SpaBoom New Features

Joy of Spa, the national online magazine for women that love to spa, is up and online!

Additionally, we've created the Joy of Spa email newsletter, beginning just in time for Mother's Day! We'll publish four editions a year, beginning with this Mother's Day (set to launch on May 7th). The Joy of Spa newsletter is branded with your spa's logo and when your client clicks to read more, the website is branded with your logo, too!

If you're not already signed up, there's still time to get the first edition of the Joy of Spa News out to your clients in time for Mother's Day, but you need to hurry — it's set to launch the morning of Thursday, May 7th!

To take advantage of this Mother's Day communication opportunity, go to Setup, Basics in the Email Marketing section to put Joy of Spa to work for your spa! Get ready to send the first edition of a beautiful, branded newsletter to your clients!

Visit the Joy of Spa website, and as always, if you have questions, please give us a call at 800.940.0458.

Posted in General, Joy of Spa, Joy of Spa News, Spa Marketing, SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

Instantly update your website, no matter who maintains it! At SpaBoom we are always trying to come up with useful tools for our clients and we have an instant winner — the SpaBoom Event widget.

What’s our widget? The free SpaBoom Event widget is a mini program we developed for our linked Instant Gift Certificate spas. It allows your online spa clients to see the specials and promotions you create in your SpaBoom account.

The Event widget is specifically designed for Instant Gift Certificate customers who do not have a SpaBoom Dynamic website. The Event widget solves a problem by allowing you to enter spa specials and promotions in your SpaBoom administrative account thru Events and have them appear on your website’s homepage. This eliminates all the fiddling required to change out promotions and specials and the need to wait on your website designer to update information on your homepage.

Having the Event widget on your home page means inquisitive customers will keep coming back to your spa website to look for new spa packages and specials.

As an added bonus the Event widget is a great tool to build on your existing email list. Whether you use the SpaBoom Email Marketing program or an external email management tool, you can add new email addresses to your existing list in SpaBoom. If you do not already have an email sign up link on your website the event widget makes it possible for you to start collecting email addresses.

This free Event widget will have a huge impact on your spa business. Good things do come in small packages!

Sign up today! Call 800.940.0458 or us, and a SpaBoom representative will contact you.

Posted in Creating Customers, General, Spa Business Management, Spa Marketing, SpaBoom New Features • 3 Comments »

Drum roll, please…

Joy of Spa, the national online magazine for women that love to spa, is nearly ready for prime time! We'll let you know when it's ready for you to explore, but in the meantime we need to share some additional, great news — we're creating the Joy of Spa email newsletter, beginning just in time for Mother's Day! Your feedback and positive response to SpaFinder Lifestyle, which has been placed on indefinite hiatus, made us realize you really really like having a great newsletter to share with your clients.

Those of you who enjoyed sharing SpaFinder Lifestyle with your clients will really love what we're doing with Joy of Spa! We'll publish four editions a year, beginning with this Mother's Day (set to launch on May 8th). The Joy of Spa newsletter is branded with your spa's logo and when your client clicks to read more, the website is branded with your logo, too!

If you participated in the SpaFinder Lifestyle, you're already signed up for the Joy of Spa.

If you hadn't yet signed up to send a beautiful, branded newsletter to your clients on a regular basis, now is your time to get onboard! Go to Setup, Basics to put Joy of Spa to work for your spa!

Stay tuned for more information, and for a peek at the Joy of Spa website — coming shortly!

Posted in Joy of Spa, Joy of Spa News, SpaBoom New Features • 1 Comment »

SpaBoom will be exhibiting at IECSC, so please be sure to come by and say 'Hi!' if you're planning to attend. We've created a new booth, are still giving away yummy Blissful chocolates, and would love to see you and show you our latest and greatest offerings – in person!

Show dates: April 26-28th, opening at 9:30 each morning. IECSC has extended their special pricing for the event. Visit IECSC NY for more info.

We hope to see you there!

Posted in General, SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

If you've been checking out our Home page lately, you may have noticed new information — specifically, that we're offering Online Booking! And did we mention that it's FREE?

Online Booking for Spas

Why do I need it?

Consumers are now used to booking online. Airfare, hotel, car rentals — it's all done online. Your clients expect to be able to book online with you, too!

How does it work?

We create a Book Online page just for you, that looks just like your existing website, and then add it your website.

You can easily change your services and packages that are available for Online Booking. And, you can create specials that apply just for a specific time period.

What does it cost?

Online Booking is a FREE benefit with SpaBoom. We don't believe in taking a cut of your core business — we make our money from the additional revenue that we bring you with Instant Gift Certificates.

Do I have to change POS systems?

No, you can keep your existing POS or scheduling system and use Online Booking with Confirmations.

How do I know online bookings are valid?

Credit card information is collected to hold the client's reservation. In the case of a no show, you can apply your cancellation policy, including charging for the appointment.

What if I'm not sure if I'm ready for online booking?

You can start today using Online Booking with Confirmations. You maintain complete control over your schedule — online bookings are confirmed by your front desk.

NOTE: If you're already using Appointment Requests, they will automatically become Online Booking with Confirmations beginning April 9th. You will NOT be charged for ANY appointments booked from March 1st, forward!

Does this take extra staff time?

It's faster for your front desk to manage online bookings than to take the equivalent phone call, and they can be addressed during down time.

Online Booking with Confirmations

Available now — Free!

Let your clients book online today without changing your POS system and while keeping complete control over your schedule.

Online Booking — Automatic

Available in June — Free!

Automatic booking is the next step once you're comfortable doing online booking with confirmations.You maintain your schedule in SpaBoom, and complete checkout transactions in your POS system or use our forthcoming POS integrations.

Not using online booking yet? No problem!

Give us a call at 800.940.0458 to get Booking today for FREE!

Posted in General, Spa Business Management, Spa Gift Certificates, SpaBoom New Features • 22 Comments »

Use the SpaBoom Buy-One-Get-One-Free (BOGO) promotional feature to drive Mother’s Day gift traffic to your spa. It generates two visits to your spa, the gift certificate (G.C.) recipient and the giver. The gift giver can use their free G.C during a spa’s slow summer months.

The SpaBoom BOGO feature allows your spa to offer a free G.C. when your online customer purchases an G.C. This means that the free G.C. goes to the purchaser, encouraging another spa client visit and more revenue for your spa.

Even better, you can set the valid dates for the free G.C. to drive traffic during the slow summer months. When the free G.C.'s are redeemed in June and July you can see your sales jump and everyone is happy.

The SpaBoom BOGO feature gives your spa a powerful tool to drive gift business for Mother’s Day and then it gives you an additional lift during your spa’s slow months. You may choose for the free G.C. to be redeemed only in July and August.

SpaBoom does not take a commission on the Free BOGO gift certificate.

Click here to learn how to run the BOGO feature for Mother’s Day.

Keep checking the SpaBoom blog for more information on revenue-building webinars, coming this spring and summer!

Posted in Creating Customers, General, Spa Gift Certificates, Spa Marketing, SpaBoom New Features • 3 Comments »

Have you always wanted to accept gratuities on your Instant Gift Certificates? Now you can!

Just go to Basics under Instant Gift Certificates and turn on "Gratuity on services". You can also select a default for your clients, like 15%.

A few notes:

• Gratuities only apply to service GCs.
• When running specials, gratuities are calculated on the original value of the service.
• On the GCs tab, a new icon appears next to the balance for GCs that include a gratuity. Click on the GC to see the full detail.
• "Gratuity included" is printed on the GC at the end of the services.
• No SpaBoom commissions are charged on gratuities.

Go to SpaDemo to see gratuities in action.

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

Most of the time when you are on the Clients tab in a SpaBoom account, you might be searching for a particular client.  That's all well and good, but many times you also want easy access to lots of other information about those clients as a whole.  We have the really cool client reports on the Reports tab, but having to do a couple of extra clicks just didn't seem logical to me as a user and as a techie kind of gal.

So… we changed it.  Now, when you are on the Clients tab, you have one-click access to both the Client Detail Report and the Client Journal Report, from the left hand tasks column.

A minor change, yes, but there are dozens of other places in our system that could be more intuitive or just flow from one step to another more gracefully.  Watching some of our clients use the software to identify those trouble points is part of what we all do, but if I haven't paid a visit to your business personally, you'll have to help me out.  Tell me the things that you'd love to see streamlined and it just might get changed lickety-split.

With your input, SpaBoom just keeps getting better, week by week.  Thank you!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Tutorials • 4 Comments »

We've just added another great promotional capability: buy one, get one free (BOGO) for Instant Gift Certificates. For example, you can offer a free $20 gift certificate when purchasing a $100 gift certificate.

BOGO has a nice advantage over straight discounting because the free GC goes to the purchaser, encouraging another spa visit and more money spent.

To run your BOGO promotion:

1. Go to Marketing, Events and select your Holidays event, or add a new one.
2. If you currently have an event with "Featured services", I'd recommend keeping those, so you'll want to add a new event. You might also want to add a new event to run your special for a shorter time period.
3. If you're adding a new event, you'll need to enter a headline like "Free Gift Certificates" and a narrative, for example, "Purchase any gift certificate for $100 or more, and receive a $20 gift certificate for you!".
4. Enter the time period for which you want the promotion to apply with the "Start date" and "End date".
5. For "Special", select "Buy one, get one".
6. In "Offer", select the promotional GC you want the purchaser to receive. You can create a brand new offer if you want, but it's easier to select one and then change it.
7. Enter in "Threshold" the purchase amount required to receive the free promotional GC.
8. Modify the "Offer description" if you desire — this will appear at the top of your Instant Gift Certificate page.
9. Hit the Update button. You'll now see a preview of the promotional GC. Scroll down click on the Change Offer button to change the value of the promotional GC, the expiration date, the GC design, etc.

See an example.

Notes:

• Promotional GCs can only be marked in SpaBoom as redeemed in full.
• The default offers all start wth 90 day expiration dates. You can make it whatever you desire, including a date range. For example, you could encourage spa visits in January.
• It's a good idea to include any restrictions you're placing on the promotional GC in the Narrative of the event and in the marketing of your promotion.
• The offers on promotional GCs aren't limited to just a dollar amount: you can make them for anything. For example, you could give a 20% discount on retail products from January 1st to March 31st.
• Current events are automatically included in email marketing campaigns by default — it's a great idea to time an email at the start of your promotion.

Posted in Creating Customers, Spa Gift Certificates, SpaBoom New Features • 11 Comments »

That's right, we are once again producing new Instant Gift Certificate designs for you and your wonderful clients to enjoy as the year all-too-quickly winds down.

One of our excellent blog commenters, Christine of Great Lakes Relaxation Center, has agreed to demonstrate how you can find and show off the new designs in your account.  I'm using her account to create the screenshots below, so you'll know what it will look like for you — nothing complicated or staged about it.

First, we wanted to make sure that your current "Most Popular" designs are not abruptly yanked from your website, so we have not forced into your list the new designs — you'll need to go get them.   You can do one of two things to begin showcasing those new designs — apply our default "most popular" in one fell swoop, or choose your own favorites for display.  I'll describe both options below.

1) The first option is quick and easy.   Go into your Setup Tab, then click on GC Designs on the left side of the screen. You'll see your already selected list of thumbnails:

 
On the left, look for the "Restore Defaults" link, and click on that.  

Click OK on the next screen, and you'll be all set.  You will now have six (6) new and snazzy Most Popular designs, which gives your IGC page enough room for the seasonal designs that we feature before major holidays (4 at a time).

2) Here's how to do the second option — pick your own designs:

Go into your Setup Tab, then click on GC Designs on the left side of the screen.  You'll see your already selected list of thumbnails.

To download the brand new designs, click on the link on the left of the screen called "Update Designs". They will come in as "Hidden" by default.  To show all of our new designs, click on "show hidden designs" and they will appear in your list:

Let's say you'd like to start by removing one of your current Most Popular designs — Celebrate Life.  All you need to do is click on the handy (and new!) "Remove from popular" button.

Next, we'll be making the new design "Lavender" visible and Most Popular.  Click on the "Show" button below the name Lavender to un-hide the design, then click on "Make popular" and you've just given super-cool in-crowd status to the lovely Lavender design.

Perfect!  Christine at our demo spa decided to go ahead and do the same thing for two more designs, hiding old ones and revealing two new designs, "Waves" from All Occasions and "Sincere" in the brand new Sorry category. Her GC page just was transformed from this:

To this:

When we decide to go all the way with her page to leave some room for seasonal designs and use the "Restore Defaults" link, her Instant Gift Certificate page will now end up like this, all nice and clean:

This was a long tutorial, but it should make all of the steps clear and give you a boost of confidence in customizing your offering to your clients — now go out there and have fun!

Posted in Holiday Promotion Brief, Spa Gift Certificates, SpaBoom New Features, Tutorials • 3 Comments »

If you'd like to help all the economically stressed consumers out there — and give them a little push to choose your spa for their holiday purchases — we've just made it super-easy to run percentage discount specials for your Instant Gift Certificates:

1. Go to Marketing, Events and select your Holidays event, or add a new one.
2. If you currently have an event with "Featured services", I'd recommend keeping those, so you'll want to add a new event. You might also want to add a new event to run your special for a shorter time period.
3. If you're adding a new event, you'll need to enter a headline like "Gift Certificate Sale" and a narrative, for example, "Save on all your holiday gift-giving, this week only!".
4. Enter the time period for which you want the discount to apply with the "Start date" and "End date".
5. For "Special", select "Percentage discount" and enter the discount % you'd like.
6. Modify the "Offer description" if you desire — this will appear at the top of your Instant Gift Certificate page.
7. Bring up your Instant Gift Certificate page and make sure it looks the way you want!

If you'd like to see the possibilities, try it out over on SpaDemo where we currently have both a percentage discount event and a featured services event running.

A couple of notes:

• Percentage discounts apply in addition to any discounted prices you've entered in another event for "Featured services".
• "Featured services" are now brought to the top on your Instant Gift Certificates page to better highlight them. If you've previously been creating a services category to do exactly that, now it just happens automatically!
• Current events are automatically included in email marketing campaigns by default — it's great idea to time an email at the start of your promotion.

Happy discounting!

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

SpaBoom.com has a new look and feel! And it's all about the wave…

Why now? It was time. We'd grown tired of the angular look and feel of our old site, and wanted to embrace more of a spa-like look and feel.

We like to think that we've combined form and function to provide an attractive, effective website for our visitors.

What do you think? We want to know!

Posted in General, SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

Dashboard shows it all at a glance

You can now get a quick pulse check of your online marketing efforts just by clicking on the Reports tab. The Dashboard quickly shows this year's Instant Gift Certificate sales compared to last year, email campaign effectiveness, comparisons to your peers, and sources of website visitors.

You also see an average of your recent reviews, how many Instant Gift Certificate purchasers are out-of-state, and GC analysis, including the percentage of service-based GCs, emailed GCs, delayed email GCs and existing client purchasers.

It's easy to change your dashboard: just scroll down and click on the Setup button. You can add and remove report widgets and change the data they display.

Posted in General, SpaBoom New Features • 4 Comments »

…tomorrow morning when you login to your SpaBoom account, you might notice a few missing items from your Setup tab menu — Events and Email Marketing.

Far be it from us to actually remove features from your toolbox; I think you know us better than that.  Some of our most powerful and favorite features deserve to be highlighted, so we're separating out and moving both Events and Email Marketing to their very own tab, called "Marketing."

So far, that is all that has changed, but in the future we have plans to add even more ways for you to connect with your customers and be an effective and successful business.  Let us know what you think, and how you'd like to see us expand our marketing offerings.

Posted in Spa Marketing, SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

As David mentioned in an earlier comment, you now have an additional report to display upcoming birthdays for clients with that information available.

Just go to the Reports tab, and scroll all the way down to the bottom for the "Marketing" reports — you'll see one called "Upcoming Birthdays."

The default view is any birthday in the next 30 days, but you can also choose the current calendar month, the next calendar month, or any particular month of the year.

What can you do with this report, other than gaze at its' loveliness?  Stay tuned, as we hook this report up with your other Marketing capabilities and allow you to easily collect the data and use it to give your clients new opportunities for gift-giving and enjoyment of your services.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 2 Comments »

You've asked for it, we've delivered — have your SpaBoom billing notifications and your Instant Gift Certificate emails go to two separate email accounts.

It's easy to set up — just go to the Setup tab and click on Billing on the left:

Notice how the default is to use your "business email" — that's the email listed with your business information in the Basics page.  Your Instant Gift Certificate notifications will always go to that address.  If you leave the default setting in the Billing screen above, your SpaBoom monthly bills will also go to the main business email from Basics.

However, uncheck the checkbox and you'll get a new field:

Fill in your alternate email address, whether you'd like it to go to you personally and have the main business email go to your manager, whatever configuration works best for you.

Let us know if you have questions, and enjoy the new functionality — we love making your life easier!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

Here at SpaBoom we are constantly thinking about ways to help you and your business. Today we're turning our attention to your clients and how we can help you offer even more wonderful promotions!

We've long had the ability to capture your client's birthday, but we're expanding that to include the client's anniversary as well. And now that we're focusing on that, we want to know how to best serve you. We'll have the ability for new email newsletter subscribers to optionally and voluntarily provide this information, but would you like to offer them an incentive to do so? And if you do, what kind of incentive would offer them? Would you like to send a targeted email to those clients who have not yet provided this information to you with an easy way for them to do so? And, again, if so, what kind of incentive would you offer them, if any?

If you are already doing birthday and/or anniversary promotions, what are they are how are they working for you?

Are there other promotions you would like to see around birthdays and anniversaries? And for that matter, are there other important dates we need to capture?

Yes, these are a lot of questions, but we really want to make sure we provide you all the tools you need. We'll take your feedback and accommodate it as best as possible.

Thank you!

Posted in Creating Customers, SpaBoom New Features • 9 Comments »

We rolled out the ability for your clients to review both their experience with the Instant Gift Certificate process as well as your business as a whole. You can add those reviews to your website, show them off for all the world to see and even choose to not display the ones that might be inappropriate.

There is a long way between "showing" and "doing," however. What can the reviews give you to make your business better? Negative feedback!

When you log in to your SpaBoom account, we have been showing you a notice on your Today tab when you've recently received reviews. Now, we have added an extra head's-up if any of those reviews are either 1 or 2-star, ending the notification with, "and one of them needs your attention!"

It looks like this:

When you receive a less than stellar comment, it might be instinctive to flinch and just brush it aside. However, little can help your reputation and the happiness of your clients more than a quick and effective response to complaints that could indicate real problems with your business.

For example, when we check on the link to the reviews report from the example above, we see the following:

Uh-oh. It looks like Maggie is going to need a phone call to ensure she feels taken care of — otherwise it could be hard to convince her (or her friends, since the word will probably circulate at her next social gathering) that visiting your spa again would be an enjoyable experience. Luckily, because she signed in with her client account, you know how to get a hold of her, via email or phone.

What might happen if you got a negative review that was left anonymously? That depends on the review. Let's say it just says, "Your lobby is horribly smelly." Even if you don't know who left the review, you can still do a spot-check of the lobby and see if anything is a problem. If not, get a second opinion and then move on. Any negative review, anonymous or not, should at least garner a quick investigation to see if something can be improved.

In the business world, focus groups are created for the purpose of getting consumers to tell companies what they really think. Focus groups cost money, time, and are not easy to do for a small business — and with reviews, you have the opportunity to get the same kind of valuable information, while at the same time building your relationships with your customers and the local community.

Now, go forth and create some happy customers!

Posted in Spa Business Management, SpaBoom New Features, Tutorials • 1 Comment »

If you are a SpaBoom client who also uses Harms Millennium, you might be missing a key tool that will make your business run more efficiently:

Harms Millennium Integration with SpaBoom!

We've had an integration tool for a little over a year now, and when Millennium 2008 was released, a new and much simpler installation process was also launched.  If you're already integrating, you know that you can avoid having to enter your SpaBoom gift certificates into your Millennium system — they are sent over automatically, into a special drawer that you designate.

If this tool is completely news to your ears — start by downloading the integration guide that Harms developed with us to walk you through the initial steps.

Then, give us a call and we'll help get the final steps taken care of for you.  Soon you'll be in Millennium bliss, only needing to log in to your SpaBoom account when you need to change administrative details or do things like set up email marketing campaigns.

Harms Millennium SpaBoom Integration Guide [PDF]   

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Tutorials • 3 Comments »

That may seem like a strange thing to say, but hear me out.

When YOU are looking at online reviews of a business you'd like to visit or a book you want to buy, doesn't it give you just a smidgen of doubt if every single entry is a 5-star glowing testimonial that sounds like their best friend… or their spouse… or their mother wrote it?  You find a dose of comforting reality in the business that has a 4 star average — from lots of 5s but a few 4s and 3s now and then.  Now you know exactly what I mean.

You might get reviews that are mixed, or less than perfect.  Embrace them.

As a business any amount of feedback you get from clients is pure gold, even if it does not appear shiny at first glance.

If you know the client who left the review, give them a call and thank them for their feedback.  Don't even mention the content.  If you don't know the client, consider the review — are there any nuggets of truth that could be addressed?  Perhaps they found the services wonderful but the wait time a little long.  If you were busy that day, of course that could have happened if bookings were going over their time frames.  Use the feedback to make your business better for the next client, and the next…

If the review is truly awful, the same followup procedures apply.  However, if you have ample reason to believe that the review was mean spirited without substance, you can choose to suppress it in your showcase reviews in SpaBoom –  just go to your Reviews Report, click on the date of the review in question, and use the checkbox "Hide this review."  You are only allowed to hide a few reviews, which gives you control over the quality of what appears on your site, while also allowing for your clients to express their opinions.

Enjoy this feature, but act as if each review is a gift from your clients and you'll continue to improve.

Posted in Spa Business Management, SpaBoom New Features, Tutorials • 4 Comments »