SpaBoom New Features

It is super-easy to backup your Dynamic Spa Website:

• Go to Website, Setup and click on "Settings".
• Under Tasks in the left sidebar, click "Create Website Backup".
• You can have up to 5 backups; once you get that many, the oldest one drops off.

If you need to for any reason, you can go back to Settings and Restore From Backup to put your website right back to where it was before.

So, how do you use this?

Any time you're going to make big changes to your site, just do a quick backup first. If you don't like the end result, you can be right back where you started in a couple of clicks, and avoid that "Oh, No!" feeling.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

Starting in the late 40s and going into the 60s, the "Hollywood blacklist" consisted of directors, screenwriters, actors and musicians who couldn't get work because of their real or suspected political affiliations. Being placed on the blacklist was a death knell for a career.

These days, we're fighting a different kind of blacklist — those managed by companies like AOL, Yahoo!, Comcast, EarthLink and others. Once your company gets on the blacklist, it is almost as hard as a 1950s actor to get off. And, the results are similar: if you're blacklisted as a spammer, your email will not flow. With so much of our lives conducted online now, being blacklisted on the Internet is a serious blow to your business.

It's hard to blame these large Internet companies for being aggressive with spam. With spam accounting for 70.1% of all email in the U.S. in April 2008, consumers get very angry with their Internet company when they receive too much spam. Desperation is one word to describe the actions of these Internet companies — they are responsible for handling billions of emails every day, and every day it becomes harder to combat the spam.

How does your company become blacklisted? It's easier than you might think, if you send email:

• To someone you don't have a relationship with;
• When you haven't obtained permission from the recipient;
• When the person you're sending email to forgets they gave you permission, and reports your email as spam; or
• When the person you're sending email to shares their email account with someone else (i.e. a spouse), and that other person reports your email as spam.

This problem has gotten so bad that the anti-spam measures large Internet companies are starting gobble up legitimate email. For example, AT&T implemented new spam filters that deleted legitimate email, with no warning or notice to their customers.

So, email is losing its effectiveness as a marketing tool because it's easy to get blacklisted. Even if you're not blacklisted, most Internet companies are using aggressive spam filtering techniques which may be filtering much of your email — without telling you or otherwise giving you any clue what's happening on the Internet between you and your clients.

SpaBoom is trying to do its part by helping you stay off the blacklists. When a consumer purchases an IGC from you, they can "opt-in" to your email marketing. This "opt-in" is unchecked, and requires the consumer to check this box to actually opt-in. If you are using SpaBoom's newsletter feature and you import email addresses into the database (or you add new clients manually), SpaBoom will send a confirmation email to all imported email addresses, asking the recipient to verify they wanted to be added to your mailing list.

Yes, these new measures are aggressive and may reduce the overall size of your email lists contained within SpaBoom. They will, however, help ensure your business stays off the blacklists and that your email is more effective overall.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, General • 3 Comments »

SpaBoomers have been collecting reviews via Instant Gift Certificates since last October, now counting over 30,000 consumer reviews!

Today, they're a great way to get feedback on your spa. Every time you get a new review, it shows up on the Today page when you log in, and you can see your reviews in Reports, Reviews at any time. But, there's more to come!

Let's start by looking at why online reviews on sites like CitySearch and Yelp are so important. Just look at how Internet users use reviews (survey data from comScore):

• More than 75% cite online reviews as influential in their purchase decisions.
• 24% used online reviews before making a purchase decision for a service in the last three months.
• Purchasers are willing to spend at least 20% more for services that are top rated.
• 30% to 40% of review-informed purchasers will not purchase from a business with a 1 star rating.

But why make potential clients that have found you go searching for reviews? With such a big impact on your spa, we're working to help you harness reviews:

• We've recently changed Instant Gift Certificate reviews so that purchasers familiar with your spa can also review their overall experience with your business.
• In the near future, you'll be able to share your reviews on your website, if you desire.
• You'll also be able to garner reviews directly on your website (not just people purchasing Instant Gift Certificates).
• Unlike the reviews that appear in CitySearch, Yelp, etc., you'll have a greater degree of control and more fair approach to reviews of your spa.

How would you like to use reviews to help your spa?

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 7 Comments »

In this age of nearly out of control spam (you have noticed how large your junk mail folder is in Yahoo or Hotmail, right?), taking steps to make sure that your own marketing practices are friendly and sustainable is a necessary part of online life.

The best way to stay in touch with your customers and prospects is to send them targeted messages letting them know what you're up to and what new benefits you can offer to them. However, sending those messages to recipients who really want to get them is the key to your success.

How do you make sure that your email list is full of great customers and leads? Simple — you ask them.

Here at SpaBoom we've made it easy for you to import your client list into your account so that email marketing is a snap. To keep your life simple, we did not — until recently — send confirmation emails to those imported contacts, but in reality they might not have known they would receive marketing emails from you. Spending your time on the smaller group of contacts who are truly interested will grow your spa's business wisely, creating your best customers both now and in the future.

Being great 'Net citizens means doing occasional spring cleaning on mailing lists, and that's what we are doing on Wednesday. We will send an opt-in email on your behalf to your imported clients, giving them a chance to voluntarily be included on all the best you have to offer.

Just to be clear, SpaBoom's free email newsletter feature is:

• A service to help you send announcement of promotions, events and special occasions to your client list.
• Not used for SpaBoom to market to your clients. SpaBoom never markets to your clients.
• Available to each client that SpaBoom can verify has "opted-in" to receive your mailings.
• Secure, in that SpaBoom always protects your customer data, even when a particular customer hasn't opted-in to receive your email newsletters.

Have a great rest of the week, and here's to finding — and keeping — valued clients!

Posted in Creating Customers, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, Spa Business Management • 26 Comments »

Tip #4

Pick the luscious, low hanging fruit: Your clients already know and (hopefully) love you. However, they are not always thinking gift when they come to you for treatments. Tastefully remind them that you have a nice website with good information and instant gifts when they do visit, and they are likely to think of you the following week when they realize that their sister's birthday is today. You can do this for free by putting your website address and key features on every piece of your advertising, sales collateral and marketing material your clients see or hear.

One of the simplest and most popular features we offer to help is our "Instant POP" function. It is under the Setup tab when you log into SpaBoom. Instant POP (short for "point of purchase") are templates for 8.5 x 11 signs you can print for your business. We generally have several pre-built for holidays, birthdays and anniversaries but you can easily modify what we write or create your own from scratch. They automatically show your logo and web address. Our top sellers have at least seven pieces of POP in their stores.

Oh, and don't forget your voice mail message. The callers after closing on February 14^th are often looking for one thing. Tell them about your online gift program (in the first sentence, before they hang up). You will be that last minute buyer's Valentine too.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, Spa Business Management • Comment »

A lot of our Dynamic Spa Website themes have some sort of boundary — we thought it was time to break free with the new Floating theme. Open and airy, Floating is unrestricted by the lines and boxes that define many website designs.

See an example of the Floating theme. Like all SpaBoom Dynamic Websites, it's easy to choose your own color palette and photos, add new pages and customize to your heart's content.

If you're thinking about switching themes for your Dynamic, check out the great new feature we have in Website, Settings to "Create Website Backup". It's a great idea to make a backup any time you're going to make big changes to your site.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Website Design • 2 Comments »

Thank you to all those who had contributed comments — online or offline — regarding my previous blog post entitled A picture is worth 1,000 words. In that post, I asked for feedback on what sort of statistics would be useful to you and your business.

David has taken this feedback, and we have a prototype that's pictured at right. What do you think? (You can click on the image to see a closeup!)

In the Information Technology world, we call this a "dashboard." And the dashboard is comprised of many "widgets," a widget basically being a graphic chart that you can configure individually. The dashboard is meant to give you a quick, bird's eye view of the performance of your business and in particular, your Instant Gift Certificate sales.

Our intent is to deliver a default dashboard, you can modify as you think most appropriate, either by changing what each widget displays or by changing what widgets show up and where. For example, the line-graph in the upper-left of the prototype dashboard (above) is meant to represent monthly sales volume for the past 12 months, with last-year's sales data superimposed so you can see how you're doing this year versus last year. You may decide you only want to see the past 6 months, or you may not be interested in this year's sales in comparison to last year's sales.

Our intent is to also give you some baseline information that helps you assess how you're doing, relative to your peers. We're hoping this can provide some feedback to you and your business, so you know where you stand. We're learning here, so your comments and feedback are going to be very helpful. Take a look at the graph below (it's a blow-up of the upper-right widget in the dashboard above):

"Others Like You" means organizations that are in your state, of the same org type (i.e. other "salons" if you've told us you're a salon), and are within 5 employees (plus or minus) of you. Is that fair? Would this be valuable to you, to see how your sales and average GC price compares to others like you?

If you have a dynamic website with us, we also know where your traffic comes from. In answering a question from our previous post, we can create a pie-chart widget on traffic locations. Take a look:

What other widgets do you think would be helpful or interesting to your business? Are we on the right track?

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management, General • 2 Comments »

Did you know the money from your Instant Gift Certificate sales can go direct to your bank account — without additional cost from SpaBoom??!? This is a free service from us. (Note: If you use PayPal, there is an extra step involved before your money gets to your bank account).

If you consistently sell more than $1,000 a month in Instant Gift Certificate sales, you might want to consider integrating your SpaBoom account with an online merchant account. This is especially helpful during the holidays, when your online sales of Instant Gift Certificates goes through the roof!

There are a number of advantages to doing this, such as:

• Save time. You don't have to manually process each credit card with every sale.
• More secure. Since each credit card is immediately submitted to your merchant account upon each sale, the provisioning of an Instant Gift Certificate doesn't occur unless there is a successful credit card transaction. This means no one can print or email an Instant Gift Certificate, unless their credit card has been successfully processed. Also, the credit card companies will allow us to ask for the card code, when the credit card transaction is immediately forwarded to the merchant account. See the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for more information.
• Save money. The rate merchant account providers often talk about - and compete with - is the "qualified rate" (learn more about rates). The problem is, most merchant account providers won't give you a qualified rate when you cannot swipe the credit card, and some will default to a non-qualified rate (the worst available). You need to check with your merchant account provider for the specific details, but some will give you mid-qualified rates for Internet-based transactions when the card code is included.

The only downside to an online merchant account, is that no one will let you use your existing retail-based merchant account. You must obtain a new merchant account that is strictly for online sales. I recommend talking to your existing merchant account provider, and checking into the costs of an online merchant account. Then, compare what you're told with the options I present further below. Before I do, consider that you need to look at several factors when considering different merchant account providers:

• Your bank and your merchant account are two separate pieces. Most banks offer merchant account services, but you're by no means restricted to doing merchant account business with your bank.
• Compare ALL THE RATES: qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified, for each merchant account provider. Get all the costs, including monthly, misc recurring costs and other fees - you may be surprised at how all of this adds up. Check out my merchant account analysis spreadsheet, discussed below.
• Look at the determining factors that decide which rate you're charged. If you're looking for just an online merchant account, make exactly sure what rate you'll be charged (i.e. some merchant account providers automatically assume all online credit card transactions are non-qualified).
• When considering an online merchant account, know that you need a payment gateway. It's the equivalent of your terminal in your store. SpaBoom is compatible with Authorize.net, and merchant account providers usually will provide you the gateway for an additional cost. Note that you can obtain the payment gateway yourself (more on this below).
• Use this opportunity to keep your existing retail merchant account provider honest. You may not be getting as great as a deal as you think you are, because the bulk of your transactions are being treated as mid-qualified. Or, your "introductory rates" have long since expired. I have personal experience in getting a lower rate, simply by threatening to leave. Don't sign long-term commitments, and seriously train yourself to switch merchant account providers as necessary to keep your rates as low as possible. You can save yourself thousands.
• Finally, if you're serious about this, I've prepared a spreadsheet to help you with your analysis. It gives you a view of several scenarios, based on your level of transaction volume. Assuming you know that, you can see an estimated monthly costs for each merchant account provider you're considering.

Assuming you are ready to take the plunge and obtain an online merchant account to interface with SpaBoom, you have only two major steps. First, obtain an online merchant account (with or/and a payment gateway) and second, let SpaBoom know about it. There are two merchant account options with SpaBoom: Authorize.net compatible or PayPal Web Payments Pro. Both of those links take you to detailed help information, with instructions on how to sign up (if you're interested) and connect them to SpaBoom. The Authorize.net option allows you to plug SpaBoom into just about anyone.

If you are considering a merchant account provider (other than the PayPal Web Payments Pro option), please make sure they are Authorize.net compatible. Most banks and merchant account providers should be, but not all are. I've heard of one unscrupulous merchant account provider actually telling one of our customers, "Yes, we're Authorize.net compatible" just to get them to sign the contract. But, when it came down to it, the sales person meant "we're just like Authorize.net" and wouldn't actually provide an Authorize.net account. Make sure you double-check this with bargain-basement merchant account providers.

The Merchant Account Analysis Spreadsheet

If you have a bit of MS Excel skill, you might be interested in my merchant account analysis spreadsheet. Download it here. This is not supported by myself or SpaBoom, and is only meant to give you a little help in figuring out the best merchant account deal. I've done my best to remove any errors and make it simple to understand.

It requires you to do a bit of homework, then fill in the blanks regarding costs and your best guess as to the performance of your business (i.e. number of and average transaction amount each month). The cells you need to fill in are light red in color. You can create some scenarios. Then, based on those scenarios, you'll have a potential cost each month of your merchant account. The results may surprise you. Often, the lowest "advertised discount rate" is not going to be your cheapest option, depending on what percentage of your transactions actually are qualified, versus mid-qualified or non-qualified. Also, PayPal tends to provide a very competitive option, if you're processing less than $10,000 in transactions each month.

I do apologize for the complexity of the spreadsheet. It's just a model, and not meant to accurately predict your merchant account expenses each month.

I'm definitely not an expert in this area, so welcome comments and suggestions that help fellow SpaBoomers select, choose and utilize merchant accounts!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management, General • 11 Comments »

One of our developers (David… the one who is really into music and has his own Internet radio station), on his own volition and initiative, decided to add some great new functionality to the SpaBoom platform. Normally, we severely and cruelly punish such behavior. We cannot permit our employees to go around and start doing great things for the company — without first filing the appropriate paperwork — namely a TPS report (with cover sheet)!

Anyway, David's unauthorized contribution to the SpaBoom platform is pretty cool, and it has us scratching our heads thinking, "Golly gee, what would be the best way to use this??!? If only David filled out his TPS report…"

In David's own words, "I decided to focus on a dashboard and giving our spas tools they need to begin to analyze their GC sales, clients, patterns, and so on." David implemented a series of graphical widgets, that can be driven by our database. The image to the right is a sample of what these widgets can look like (we'll change the color schemes to match the SpaBoom user interface).

Today, when SpaBoom clients log into their SpaBoom accounts and go to the reports tab, they are presented with pretty much a blank page (you need to click on the tasks on the left-side of the screen to get specific reports). We think it would be really cool to use David's new widgets on the Reports Page, summarizing some cool and useful stats, metrics and whatnots.

The question is, what sort of whatnots would be really helpful and beneficial to our clients? To that, we're really interested in your ideas and suggestions!

We have a strong desire to provide whatnots that really help our clients become more effective at selling Instant Gift Certificates. We also would like to make the SpaBoom platform more valuable to our clients, by offering up useful and interesting information that isn't available elsewhere. What would you suggests or recommend we work on??!? Here are some ideas of the possibilities:

• We have the historical data of your sales. We also have redemptions, if you're putting that information into SpaBoom.
• We can slice-and-dice GC sales information, such as by service category or dollar versus service.
• If you entered in your offline (i.e. retail) sales into SpaBoom, we could give you comparisons of your online versus offline GC activity.
• If you have a dynamic website with us, we know your conversion (i.e. the percentage of visitors to your website who actually make a purchase).
• If you have your own website, would you be interested in conversion numbers (it would require you to place some javascript code on your homepage, so we could track your incoming visitors)?
• We can aggregate all our client's sales data, and let you know how you're doing versus the market. We need to do this, in a way that maintains the privacy and security of our clients. And, it would be more meaningful to let you know how you're doing against organizations similarly situated, by geographic range or by demographic. We do keep some demographic data (look at the Setup Tab, Basics within SpaBoom).
• We have some information on the clients who purchase your GC's, such as their locations. We can give you in-state versus out-of-state, in-city versus out-of-town, etc.
• Or just about anything we keep existing reports of, under the Reports Tab.

So, please, give us your input and feedback! What sort of widgets and whatnots would you like us to build and place in SpaBoom? We can't promise every suggestion will be fulfilled, but we'll do our very best to take in the feedback, figure out what's possible and most useful to the largest number of clients.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 2 Comments »

When running a business, getting feedback from your customers on how they perceive your company is critical. Do they appreciate the value you provide? Is buying from you a fun experience? You can always ask people directly, but that can be awkward or time-consuming.

SpaBoom has now added a new feature that allows you to collect this kind of information about your clients' Instant Gift Certificate purchase experience, and by extension, their opinion of how well they were able to use your website overall.

Any time someone buys an Instant Gift Certificate from you, they will see this extra section on the post-purchase screen:

Submitting a review is completely optional - they can end their transaction immediately, or click on a button to purchase another Instant Gift Certificate. If choosing to provide a review, they can select a rating of one star through five stars, and also leave a comment detailing their experience. Once submitting , they are again taken to a screen thanking them and allowing any additional purchases.

For your business, a new SpaBoom account report has been added to list all of your clients' reviews so you can see how things are going, and also to address any problems that the might have encountered. When you login to your account, you'll see a new item in the Today screen mentioning that you have new Reviews. You can view them by clicking on that link, or through the main Reports screen.
From the Reports tab, click on "Reviews" on the left side of the screen, to see this view:

You can sort by any of the columns, see the average rating at the bottom, and even click on the client's name to view their record.

We hope this will be a useful tool for you to keep in touch with your customers' attitudes and feedback for the services you offer, both through SpaBoom as well as your overall website design and functionality. Please let us know if you have questions about Reviews, or any other suggestions for great new features we can add in the future.

Posted in Tutorials, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management • 3 Comments »

We should really call this article "Joyce rocks!" Because she does. She's the one creating all of the new designs you're seeing, and there's more to come! So thank you Joyce for your much-appreciated beautiful designs!

Look for:

2 Wedding designs (Cake and Doves, and White Lily). We know it took awhile to get a Wedding category, but here ya go!

2 new Birthday designs (Happy Birthday Pussycat and Yellow Birthday.)

2 All Occasion designs (Feather, and Lotus.)

These new designs have been automatically added to your "Most Popular" group for your online shoppers, as will the subsequent designs we're creating, but you can always customize by changing the individual settings on each GC design. See our next post for some tips on the "Most Popular" configuration.

Enjoy!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Gift Certificates • 2 Comments »

Overview

New Mexico has joined the growing list of states that regulate gift certificates. HB0127 was signed into law by Governor Bill Richardson last month, and takes effect July 1st, 2007.

This law, like many of the others, has the best of intentions but really ends up hurting small businesses. It is my sincerest hope that eventually, our legislators will look past the mentality of "I have no sympathy, because businesses just use your money and hope you will lose the card!" (actual quote from an unnamed NM State Legislator). Without going into a diatribe, some of the high-level problems with this statute are:

• Five (5) year expiration date – For a product- or service-based GC, there is a significant chance the product or service will no longer be available or cost significantly more than what was originally paid for, at five years. Also, the five years is a long time for the small business to keep a liability on the balance sheet.
• No fees, including at time of sale – The language used is imprecise, and can suffer from many interpretations. A conservative – and reasonable – interpretation would be that no fees of any form can be charged against the GC, including but not limited to gross receipts tax, shipping and/or handling charges, surcharges or convenience fees.
• Modifies 7-8A-2 NMSA 1978, Presumption of Abandonment, to the Uniformed Unclaimed Property Act (UUPA) – GC’s are considered abandoned property, if "unclaimed 5 years after December 31st of the year in which the GC was sold." This means GC sellers must turn in the money obtained from GC sales to the Tax and Revenue Department of New Mexico, if not redeemed. This legislation assumes GC revenue is “free money,” and doesn’t appreciate the many costs that go into selling, maintaining and redeeming GC’s: CC transaction fees, handling fees from service providers, and staff time.

There are many ways to help protect consumers, while avoiding hurting small businesses. For example:

• Require the expiration date and key terms and conditions to be prominently displayed on the GC.
• Prohibit expiration dates of less than a year, unless charitable. Five years (or indefinite) is too long.
• Require a phone number and contact information on the GC, where a holder can call to inquire as to the status of the GC.
• Require businesses to honor their GC’s.

New Strategies to Maximize Revenues Given Gift Certificate Laws

I believe this applies to everyone, not just New Mexico spas and salons.

When you sell a GC, it cannot be counted as revenue, since it's actually a liability. The money goes on your balance sheet as a liability, where it stays until one of three things happens: The GC is redeemed, the GC expires or the GC is turned over to the state. The goal here, is to move the GC amount from the balance sheet to your income statement. You can only do this, if your GC is redeemed or you expire the GC.

Therefore, if you're in a state that does NOT regulate GC expiration dates, you benefit by having a reasonable expiration date because it helps you achieve your goal of recognizing that money as income. My recommendation in these jurisdictions: Use a one (1) year expiration date, but if someone walks into your spa or salon with an expired GC, take it! You have an opportunity to obtain a new customer, or at the very least, a happy recipient who may refer new customers to you.

If you're in New Mexico or one of the other states that regulate GC expiration dates, the strategy changes. You can ONLY recognize a GC sale as revenue if the GC is redeemed. You need to think about strategies that cause folks to redeem your GC's. In New Mexico, waiting the five years to expire a GC doesn't really help, since you're now required to send in the funds to the State of New Mexico, given the modification to the UUPA (more on this in an upcoming blog article).

No or long-term expiration dates also create potential issues for service-based GC's. Over time, products or services may no longer be available or increase in price. You are only required to honor the value paid for GC's. Do you need to put the value-paid for a GC on the GC? No. Should you create a policy with respect to long-term, service-based GC's? Yes.

Here are our recommendations:

• Expire your GC's if you can, within the parameters of the law, and always accept your GC's even if expired.
• Work hard to get customers to redeem their GC's:
• Consider promotions for GC holders.
• Use SpaBoom to send out newsletters and reminders to your GC customers.
• If customers lose their GC's, look it up and print a new one. SpaBoom makes this easy, if you use SpaBoom to manage your GC's.
• Over 60% of GC buyers prefer service-based GC's, and those buyers spend more, on average, than dollar-based GC buyers.
• Continue selling service-based GC's, and maintain the personal touch by NOT placing purchased amounts on the face of the GC's.
• Create a policy around service-based GC's, by offering the service for a year and converting the GC to cash-value after a year. In SpaBoom, you can add to the "GC fine print:" under Setup, Basics, with the following language: "Reverts to cash-value after one (1) year."
• To reiterate, I do not believe you should consider including the cash value on all GC's.
• Get ready to start filing reports to the State of New Mexico, and sending in the cash for unredeemed GC's. Many states have some form of UUPA on the books. SpaBoom will be publishing more information about this shortly. Stay tuned.
• When buying or selling a spa or salon, do NOT forget about the GC liability. Simply hanging a sign, "Under New Management," will not prevent customers from demanding redemption of their GC's, and can create serious legal consequences if not handled properly.

In Summary

If you're in New Mexico, you must change the expiration dates of GC's sold on or after July 1st, 2007, to five (5) years or more. Start changing your mindset, and your policies, regarding longer-term GC's. Start thinking about how to get folks to redeem their GC's.

Consult with your tax expert or attorney, to make sure you're doing things properly.

Finally, stay tuned. SpaBoom will be publishing more information about the GC laws in all states, as well as UUPA compliance. We are also thinking about better tools to help you with legal compliance, as well maximizing GC profitability. Do you have suggestions or ideas?

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management, General, Spa Gift Certificates • 5 Comments »

We recently made a change to Website Reports to exclude search engine bots (as in "robots"). Google, for example, sends Googlebot crawling across the Internet bringing up web pages to keep their index current. With this change, those visits from Googlebot no longer show up as a visitor in your website reports (after all, Googlebot isn't known for buying spa services).

So, if you've been keeping score, you might notice that your Visitors number has gone down — but it is now a more accurate reflection of the actual visitors to your Dynamic Website or to your linked-in pages.

We've also added more depth to the Website Referrer and Keyword reports so that you can see more detail about the source of your visitors — just click on the links!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

There is a feature for Instant Gift Certificates that you may not know about: the ability to offer a mail delivery option. This is a bit of a contradiction, of course, since mail removes the "instant" part of "Instant Gift Certificates".

We created this feature as an alternative for SpaBoomers who were previously using the "shopping cart" method of selling gift certificates — where the only option was to mail it. Some SpaBoomers told us they didn't want to leave out the mail option, and were leaving the shopping cart on their website in addition to Instant Gift Certificates. That kind of confusion reduces sales, so we created a mail delivery option.

Since we're all about Instant, we also left it turned off by default. The setting is in Setup, Basics:

• In Setup, Basics under Instant Gift Certificates, check "Provide mail delivery option" to turn it on. You'll then see your Instant Gift Certificates page change to ask for the delivery options at the top, with mail delivery as a new option.
• Specify a "Mail surcharge" if you want to charge extra for mail delivery.
• You can change the default description from "Mail delivery, please allow 4-7 days" to whatever you'd like.

Should you do it?

12% of SpaBoomers offer the mail delivery option and 5% of their purchasers choose it. Two-thirds of SpaBoomers add a mail surcharge of an average of $3. A surcharge of more than $5 cuts the use of the mail delivery option in half.

If you're committed to offering a mailing option to your clients, this is the way to do it. It provides a consistent user experience, which will increase your sales by reducing the confusion that comes from having multiple ways to purchase GCs. Otherwise, you can stay completely Instant.

How do you know if someone selects mail delivery?

The email you receive for the purchase will start the subject line with "[MAIL]", so you know you've got some extra work to do. When you go to the GCs tab in SpaBoom, you'll also see a mail icon next to GCs that need to be mailed. Click on the GC, and you can scroll down to the mailing address. Once you've mailed it, change the Status from "Not Mailed" to "Mailed".

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

We sincerely appreciate everyone's patience as we've worked out the kinks and beta tested the integration between SpaBoom and Millennium. Today we're proud to announce that we've moved into production!

What are the benefits?

Almost one-half of gift certificate customers wait until the last 48 hours of a holiday or event before purchasing their gift. SpaBoom clients have the ability to sell to these last-minute buyers.

• Sell more gift certificates by making them instantly available on your website. It's fast and easy for your clients to choose a gift certificate, preview it, and then email or print it immediately.
• Increase out-of-town and last minute sales.
• Save staff time — no filling out certificates and mailing by hand.
• Beautiful designs are automatically branded with your logo.
• Mimics the look-and-feel of your existing website.
• Gift certificate sales are automatically transferred to your Millennium database.

What are the caveats or issues?

The three biggest caveats are:

• SpaBoom does NOT send credit card information to Millennium. You will still need to process credit cards manually, or through an online merchant account. More information is available.
• Client matching. SpaBoom attempts to match GC buyers with an email address. If no match can be found, a new client record is created for the buyer in your Millennium database. SpaBoom does NOT attempt to match GC recipients. So, a new client record is created for all new GC recipients in your Millennium database.
• Network adjustment. SpaBoom will need to reach your Millennium machine over the Internet, which may require some adjustments to your local network. To do this safely, securely and effectively, this may require the services of a network engineer or IT person.

We have additional information in our Post Install Q&A, as well as our implementation guide. For more information about Millennium, please check out the Harms Website.

Remember, our client services team is hear to help you! Call us at 800-940-0458, x2, for assistance, questions or guidance!

Posted in Millennium by Harms, SpaBoom New Features, General • 4 Comments »

We've been actively writing more SpaBoom Help articles lately, and we've added some great features to make it easier to find the information that you need:

• Go to Help directly whenever you want with the Help tab. The Overview shows some of the most commonly sought help topics.
• Search finds both Help topics and SpaBoom Blog postings.
• From the Help tab, Index shows you all of the help topics at a glance.
• Of course, you can still click on the Help link in the left sidebar for information on wherever you're currently in SpaBoom.

If you're looking for information in help and don't find it — tell us! We want to know what would be most helpful.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

We've just added two great new features to Dynamic Spa Websites to make it easy for word-of-mouth to spread about your spa.

Spa Wish List

Sometimes it takes a little nudge, and the Spa Wish List is the perfect way for your clients to drop a little hint to that someone special that what they really want is the gift of spa.

• Go to Setup, Website and then Settings and check "Spa Wish List" to turn it on.
• That will add "Buy" and "Wish" buttons to your services menu. "Buy" takes your visitor to Instant Gift Certificates, and "Wish" adds the service to their Spa Wish List.
• Your Spa Wish List will automatically appear in the sidebar of your website. Customize "Spa Wish List" in Events.
• Try it out! Send yourself a email to see what it's like; you change the "Wish List" email in Email Marketing. But, be careful: it's the tags like "{wish_list}" within the email that make it work. If you leave those in place, it's easy to change or add text.

Share With a Friend

The key to great viral marketing is making it easy to share. Once someone has found your website, we them to tell their friends!

• Turn on Share With a Friend the same way, in Setup, Website and then Settings.
• You can also customize "Share With a Friend" in Events and Email Marketing.

Tips

• If you make changes to the events or emails, it's a great idea to try out on your website and send a test email to yourself. Make sure you're getting the result you want!
• You can add Spa Wish List and/or Share With a Friend to your main navigation, if you desire. In Setup, Website, click on the little signpost icon to change your main menu. Click the "Add Link / Page" task, and then select the "spa-wish-list" or "spa-share-with-a-friend" page. After you save, use the little green arrows to rearrange your menu.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing • 1 Comment »

The Email Campaigns report will tell you in a glance the results of your email marketing efforts, showing each campaign, when it was sent and the salient details:

• Emails is the number of emails sent for this campaign.
• Responses shows the number of recipients that clicked on a link in the email.
• GCs Sold is the number of Instant Gift Certificates you sold from a recipient clicking on a link in the email.
• Appointments is the number of appointments scheduled by recipients after clicking on a link in the email.
• Conversion % is the percentage of recipients that purchased a GC or scheduled an appointment.
• Unsubscribes shows how many recipients unsubscribed from your email newsletter.

Many dedicated email marketing services track an open rate, theoritically how many people have looked at the email. We've chosen not to because the number is horribly unreliable. Most email programs now block showing external images, which is how open rates are determined. The technique also throws up red flags for some spam filters.

Response rate is a very accurate measurement, tracking how many recipients click on a link in your email. But that has its limits, too: someone who receives your email and then pops over to their browser and types in your website address or clicks on a bookmark isn't going to be included. It's only if they actually click on the link in the email. Same thing applies to GCs Sold.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing • Comment »

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 »

The first email marketing campaign is for all those guys that have waited until the last minute for Valentine's Day. You've got the perfect solution, and this is the perfect way to remind them that you're here for them.

The Valentine's Day email is scheduled for Monday, February 12th. Marketing emails tend to do better when sent during the week. Emails over the weekend are often lost in the deluge for folks that don't check their email until Monday morning.

You can, of course, change anything you like about your email campaign: the subject, narrative, when it's sent, photo, etc. It's all in Setup, Email Marketing.

If there is an email campaign that you don't want to send to your clients, just delete it.

Events

Email Marketing will automatically include services that you're promoting in current Events. So, go customize that Valentine's Day event, and tell your clients about the services you have that make perfect romantic gifts!

Colors

For Dynamic Websites, Email Marketing automatically picks up on the colors from your website. That's not possible for linked sites, so we use natural tones for defaults colors.

You can change the colors for your emails by going into Setup, Email Marketing, Settings.

Test it!

To see what an email will look like, click on it in Email Marketing, and then click on the Send Test Email task. A sample of the email will be sent to your main email address.

Don't want automatic email campaigns?

If you're already doing email marketing, or just don't want to send marketing emails to your clients, then go to Setup, Email Marketing, Settings and turn off "Accept default Email Marketing campaigns". You'll also want to delete any email campaigns that already exist.

To learn more, check out SpaBoom Help.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing • 4 Comments »