive loyalty and increase revenue for spas and salons.

Reserve your Webinar Seat Now!

Title: 3 Trends You Can't Afford to Miss – Webinar
Date: Wednesday, January 18th 2012
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Yesterday afternoon, credit card processing for Instant Gift Certificates through SpaBooker stopped working.

In talking with SpaBooker, it was evidently their plan to stop supporting credit card processing for SpaBoom clients on January 3rd.

It actually stopped working yesterday afternoon, right before the three highest selling days of the year. The SpaBoomers we've talked to so far had no warning from SpaBooker (and obviously, we didn't either).

If you were using SpaBooker credit card processing, we have switched you to manual and our Client Services team is reaching out to you right now.

UPDATE: SpaBooker says it was a technical issue and credit card processing is back on, temporarily, until January 3rd.

UPDATE 2: SpaBooker credit card processing is now failing again for some accounts, for a new reason, as reported by their system: "network problems".

UPDATE 3: See comment below from SpaBooker support: "Please note that one of our payment interfaces, SkipJack was having processing issues today that may have affected your interface. In addition, the SpaBoom interface is no longer officially supported and any SpaBooker users that utilize this interface have been notified of this multiple times. Please use it at your own risk."

Happy Holidays, SpaBoomers!

A couple of announcements about our customer service team hours of operation this holiday:

SpaBoom will be closed all day on Monday, December 26, 2011 (Day after Christmas)

On Monday, January 2, 2012, SpaBoom will have limited support hours of 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. (MST)

Wishing you joy and peace, warmth and relaxation, and all the eggnog you can possibly enjoy!

Team SpaBoom

The National Retail Federation has upgraded the sales forecast for the 2011 holiday season. As spas and salons focus on sales leading up to Christmas, there's a renewed focus on capturing those last-minute sales and taking a piece of the forecasted $469.1 billion.

This year's Cyber-Monday was a huge success for SpaBoomers, who performed better than the national average, with same store sales increasing 38%! In 2010, SpaBoomers sold a record smashing $10 million in Instant Gift Certificates, a 25% increase over the previous year's same store sales and more then double the national average, with ComScore reporting an overall 12% online sales increase versus the corresponding days last year.

The best news this year? Fewer consumers have finished their holiday shopping and that means that more of them will be looking for last-minute gift solutions. Make sure your spa or salon takes advantage of this by utilizing some creative methods to increase your Instant Gift Certificate sales. According to the National Retail Federation, this year shoppers are more influenced by marketing so spas and salons must execute a strong and clear promotional message to capture sales.

In addition, "self-gifting" is a popular trend this holiday as retailers offer fantastic deals that consumers are purchasing for themselves. According to the National Retail Federation, six in 10 planned to buy non-gift items this holiday season, spending an average of $130, up from $112 a year ago.

So far this holiday, consumer spending has exceeded expectations and there's a tremendous opportunity for spas and salons to capture those last-minutes sales and experience a record breaking season. Stay top-of-mind with your clients this week and reap the revenue rewards this holiday.

I thought it was just me.

But dang, people. All you haters really don't dig Yelp.

Have to add my name to the list.

When I first heard about Yelp's IPO filing I really wanted to like it. I had nothing to compare it to except other pricey IPOs like Groupon, Pandora and Netflix so I was really looking forward to sinking my teeth into their meaty filing. I just assumed that our turbulent economy called for overpriced IPOs (estimated at $2 billion) that consistently post losses and generate negative cash flows. But, after digesting reviews from Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and CNNMoney I got indigestion. Guess not people!

I know what you’re thinking; sometimes it’s easy to read too much into reviews. Given that almost anyone can write a review, even a fake review, and with some legitimate reviews being filtered out (over-processed) by pesky algorithms, it’s a stretch to take any of them seriously.

Trippin' as they are to write, Yelp reviews and their accompanying stars can seriously affect a business’s bottom line, (by 5-9%), and can torch their revenue prospects. There's been an avalanche of complaints from small businesses claiming that Yelp’s sales force is badgering and its business model is an awful closed and rigged loop that actually hurts family run businesses. Yelp may claim businesses are whining just for the thrill of it, but I think they have a real issue. If businesses hate Yelp, how does it grow its revenue?

Now we're getting to Yelp's less than stellar revenue potential. Yelp's core business is running fast into a huge search issue now that Google, the source of most of Yelp's traffic, failed in its attempt to acquire Yelp and picked up a cheaper Zagat instead. Then Google changed its algorithm too so searches stay put on Google review sites. Yelp has reacted with some new but bland menu items for traffic, notably local, mobile searches (like Monocle) but since 43% of smart phone owners use the android operating system (owned by Google) I think that may not work out so well.

Yelp is the kind of review site you use when you have no real friends. I mean at least on Facebook you can get a review from someone who has the balls to give their own name. Yelp's not exactly the kind of site where you'll always find a balanced review or know whether the reviewer shares your taste or personal hygiene.

It's just a nothing-to-write-home-about review site with coarsely-chopped algorithms that leave you unsatisfied and wondering whether you're getting the whole picture. Granted, Yelp does drive sales to independent businesses and has amassed 22 million reviews, which makes them popular, but nothing lasts forever. I'm trying to remember the last time I heard someone say Myspace. I think it was Justin Timberlake.

If you want an overpriced experience that will leave you famished and less wealthy then order right off the menu at Yelp's IPO in early 2012. They are projecting a high-flying valuation, which means you'll get a heavy serving of price, without a side of earnings, and it will be topped off with a bland profit potential that's predictably overpowered by the strong scent of hype.

We have all recently realized just how close we are to Kevin Bacon, but did you know that now, thanks to Facebook, you might be able to reach him in just over 4 Facebook friends? Whew, good to know and just in time for the remake of Footloose!

Marking the distance between ourselves and others is a very human characteristic. One of the best ways for spas and salons to connect the distance between the business and consumers is by utilizing social media as a networking advantage.

With the holidays upon us one of the quickest and fastest tools to build buzz and generate interest in your Spa /Salon’s holiday gifts is through social media, specifically Facebook.

Facebook is the quickest and most expedient way to share information about your services and holiday gift solutions with a much larger audience now more than ever before. Think about this example – I send my best friend in New Hampshire a gift certificate for her birthday, she posts it on Facebook; her sister-in-law who lives in Spain, sees the post, and buys a spa package gift certificate for the two of them to use while she is visiting over Christmas. What could be better than free advertising, a returning client and the purchase of a larger Christmas package gift certificate? Facebook makes the connection that easy.

You may not like the idea of Facebook, or use it personally, but don’t you want to reach those potential spa and salon goers who are talking about their next purchase, hair cut or service treatment? And who knows, maybe Kevin Bacon will stop in!

SpaBoomers do even better

We all know retail sales are moving online, and Cyber Monday, the holiday just for online shopping, is a great leading indicator:

SpaBoomers did even better, with same store sales increasing 38%! Even SpaBoomers that don't traditionally sell a lot of gift certificates are using new techniques to sell more. Janice at Hue Salon writes:

It's going to be an epic Cyber Monday, with $1.2 billion in online sales expected today. Mobile sales are a growing portion of online transactions, fundamentally changing holiday shopping and bringing an extra dose of revenue to savvy, mobile-ready retailers. Smart phones have changed our purchasing behavior forever. The number of consumers using smart phones to purchase gifts is expected to double to 14.5% this holiday.

SpaBoom's Dynamic Websites can automatically detect a smartphone user and deliver an optimized mobile version of your website. Your address becomes a link to Google Maps so customers can find you, and your phone number becomes a link so they can click to call you. Best of all, unlike creating a separate mobile website, the SpaBoom mobile version of your Dynamic Website is great for SEO (search engine optimization).

So what can your spa or salon do to catch more smart phone consumers sales this holiday?

Provide Stellar Customer Service

During the holiday many stores are too busy to provide customers with great customer service. Make sure your spa or salon is ready with superior service this holiday . You are a service business so use that to your advantage and shine above the rest of the fray.

Check Online Reviews Daily

Take a look at your spa or salon's online reviews every day. If you need to address any last-minute issues do it right now. You don't want to lose a sale over a bad review.

Create Simple, Valuable Promotions for Customers

Spas using the strategy outlined in our recent article on great Last-Minute Cyber Monday Ideas are generating up to 80% more business than a similar promotion from last year. Click here to see how you can set one up too.

Reward Social Media Use

Encourage your clients to check-in on Facebook at your business and give them an extra incentive when they do it. This targeted marketing will increase your online visibility with friends of existing customers.

This Cyber Monday 17.8 million people will use their phones to shop for deals and your spa or salon needs to be ready online to deliver a great experience and stay top-of-mind throughout the holiday.

If your site is not mobile optimized give us a call today!

Give your spa's Instant Gift Certificate sales a real boost for Cyber Monday:

• Run a BOGO! Buy-one-get-one-free has long been a favorite promotion of SpaBoomers because it drives two visits: the recipient and the purchaser. Learn more about BOGOs.
• Do a two-level offer: The terms for the free GC in your BOGO can be whatever you want! For example target your slow time with a two-level offer: $50 in January and $25 any other time.
• Run a BoomTime Deal: Unfortunately, consumers are trained to look for deals on Cyber Monday. Turn this to your advantage by running your own deal, without the huge costs of Groupon. Learn how to run a BoomTime Deal.
• Run a Sweepstakes: Take advantage of all those people going online by kicking off a Sweepstakes on Cyber Monday.

It's that time again, when leaves are falling, and the smells of Thanksgiving dinner and family celebration fill the air. It's time to enjoy the Fall harvest and gather with friends and family to count our blessings once more.

We're going to be closed on Thanksgiving Day, then open part of the day on Friday, November 25th. We'll be here from 8:00 a.m. — 2:00 p.m. Mountain time.

We'll be back to our regular schedule on Monday, November 28th, 7:00 a.m. Mountain.

May your holiday be filled with friends, family and great food!

All our best,

Team SpaBoom

The Joy of Spa News: Being Fully Present This Holiday edition is now ready for you to customize. It is complete as is, but you are always welcome to make it yours by playing with the introduction, which follows:

Joy of Spa invites you to take time to enjoy the holiday's simpler, sweeter offerings. Friends, family, and the time to count your blessings will soon arrive. Be there, be thankful, and embrace the joyous chaos sure to ensue! Happy Happy Holidays from Joy of Spa!

This edition will launch over a three day period, December 14th-16th, unless you've opted to change the date it goes out. Be sure to make any changes prior to that date! (And be sure to send yourself a test email after making any edits, and remember that Events that encompass the date on which your email is sent will be included in the email as well.)

Note: The new articles that accompany this edition of the Joy of Spa News will appear magically before it goes out to your clients, even if you can't see them in their entirety when you send yourself a test email. No worries, they'll be in place! We promise!

We highly recommend creating Holiday events and relaxing, soothing, service packages to accompany this edition of Joy of Spa News. Helping people choose a great spa gift package for the occasion provides them a perfect gift solution while increasing the average amount of the gift certificates — a win win!

Remember, the Joy of Spa News is branded with your spa's logo and when your client clicks to read more, the website is branded with your logo, too!

Not yet signed up to send a beautiful, branded newsletter to your clients on a regular basis? Now is your time to get onboard! Go to Setup, Basics to put Joy of Spa to work for your spa!

I received an email today from Amazon, inviting me to enter their sweepstakes on Facebook to win a Kindle. Over four weeks, they are giving out 4 Kindles plus 3 to the friends of the winners.

So, I can go to Facebook and Like Amazon, then enter the sweepstakes. Guess how many people Like Amazon right now? 1,686,315 (Scratch that.  Since starting this post they are now at 1,689,515.) Now, that might not be nearly the same number as those that have entered the contest, but really, what kind of odds does that represent? That's about a 1-in-fuggedaboutit odds. I might as well buy a lottery ticket. (Or just buy a Kindle. Perhaps that's the real hook.)

However, YOU can give your clients what they deserve — both the amazing gift of YOUR services, and a real actual chance to win. If you have a few hundred Likes, or even a few dozen, or a few thousand, the clients that enter your sweepstakes using the BoomTime Sweepstakes feature, they can count on having a fighting chance on seeing some gift certificate joy.

Now, that's something to get excited about.

Feel free to tout this very sentiment when you promote your Sweepstakes – use my words all you want. I won't mind.

Google is always changing their algorithm for producing search results — every week. But they've made two particularly large changes recently that I want to talk about.

The Farmer Update

The first change was back in February, and is often referred to as the Farmer update. It's good news for all of us Internet citizens, because it reduced the rankings of content farm websites that produced poor content or content scraped from it's original source. We all know it when we see it: you click on on a link in search results, get a page filled with ads and a little bit of keyword-stuffed content.

This same effect can be seen on the hundreds of useless yellow page-like directory sites that show just basic information about your spa. Google pushing these sites down in search engine results pages (SERPs) makes it easier for your website to move up in the rankings and for Google Places to take prominence.

This has been a long-standing trend in Google's algorithm for a while, and the Farmer update just re-enforces Google's strategy.

The Freshness Update

It's been a long-standing struggle for Google, the tendency to trust old, established sites more but with an interest to show the most current and relevant results. Last week's Freshness update indicates an increased emphasis on newness.

So, the best combination? Established sites with regular updates. The Freshness update specifically targets search queries that Google has decided are about current events. You may think this doesn't apply to your spa, but I see this as part of a greater trend, on Google's part, to give better ranking to regularly updated, regularly growing websites. And your spa needs to be one of them.

What We Do to Help

We're constantly tuning our Dynamic Spa Websites platform for search engine optimization (SEO). For example:

• We make blogging easy! Write a blog article, and it updates your website, Facebook and Twitter with one click. Then, your blog articles roll up into email campaigns to create your email newsletter.
• Every time your website content is updated, either from content changes, blog articles, menu changes, new events, etc. SpaBoom automatically pings Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask to notifying them of your changes.
• Automatic new content: One of things Google loves to see is websites that naturally grow in size, consistently over time. SpaBoom's built-in marketing campaigns always keep your website current and relevant, and those campaigns automatically create new pages on your site to keep it growing.
• Sitemaps are the blueprint of your website, showing search engines where to go on your site. SpaBoom automatically creates and updates your website sitemap, maximizing the indexing by search engines of your website.

As the socialite-turned-porn-star-turned-reality-star Kim Kardashian debacle interrupts our every waking hour and we endure each pundit’s predictable shots at the spectacle, can we at least use it to gain some branding wisdom?

No matter the justification for keeping wedding presents and the bling ring, we just aren’t buying what she is selling anymore. Watching the K machine's damage control is insulting because it's very clear they believe that we believe their own PR. That is dangerous for any brand, celebrity or spa.

I believe that Kim’s (since millions have all seen her naked we are on a first name basis) train-wreck brand failure in real-time can provide your business with key knowledge you can use to make your spa brand stronger and well, more classy.

So, what can we learn from the Kim spectacle? Well you have to dig deep down to the core tenants of branding to see there’s a rich reservoir of wisdom to take from her disaster and apply to your brand marketing.

Manage your brand.

Exposure matters. Kim built her brand by exposing the personal and sensational parts of her life. It went viral because (like a train wreck) few can resist watching a spoiled socialite sleep and party her way though the shallow trough of celebrity society. Just like Kim (but probably on a smaller scale) consumers are out there talking about your spa or salon and you need to monitor the conversation, better yet, get in the middle of it. Your brand is what they say about you, not what you say about yourself.

Kim’s surprise at the backlash is unbelievable. She earned the disdain she is getting and she needs to accept that even fans who follow her for leaking a sex tape and fighting with her family are still insulted that her wedding was really a pay-per-view peep show. She needs to stand up, take responsibility, and do the right thing. It will go far to begin the healing process and help salvage her bruised reputation.

That also goes for negative online reviews of your spa. If someone is so angry they are willing to take the time to leave a negative review, it begs for management to address it head on. A negative review can provide rich insight if you are willing to see through the anger to gain awareness of a problem. It might mean stepping up, taking responsibility for sub-par service and rectifying the situation. It means taking your punishment and leading by example.

Keep it simple.

Extraordinary, over-the-top spectacles just make consumers wonder what’s hiding underneath all that fluff. The best spa experiences are those that stem from businesses and employees who are passionate about what they do every day. Keeping it simple and letting your enthusiasm speak for itself will keep your brand strong long-term.

Be transparent.

Consumers are savvy enough to see through a brand singularly focused on money and revenue. That mentality shows itself in a million little things that add up to a mediocre spa experience. Instead, local spas that strive to give clients the best service and spa experience available will always win over stuffy, rude and expensive. Being honest and straightforward in your business breeds strong loyalty and client ambassadors for your spa brand.

This kind of break-up behavior obviously struck a vein of contempt among the American public because it was so blatant in its unethical and low behavior. Kim's brand is spoiled sleaze. Her latest stunt took her into the sphere of professional wrestling — wedding for profit and a focus group cast groom.

So take what you can from this contrived publicity stunt and remember that it's your passion for what you do every day in your spa that shines brightly and heightens your brand in the local community.

The holidays are ripe with new purchasing activity, but your time is running out. Thankfully, we just had a webinar about your strategy to take you through the holidays and use promotions to get YOUR brand front and center with the clients that will appreciate your services.

We discussed 3 easy promotions to increase your last minute holiday sales for the next seven weeks without spending more than 15 minutes to put them in action. Download our presentation, or watch the video and get yourself excited!

Watch the Video: Hot and Fast GCs for the Next 7 Weeks

Download and follow along with our presentation [PDF]