There was an outage from 8:05pm to 8:30pm, Mountain time on the 14th. We're still working with the data center that we use to house our servers to understand the issue. We know it was caused by human error, which is why it circumvented all of the redundancy built into the data center. We're very concerned about the issue — our data center provider has traditionally been very reliable, but we'll have to address it if we don't get great answers.

We're sorry for the interruption in service, and we're working hard to prevent it from happening again.

Here's a link to the "Seriously, Size Doesn’t Matter" posting.

Overall, I am very impressed with the quality marketing campaigns that the SpaBoom team has come up with and I am so grateful to have been able to find such an awesome team of truly caring and professional staff members who truly have the best interest of my business at heart.

Marketing isn't my thing as I am too busy taking care of my clients. I will tell you this, that I have only been a SpaBoomer since last July and already overall, just having the website has increased my business to the point that I am now able to have a second massage therapist work for me on a part time basis.

I look forward to an exciting and profitable marketing year ahead with SpaBoom!

In grattitude, Janet

Stephany at SpaBoom asked me to comment on my Valentine's Day sales. I had a Valentine's special that could only be purchased online. I discounted my 90 minute sessions by a full 30%. Yeah, I know its a chunk. But I did sell A LOT OF GIFT CERTIFICATES, 33 to be exact. 30 by SpaBoom's count, but one client had trouble with her password, so I made an exception and mailed her 3 certificates which I wrote out by hand. Technically, I only sold 2 certificates in my office for Valentine's day. I ended up selling almost double of what I sold at SpaBoom for Christmas.

Anyway, my goal was to attract clients (primarily new clients). I did not send out anything to my mailing list. I advertised in the local daily paper for two weeks (3 times per week). The ads were strategically placed so the two weeks' ads sort of ran into each other. I also put a large ad in a weekly paper. I had a big chunk of air time at a local radio station as well. The radio air time was accumulated through a "trade" of sorts. The radio ad was done in my own voice. I mentioned my website (which is very easy to remember) and also referred listeners to my newspaper ads.

Some were sold to existing clients, but most went to new clients, which was my goal. None of my existing clients who purchased the special are "regular" clients. They tend to be the type who wont book ahead and only come in a few times a year, so it is not like I am losing out that much with these clients.

I changed the expiration date temporarily. Normally it is 12 months, I changed it to 7 months for two weeks.

Not counting the radio spots, the newspaper ads cost me about $325. In reality, I would have been happy to break even. Truly, I thought I would sell about 20.

I borrowed the look and feel from the ad listed in the "seriously, size doesn't matter" blog and added my own special touch. If I am going to pay good money on a newspaper ad, I want to see results. I would never put an ad in which doesn't have some kind of offer, most of the time it is an offer for new clients. My conversion rate was about 48% for Feb 6th (first day of my ad and radio promo) to February 14th.

I didn't limit the amount of certificates a client could buy, I figured I wouldn't need to. If someone bought more than one, they generally bought one for themselves and gave the others to someone else, usually a family member.

Part of this was an experiment. I wanted to see how high I could get my conversion rate. The next part of the experiment will be in pricing. Can I raise the price and keep the conversion rate about the same? If I advertise a less expensive gift certificate will I sell more of them? If I run a smaller ad in the paper, will I sell as many certificates? Did the radio advertising really pull in any sales? What will happen if I put a spot on a different station?

Can you tell I love marketing?

Blog on, Christine