Spa Gift Certificates

We love feedback! Your super-positive insight tells us when we're on the right track, and your wish list drives what we're working on every day.

What follows falls into the super-positive category, and after speaking at length with Ken at Brooks Massage in LA, I have to say positive seems to be his MO in life!

Ken shared why they became part of the SpaBoom family:

Thank you for your support, Ken and Yanni, and congratulations on your recent Miami wedding!

Posted in General, Spa Gift Certificates • 1 Comment »

Every spa operator knows (and every soon-to-open spa should) that spa gift certificates sales represent a critical source of annual revenue and new customers. Depending on the age and client market of a spa, these important sales can account from anywhere between 10-25% of total sales, a particularly crucial life preserver for new cash-hungry but client-poor businesses. For many spas, just like the holiday rush for retailers, seasonal gift certificate sales (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas) provide a powerful boost to flagging service appointments and bank reserves. Yet all spas, regardless of their years in business, need this steady flow of ready income and new customer potential to drive the wheels of growth forward. Conversely, it is tempting to take these sales for granted — windfall that they appear to be — instead of planning an optimal strategy for this lush opportunity.

Here’s some advice that you can use in your company right away to make more money while reducing the potential hardships and hazards brisk gift certificate sales can pose:

Individual services and/or specified dollar amounts

• Make gift certificates easier to sell! While we love this upfront cash, the transaction can be time consuming for front desk staff and a chore for the purchaser. You may want to consider adding a sales feature on your company website to handle the job for you. Companies like SpaBoom help you set up your site with the tools needed to make online gift certificate sales simple and fast. They charge a small fee per transaction and relieve employees of having to work every sale — a real blessing during a holiday crunch!
• Selling gift certificates for cash credit is the ideal way to go if you want to avoid the unpleasant task of having to book packages out many weeks in advance. When a customer has a gift certificate for, say, $200, the spa is only obligated to redeem it for its full value, not guarantee the availability of a specific package. Many clients will prefer to use the credit in small increments, and these several visits help establish them with your spa and often lead to retail purchases. In any event it helps eliminate pressure on your schedule and personnel.

Spa packages

By now you know that most spa service packages are sold as gift certificates and redeemed by persons for whom the spa is a rare experience. And while the welcome of this gift by the recipient can range from ecstatic to dread, even the most enthusiastic individual may require weeks, if not years, to get the thing scheduled. Now, that’s fine for them but if it’s your too-busy spa that’s causing the scheduling delay then you’ve got a real problem on your hands, namely, a miffed buyer and user. And since most package customers prefer prime time appointments (those precious evening and weekend hours) you may suddenly be forced to schedule these folks out many weeks into the future. This may inspire some to believe that they’re a low-priority to you, and that you’re making it deliberately difficult for them to use their gift. Worse, high concentrations of gift certificate appointments during peak hours can make it challenging for your loyal regular clients to schedule, leaving you with the terrible trade-off of top-value customers for the infrequent visitor. This isn’t a good deal for spas that depend on local trade for survival.

Solutions:

• Offer a maximum of 3 or 4 spa packages, all under 4 hours in length. Reduced-length packages are easier to schedule, are less damaging when cancelled late, consume less schedule time, and minimize the chances for something to go wrong over long hours of service that could cause you to redo or comp. the services… Ouch! Shorter packages are also easier to train employees on, and are more flexible when clients want to rearrange its order or substitute services.
• When customers call to schedule a gift certificate service be sure to offer your lowest demand appointment hours first! Never permit your concierge to voluntarily utter the deadly words, “When did you want to come in?” You’ll be amazed how positively people will respond to your time suggestions so don’t paint yourself into a scheduling corner needlessly!
• Never discount your spa packages!!! Considering the cost of scheduling them, then rescheduling them, poor retail sales after them, and the potential displacement of regular customers because of them you can scarcely afford to shave the price. Here’s how to sell your spa service packages above the combined services value:
1. Create a package that contains specially named and designed face and body services that are available only in the package: meaning, they are not sold or seen a la carte on the service menu. These “special” facials, massages, etc. should take no longer to perform, nor cost any more than a regular service would. There’s no need to lengthen or to make any significant changes in them they’ll be largely unfamiliar to both purchaser and recipient.
2. Charge roughly 20% more for this package than you would if those services were sold individually. This is a gift, and gifts aren’t as price sensitive as practical purchases.
3. Always schedule a package with the facial as the last service, if possible. This is the service that’s most likely to generate a retail purchase with this customer.
4. If you have some difficult-to-sell services at the spa then stuff them into your packages! After all, you have plenty of openings for those…
• Always direct gift certificate purchasers to the packages that you most want to sell! Instead of the passive and incorrect “Did you have something in mind?” ask the purchaser who the gift is for and then offer a suggestion: “That’s great! Would you like to know what everyone loves as a gift from our spa?” Then, describe the package that you’d like to sell, and do it in feeling terms, not technical. “It’s the most incredible and relaxing thing she’ll probably ever experience! She’ll love it — I would!” That’s about all it takes to get the card swiped and the envelope sealed.
• While the retail sales that follow spa package appointments are often dismal, and those gift baskets haven’t flown off the shelves, you can build products into the packages by designing it thus:



South Pacific Holiday

Our most popular package gives busy, working moms some needed time-out and a personal experience she won’t forget! She begins her visit with a wonderful tropical hand and foot exfoliation and massage using real papaya and natural loofah. Next, her tense muscles are soothed away by the hands of a specially trained therapist using the ancient Hawaiian Lomi Lomi technique, finally mom is carried away to the soft breezes of the islands with during our unique Tradewinds Aromatherapy facial.

As a special treat the package comes complete with an enchanting scented candle and skin smoothing body lotion for her enjoyment before we greet her here at Spa Leilani. Aloha!

• The package is only sold inclusive of the retail products that you place into a gift bag with the gift certificate. This is an excellent way to move slower selling stock while guaranteeing some commission-free retail sales!

Some final advice: do everything in your power to convert your gift certificate customer into a loyal, long-term client! With all the emerging competition in the spa market you cannot count forever on this fat flow of nearly passive income. It’s the clients you keep that ultimately represent your spa’s foundational business. If that gift river should run dry you’ll be glad you have a well of reliable supporters beneath you!

Posted in Preston Professionals, Starting a Spa, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Our spas, salons and massage therapists just crested over a collective $1 million in online sales of Instant Gift Certificates today.

For last year's Mother's Day, we were testing Instant Gift Certificates with just one spa. The story was a little different for Mother's Day this year, as there are over 330 SpaBoomers out there now. Thanks for joining us, and congratulations on your sales!

Posted in General, Spa Gift Certificates • 1 Comment »

Our day spas did great with Instant Gift Certificates for Mother's Day! Here's the average sales numbers for the two weeks leading up to Mother's Day:

• All of our day spas: $2,663
• Top 50%: $4,547
• Top 20%: $7,125

Interestingly, almost half of these sales were during the crunch time of the two days prior to Mother's Day, and on Mother's Day itself. That's a lot of last-minute sales!

What promotions did you run for Mother's Day? What worked the best?

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • 6 Comments »

We don't think so. Most buyers of Instant Gift Certificates are looking for a great gift for Mom. They are husbands, sons and daughters. The closest relative Mom could possibly have. These buyers will choose a discounted offering if available, but are not motivated by price. They are motivated by love.

So, how do you appeal to these buyers? By selling love.

Offer them special packages or services … just for Mom. Use creative names with Mom as the centerpiece, such as “Pamper Mom” or “Soothing Soak for Mom”. Use a description that really makes the point that this is a special service, just for Mom, and only offered now before Mother’s Day.

Save the discounting for the slower months.

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

I love getting emails like this… it’s very gratifying! Thanks, Mark, for the kind words; we’re very pleased to have you as a client!

Posted in General, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

First, the bad news: spas aren't very successful at selling products online.

Today, there are two primary ways to sell product online. First, you can hire a web designer to build a "catalog and shopping cart" website for you. The good web designers will use pre-built packages, to keep costs down. They will look nice and be somewhat easy to maintain. Despite the pre-built nature of the package, your upfront expense will still be somewhat significant. The second way to sell product is to take advantage of a vendor who is already selling product online, and you refer business to that vendor using a "reseller id" from your website. The advantage of the first method is you get all the revenue associated with the product sales (less your costs), while the disadvantage is you have to maintain the catalog, handle fulfillment, and keep your website updated as new products and pricing comes out. The advantage of the second method is it's very inexpensive to start, and you don't have the responsibility of managing the ecommerce transaction and fulfillment.

Either way, almost every spa or salon I talk to, has indicated dissatisfaction with the level of sales being generated. By almost every measure, these folks feel their effort has been a waste of time.

Online Instant Gift Certificate sales, in stark contrast, work very well for spas and salons.

Why the discrepancy? I don’t know, but I would love to hear your comments. What are your experiences with product sales and what have you done that you feel boosts product sales from your website?

Is there another way? Well, I want to fill you in on two options to consider.
First, SpaBoom is considering providing a built-in product capability into its offering, that will behave and work very much like the Instant Gift Certificates do. We feel it should be easy and seamless to sell product on your website. We feel you should have an option of whether to fulfill orders yourself or have someone else do the fulfillment. How do you feel about this? Please comment or . SpaBoom is interested in talking to vendors or manufacturers to partner with, who desire to enable their spa and salon customers to easily sell product on their websites. If you have vendor suggestions, please . Let us know what vendors or manufacturers you think we should be working with!

Second, and something you can easily do right now, consider enhancing your product and gift certificate sales by merging your products with your services. Make a really cool and unique package or service combo, combining the best of your services and products. For example, offer an “Aromatherapy Massage,” where after the massage, the massage recipient received a supply of the aromatherapy oil used in the massage. Or, in another example, they receive facial cream after receiving a blissful facial.

You would then combine the service and product price into the overall package, highlighting the benefits of both, and really exciting the gift giver, because not only are they giving the gift of a wonderful treatment, but their recipient also walks away with a tangible product after the treatment.

Have you tried this already? If so, share your thoughts and experiences with us!

Posted in Spa Business Management, Spa Gift Certificates • 3 Comments »

Joyce with The Spa…for the woman who cares is a woman who brings great passion to her work. With over 20 years in the business, she’s worked in a variety of environments — big, small, medical, and so forth — so when she decided to open her own spa, she knew exactly what she wanted to create.

Her desire to create a niche spa, offering high-quality, private services that draw people “who come to us to totally escape” is being realized, but not without careful thought and planning to help bolster her passion for providing absolutely luxurious, unhurried services to her clients. She elaborates, “People can feel your dedication. If you don’t have your whole heart in what you do, people don’t come back. They want a special experience, and they have many spas to choose from, particularly up here in Puget Sound. You know you’re doing something right when clients re-book again and again.”

Joyce has vision. She's had the foresight to advertise online with McCall Bennett () at City Search, which has helped create steady traffic for her website. In fact, she’s not only advertised on City Search, she has 70 customer reviews posted and her spa has made the Top 10 list in six different categories for two years running. That’s saying something!

She’s comfortable advertising on the Web, she’s learned how to make the most of her website, and in the process she discovered SpaBoom’s Instant Gift Certificates. “I come in every morning to find more gift certificates sold, and I’m delighted. This has been an incredible addition to our website, and an extremely effective way to sell gift certificates!” she said.

And her clients’ feedback underlines her decision to offer Instant Gift Certificates. One recently emailed Joyce:

Joyce has made a series of good choices when it comes to her business, not the least of which includes adding Instant Gift Certificates to her website. Having a passion for services and a head for business is definitely paying dividends for her spa!

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

When I was talking with Elissa at Betty's, she made a great comment: "Without SpaBoom, we would have been understaffed and overwhelmed for Valentine's Day."

Valentine's Day is crucial crunch time for your gift certificate sales, along with Mother's Day and the Holidays. Those three occasions can easily account for over half of your gift certificate sales for the year. Performing well during these times is crucial to serving your clients and the profitability of your spa.

It's also very challenging. The front desk at a spa during crunch time — clients checking in, checking out, buying gift certificates, setting appointments, the phone ringing — can sometimes seem more like a feeding frenzy than the tranquil, relaxing experience that we really want.

The lifesaver for Betty's is Instant Gift Certificates on their website. Betty's tells everyone how easy it is to buy a gift certificate on-line. When someone calls to purchase a gift certificate over the phone, the front desk checks to see if they'd like to go to the website and instantly print or e-mail it themselves. On-line sales make up 30% of Betty's total gift certificate sales; during crunch time for Valentine's Day, it was almost 40%. Clients get instant gratification, and the front desk doesn't have to do all of that last-minute fulfillment. The time savings is significant, and it goes right back into the customer experience.

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

There is always a special at Betty's Bath highlighting a unique service or a special package for the current occasion. And it works — looking at Betty's gift certificate sales in the two weeks leading up to Valentine's Day, we can learn some interesting things:

• 65% of Betty's retail sales and 75% of on-line sales were for a service.
• For those service gift certificates, Valentine's Day specials made up 30% of retail sales and 54% of on-line sales.

Thoughts:

• Your website is a great way to highlight services that you really want to promote — people actually buy them.
• Clients like the option of buying a gift certificate for a service. It's a great way to have the ease of a gift certificate while making it a personal gift.
• Clients purchasing on-line are particularly interested in convenience. Featuring a service that's perfect for the occasion makes their life even easier.
• A special doesn't necessarily mean a discount. Creating a unique service or package for the occasion is a great service for your clients and effective marketing.
• Consider including a product in your specials so the spa experience can continue at home (while also increasing your margins).

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

What is your outstanding balance of unredeemed gift certificates and gift cards? In my unofficial, completely anecdotal personal poll, the top ways of tracking a spa's unredeemed balance:

1. A manual ledger of sales which you flip through to find the gift certificate from nine months ago to mark it as redeemed
2. Excel spreadsheet — just like the manual ledger, but it is on a computer
3. The really scary one: none

If your current method isn't working as well as you'd like, there is a better way — in addition to tracking your online sales, you can also track your retail gift certificate and gift card sales in SpaBoom. You'll get a complete history of all your GCs with easy reporting to balance your books and you'll always know where you stand.

Bonus: By tracking your retail GC sales in SpaBoom, you'll also be building your client database. Make it a habit to ask for your clients' email addresses, and start putting them in SpaBoom.

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

Yes, I know we're still in March, but now is the perfect time to plan your marketing for Mother's Day. It's the second biggest gift certificate season of the year, behind the Holidays. What's a better gift for mom than a relaxing break at the spa?

Your clients don't know about your new, last-minute solution to Mother's Day: Instant Gift Certificates. Tell them they can go to your website for instant gratification:

• Put a poster up in your spa
• Include a flyer with retail purchases just about Instant Gift Certificates
• Include Instant Gift Certificates in all your advertisements and mailers
• Send out an e-mail blast

The word "instant" is crucial — this is what sets you apart from all the other spa websites, where you click on "Gift Certificates" only to find out it you have to wait for it to be mailed to you. That doesn't work when the occasion is tomorrow — or even today!

Spread the word about this great new service you're providing your clients, and watch your gift certificate sales climb!

Posted in Spa Marketing, Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

I don't know that there is any deep meaning to be derived from this, but our spas' Instant Gift Certificate sales for Valentine's Day averaged $9 more per GC than for the Holidays. It will be interesting to compare to Mother's Day…

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

In the form of Instant Gift Certificates! All of those last minute gift certificate sales are enough to warm the cockles of your heart, particularly if you own a spa!

The average online sales of Instant Gift Certificates in February, updated through Valentine's Day, for our day spas:

• All of our day spas: $1,869
• Top 50%: $3,563
• Top 20%: $5,979

These aren't big destination or resort spas, but the typical small-to-medium day spa's online sales.

If you're not in the top 20% (or are, and want to sell even more!) call or email us, we can help! It's been a great experience seeing how relatively simple changes have a noticeable impact on online sales. I highlighted a handful of key website design tips for your spa for Instant Gift Certificates in a recent posting.

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • 2 Comments »

All of the flower shops were out of roses on the way home from work. Now it's 9 o'clock at night, on the eve of Valentine's Day. A thought suddenly pops into his head: "My girlfriend loves to go to the spa…" He hops on Google and finds a handful of local spas. The second one he clicks on has a nicely designed site that prominently promotes Instant Gift Certificates. Inspiration strikes — instant gratification is exactly what's called for at a time like this. He chooses a "Romantic Escape" package, types in a clever and endearing message along with his credit card number, and prints out his gift certificate and slips it into a Valentine's Day card.

Did he buy the gift certificate from your spa?

It's easy to sum up success selling online: how many people are you driving to your website (traffic) and how many of them become clients, by purchasing a gift certificate or scheduling a service (conversion rate)? These are the two factors that we're going to spend a lot of time talking about, because you control both of them. Drive a lot of people to your website with a high conversion rate, and you'll sell a ton online.

Let's focus on conversion rate. Relatively simple things have a large impact on how many of your website visitors purchase an Instant Gift Certificate:

• Do you prominently promote your Instant Gift Certificate capability? Does it say Instant or just Gift Certificates? A lot of spa websites have links for gift certificates that just take you to a page with a phone number, or a shopping cart where you don't know what kind of gift certificate you're going to get, and you don't know when it's going to arrive. You're different! Stand out by promoting your ability to deliver instant gratification.
• One of our best selling spas is Betty's Bath. Right there on their home page, front and center: "Instant Gift Certificates Now Available". Another very successful spa is Cascade Gardens, promoting a "Hawaiian Candlelight Couples Massage" for Valentine's Day with links to book an appointment and purchase an Instant Gift Certificate. When a prospective client goes to one of these websites, they know exactly what to do next. The result is more sales.
  
• How many steps does it take to actually get to Instant Gift Certificates? You'll have a higher conversion rate if your link goes directly to Instant Gift Certificates, instead of through another "shop online" page first.
• Don't open Instant Gift Certificates in a new window. This makes your client think they're going somewhere else, dropping your conversion rate.
• Include Instant Gift Certificate in the main menu / navigation for your site.
• Don't promote just the e-mail capabilities of Instant Gift Certificates. Almost 75% of purchasers print out their Instant Gift Certificate themselves.

Here's what I'm really saying: when I go to your website, can I immediately figure out where to click to buy an Instant Gift Certificate, or do I have to look around, search and scroll to find it?

Posted in Spa Gift Certificates • Comment »

Less than two weeks to V-Day, now is the time to do a checkup on your website:

• Clutter is the bane of an effective website — has any junk collected on your home page that detracts from your image? Old, outdated information or text that seemed like a good idea but doesn't really help guide a prospective client in to buying a gift certificate or scheduling a couple's massage for Valentine's Day?
• Look at your site with fresh eyes. What do you see?
• Verify all of your links. Are you prominently promoting Instant Gift Certificates?
• Are your Valentine's Day specials in Events so they appear in Instant Gift Certificates and Appointment Requests?

Valentine's Day is the third largest gift certificate selling season for spas, right behind Mother's Day (#2) and the Holidays (#1). Take advantage of it!

Posted in Spa Website Design, Spa Gift Certificates • 1 Comment »