Spa Gift Certificates

Today, we make the integration of two great spa software companies a reality! SpaBoom now sends your Instant Gift Certificate sales transactions directly into your Harms Millennium software, using a special GC-SDK created by Harms!

How does this work? Assuming all of the requirements are met, and you perform the setup steps, SpaBoom will send all the Instant GC information to your Millennium system.

One big caveat is CC information, as opposed to GC information. Due to onerous CC rules by the credit card companies, SpaBoom does NOT send CC information into Millennium. This means you cannot use Millennium to process the CC's obtained from your SpaBoom sales. SpaBoom has a number of CC processing options available. Please contact SpaBoom for assistance or questions regarding CC options.

Today, we enter beta testing, with the intent to release this to all our customers within two or three weeks.

Please be sure to tell us if you're a Harms Millennium customer, and would like SpaBoom to automatically send your Instant Gift Certificate sales into Millennium!

Posted in Millennium by Harms, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management, General, Spa Gift Certificates • 8 Comments »

Last year, almost half of the Instant Gift Certificates for Valentine's Day were sold in the last 48 hours. That's a lot of last-minute gift givers — and it's not too late to make your spa the easy, perfect choice for them!

I know I've hit on this before, but a lot of guys just aren't that comfortable buying a spa gift certificate for their wife or girlfriend. He's doing it because he knows that she'll love it — and he's enduring this pain for her (well, really the benefits he'll receive in return).

I can channel the typical man's fear quite easily. Even though I love to spa, I still stick pretty close to the massage menu. Venturing out into wraps, facials and exfoliation is uncharted territory. What I need is for you to guide me, or even better, just tell me exactly what to buy.

Here's the good part: that's super-easy for you to do! Just go into Events and click on "Valentine's Day". Pick two or three of your services that make ideal Valentine's Day gifts and you're done!

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • 1 Comment »

We've been listing SpaBoomers on Spa Emergency just in alphabetical order. But there's really no reason to benefit "A Spa" while penalizing "Ze Spa". Last night, we put in place SpaRank, our own miniature version of Google's PageRank that determines the order you appear within your city on Spa Emergency. Unlike Google, we're not evaluating links to and from your website, but instead the factors that contribute to your success selling online. Many of those you directly control, and you can improve your ranking by taking advantage of them:

• Listing Description in Setup, Basics that describes the unique attributes of your spa, helping gift givers choose you for their recipient.
• Services: SpaBoomers that sell Instant Gift Certificates for services in addition to dollar amounts sell more. Having a healthy selection of services with good descriptions makes it easier for you clients to find the right gift. It's easy to do in Setup, Services and more info is in Help.
• Current specials in Events make it easy to choose the perfect, personalized gift. Many gift givers are unfamiliar with spas and spa services — highlighting your services for the current occasion makes their life easier, and increases your sales. We always put Events out there for you — all you need to do is pick a couple of services that go with the occasion.

The result is the better, more successful listings at the top of Spa Emergency within each city or zip code search. Make sure that's you!

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Marketing your spa to local businesses can help you establish a steady stream of return Instant Gift Certificate buyers. Ask anyone responsible for providing cool gifts for employees' birthdays, the holidays, or general appreciation how quickly they run out of options. I know, I've done it.

As a spa you have a unique opportunity to be 'the best choice' when it comes to those corporate gifts. How? There are a number of ways to be seen, not the least of which involves contacting the HR department of local corporations and letting them know you are happy to provide your spa services for their employees, and you may even consider offering special packages to incent these larger prospects to try you out.

Joining the local Chamber of Commerce or other organizations is also an easy way to get known within the business community. Participation in local Chamber events provides good exposure to clients as well as a way to build relationships with the corporate representatives that routinely attend.

Signage in your spa also offers up a way to be noticed. Instant POP has built-in poster ideas that you can customize to best fit your spa's marketing style. Print a few up and let the world know that you specialize in corporate gifting. A poster that says "Our spa's Instant Gift Certificates Make the Perfect Corporate Gift!" will go a long way toward planting the seed so that the next time that corporate buyer is tasked with coming up with great gifts, your spa comes immediately to mind. And, you can capture the attention of visitors, possibly even the very person who makes the gifting decisions at the local corporation, while they're enjoying a service of their own!

So tell folks what you do, and why Instant Gift Certificates to your spa take ho hum corporate gifts and make them special!

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Our theme of top 10 SpaBoomers from the Holidays continues with Tom Winegar at Renew Day Spa:

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • 1 Comment »

Anne Adams at Terrace Retreat Salon & Day Spa, a top 10 SpaBoomer, appreciates the time savings Instant Gift Certificates create:

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Our theme continues with top 10 sellers from the Holidays! Penny Limperis at Spa Constantine comments:

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • 2 Comments »

They need you to make their life easier — Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and you can help all of those guys find the perfect gift!

• Appeal to the mind of the typical GC buyer: provide a small selection of 2 or 3 services and packages to promote just for Valentine's Day. Highlight the benefits of the treatment, not the technical details. Men are buying romance, not a mineral salt scrub.
• Valentine's Day is a great opportunity to upgrade your gift certificate sales:
A man buying a spa gift certificate for a woman is like a woman buying a gift certificate for a man in an auto parts store; both have one goal in mind: to escape as quickly as possible!
• Use the SpaBoom Valentine's Day event to highlight those special services and packages. To learn how, see SpaBoom Help.
• Events appear automatically for Dynamic Websites, or you can add a link to your existing website (here's how).
• Your specials in Events will also appear on Spa Emergency for more marketing exposure.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • 1 Comment »

With the Holidays behind us, we can all look back and be extremely proud of what we've accomplished! We've decided to gather and share the reflections of spa owners and directors among the top 10 Instant Gift Certificate sellers for the Holidays this year. Here's our first in the series, from Elissa Breitbard at Betty's Bath & Day Spa in Albuquerque:

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

We've barely recovered from the holidays, but it's already time to start promoting Valentine's Day. You have clients coming in now that you might not see again until after Valentine's Day — so make sure they know you've got the perfect romantic gift for them!

Go to Setup, Instant POP to print or customize your Valentine's Day point-of-purchase display. For more information, see SpaBoom Help.

Thanks for all of your great feedback on Instant POP — that's why we've expanded it to apply for all gift giving occasions.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Wow! SpaBoomers sold over $2M in Instant Gift Certificates for the Holidays!

We last left off on the Tuesday before Christmas; as you can see in the graph above, there was another huge bump in sales at the end of the week. The Friday before Christmas was the biggest of the holiday season, pulling in 11% of holiday sales with a 54% increase over Tuesday.

More fun Instant GC holiday stats:

• 60% of holiday sales came in the week before Christmas.
• 55% of GCs were for services for an average of $110 each, while dollar amount GCs averaged $103 each.
• For service GCs, less than 10% had multiple services.
• 24% of GCs were part of buying more than one.
• 84% of GCs were printed and 16% were emailed.

How were your holiday sales? What worked (or didn't) for promoting gift certificates?

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • 4 Comments »

Case in point: a small day spa in the small town of Sedalia, Missouri, is one of our top 50 sellers! Bodyworks Day Spa is kicking butt selling online! Their website conversion rate (turning visitors into clients) is extremely high — 16% vs. 5.4% average across all Dynamic Websites — during the big sales upswing for the holidays!

How? Pam Vaught, founder, makes marketing magic, promoting her website prominently in her advertising. Check out the "last minute" print ad she's running:

Notice the prominence of the Instant Online Gift Certificate message. "Gift of relaxation with no stress" is a strong message that will garner those last minute gift givers.

And when visitors get to the Bodyworks site, they'll see that Pam is highlighting special holiday packages, making gift giving easy! There's four options to choose from, and they're the first thing you see in Instant GCs. No wonder she has such a great conversion rate!

Great work, Pam, and thank you for sharing what's paying off for your spa this holiday season!

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • 3 Comments »

Just for fun, I graphed Instant Gift Certificate sales so far this month. Pretty dramatic upswing as we've gotten deeper into December! On the 19th, SpaBoomers sold seven times as many Instant GCs as on December 1st.

Every Monday in December has established a new level, followed by a slight dip over the weekend, and then a new high the following Monday.

What do you think is going to happen on the last five days before Christmas?

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • 10 Comments »

We'd bounced this idea around before, and another great post from Brandy at karmassage on BodyworkOnline spurred us into action:

Great idea — we've just added a new feature to instantly create a point-of-purchase (POP) display for Instant Gift Certificates. We call it Instant POP!

Here's what you do:

1. Go to the Setup tab in SpaBoom and click on Instant POP in the list of options on the left.
2. Click on "Print or view" to bring up a PDF of your POP display.
3. Make any changes to the text, font, colors, etc. that you desire and hit the Update button, then "Print or View" again.
4. When it's the way you like it, print it!

You've just created a point-of-purchase display in record time, perfect for posting at the front desk or running off color duplicates to use as a retail bag stuffer.

Although we're not going to replace Photoshop, I'm sure there are lots of cool things we can do with this — what kind of point-of-purchase displays do you want?

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • 7 Comments »

You may have noticed a few new GC designs available on your Instant Gift Certificate page!

We have pushed out several new designs for All Occasions, Holidays and Valentine's. There's just one catch: In a previous blog posting, entitled More choices means less sales, we have an interesting conundrum. Do we push out the new GCs and potentially run into the problem of offering too many choices, or do we run the risk of hiding a few designs our customers might like? To solve our conundrum, we looked at the popularity of all our designs, and hid the least popular ones.

So, please review the designs. Under Setup, GC Designs, you can easily hide or unhide those designs you want to offer or remove from the list, as you feel appropriate (don't forget to check the "Show hidden designs?" checkbox at the top of the page). Of course, you don't have to do anything and you'll have great looking GC designs available on your website.

We're working on more, and should have them available shortly. As always, suggestions are much appreciated so keep 'em coming! Tell us what you think!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

We're on the verge of the biggest gift certificate selling season of the year! No better time to review the simple, quick and proven ways to increase your online sales:

1. Don't hide what you really care about in fancy graphics. Or any graphics. Use plain text. When was the last time you looked at a banner ad — that's what the graphics on your website are to your visitors.
2. Include a link to Instant Gift Certificates in your main navigation.
3. Make that main navigation consistent, in the same place on every page on your website.
4. Talk about Instant Gift Certificates in the main text of your home page, under it's own subtitle. For example:
   New! Instant Gift Certificates
   
   We have the perfect last-minute gift! Design, preview and immediately print or email an Instant Gift Certificate.
5. Don't open your Instant Gift Certificates page in a new window. It's like making a client walk out of your spa and go next door to buy a gift certificate.
6. Don't call your Instant Gift Certificates just "gift certificates". You're a SpaBoomer, you're unique — you've got the online gift giving solution. Use words like "online", "instant" and "immediate".
7. Highlight 2 or 3 holiday packages that stress the benefit to the purchaser.
8. Make your Instant Gift Certificates links go directly to Instant Gift Certificates. No in-between pages — ever notice that the more steps it takes to do something, the less likely you are to do it?
9. Don't just promote emailing Instant Gift Certificates; 75% are printed. It's the instant part that's important.
10. Close your eyes. Forget that you've ever seen your website. Open your eyes and look at it for the first time. Make sure it's obvious what you want your visitors to do.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • 2 Comments »

I love seeing a series of Instant Gift Certificates sold by one SpaBoomer in just a few minutes. You know someone just found a way to put a lot of check marks on their holiday shopping list all at once. 20% of the Instant GCs sold since December 1st have been part of purchases of 2 or more at a time.

Last night was a new record, though. Someone found the perfect solution to the company employee gift: an Instant GC for everyone, resulting in 22 GCs sold in a row.

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • 2 Comments »

Today is my best friend Karin's birthday. She lives in Kansas City; I live in Albuquerque. At 9:43 a.m. I went onto to Spa Emergency for Kansas City spas, purchased a beautiful Instant Gift Certificate to Spa Catalina for a Catalina Pedicure (my friend loooves pedicures!), and emailed the GC.

At 10:00 a.m. I received a thank you email from Karin, and boy is she jazzed! She's looking at her schedule to see if she might be able to squeeze in that lovely treatment as soon as this afternoon!

I thought that was pretty cool. How often are you able to share a great gift, then find out if it 'fits'–all in the same hour–with someone 1000 miles away?

And, I'm guessing I'm not the only one out there with great intentions (to buy an awesome gift well in advance of an occasion) that just never seem to materialize. Good thing we have the perfect way to handle life's little gift giving emergencies, huh?

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Here's an easy tip for increasing your holiday gift certificate sales: Make sure your voicemail greeting mentions that more information is available on your website, and that gift certificates can be emailed or printed from home.

As this holiday season swings into full gear, you don't want to lose sales because there are more incoming calls than you have incoming lines or people to answer your phone. Also, many last minute buyers will try to call after hours.

One of the best voicemail greetings I've heard lately, is from Serenity Now! Massage Therapy. They update their voicemail greeting early each morning, before they open, and quickly address the most common issues that generate phone calls.

Jessica at Serenity Now! knows how to sell. Take a look at her website, and notice how easy it is to buy a gift certificate.

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Business Management, General, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Of Instant Gift Certificates, that is. But first, let's step back and talk about what happens when you sell an Instant Gift Certificate.

Selling Instant Gift Certificates

Every time you sell an Instant Gift Certificate, you'll receive an email copy of the receipt sent to your client (and a copy of the emailed GC, if your client choose to email it).

1. If you're using automatic credit card processing, then you've already been paid. If you're doing manual processing, then you need to login to your account at SpaBoom and click on the GCs tab; any GCs you need to process have a cute little credit card icon next to them. Just click on it to bring up the credit card information.
2. Process the credit card like you would a phone order. For tracking purposes, enter the approval code and invoice # from the credit card transaction, and then change the status to "Processed". You can make any notes that you'd like to see for future reference.
3. If you're unable to successfully process the credit card, then contact the client for additional information. If you're unable to resolve, then mark the credit card has "All attempts failed", and then click on the GC and Void it.

Redeeming Instant Gift Certificates

Now, let's get to the redemption part. The lucky recipient has arrived on the scene:

1. When the recipient schedules their appointment, go to the GCs tab and search for the GC by the To, From, date or ID.
2. Verify that the GC is valid and check the remaining balance.
3. Depending on your policy, you may still want to collect credit card information to hold the appointment.
4. When the GC is redeemed, bring it back up in GCs. Click on the ID for the GC to see the history of activity.
5. Click Redeem and record the amount of the GC that has been used.
6. You don't need to issue a replacement GC for any unused portion. You can simply track the unused amount in SpaBoom. Some spas note the unused amount on the GC, and hand it back to the client, or use a rubber stamp with a blank to fill in the unused amount.

Posted in Tutorials, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »