Text message marketing for businesses – What you need to keep customers coming back

With people turning to cellphones as their main method of communication, mobile marketing is becoming more relevant than ever.

A survey by Salesforce has shown that the number of marketers who use mobile channels to communicate with customers has grown from 53% in 2018 to 69% in 2020.

Even with this rapid growth, 43% of those surveyed are still planning to increase their use of mobile marketing tools.

This shows that mobile channels, such as text messages, push notifications, and applications, are being used more frequently.

SMS marketing could be the tool you need to outgrow your competitors.

A survey by 3Cinteractive in 2016 showed that 48% of customers prefer to receive loyalty-related information via SMS than through other channels.

According to ZDNet, 80% of consumers wish they get more texts from businesses.

We’re not even talking about results yet, but these numbers are enough reason to learn how business text messaging can help your marketing efforts.

What is text message marketing?

Text message marketing is a way for businesses to promote their products to consenting customers by sending personalized text messages (or SMS) with a clear value.

If you want repeat customers, business text messages should be a part of your mobile marketing strategy. A well-put text message can help you increase brand awareness, engage with your loyal customers, and even grow your sales.

It’s the perfect way to communicate with existing customers, especially if most of them are cellphone users (which over 67% of the world population are, according to BankMyCell).

There are two kinds of text messages a business normally sends out.

Promotional texts, such as offers, discounts, and sale reminders
Transactional texts, such as appointment reminders, order confirmations, and account activity reports.

Some businesses use text messages to gather customer feedback and open an SMS channel for customer support, as the response rate is higher compared to other channels.

Depending on your business, the campaigns you’re running and the results you get will vary.

How effective is text marketing for businesses?

To see the impact of text marketing for businesses, let’s compare its average results with its closest, more popular relative: email marketing.

Text message marketing and email marketing have a lot in common.

You can access both via mobile, they’re sent to customers who opted in, and both are used to inform users.

But how different are the results you get?

	Email Marketing	SMS Marketing
Open rate	19 – 26%	99%
Click-through rate	6 – 9 %	19%%
Response rate	20%	45%
Average time to respond	90 minutes	90 seconds
Coupons redeemed	2% – 4%	30% – 50%

*source: Hubspot, Tatango, 99firms, Gartner, Campaign Monitor, Point of Sale

At a glance, you‘ll notice that SMS marketing is much more effective than email marketing.

So, does this mean business text messages are better than email?

Yes, and no.

Compared to email marketing, SMS marketing is an excellent way to hit your customers with bursts of urgent information.

However, email marketing is a reliable channel if you need to inform your customers using long-form content.

While the results of a text message marketing campaign are staggering, it’s still not enough to hold up your business as the only marketing campaign.

Text message marketing flourishes when you use it in tandem with other marketing channels, such as email marketing, referral marketing, or loyalty programs.

Why should you send a business text message?

As you can see, SMS marketing has a delightful success rate.

If you’re a marketer who has struggled with meager success rates before, pick your jaw off the floor, and let’s find out how these astronomically high numbers are possible.

1. It’s sent directly to your customer’s inbox.

Unlike emails, which have to battle spam filters and competing newsletters, business text messages are delivered straight to your customers’ notification panel.

It’s delivered instantly, with a push notification, and your customers don’t even need to download an app to get updates.

Using text messages to relay urgent information about your business makes perfect sense.

Your customer’s phone is something they stare at often. The chance of getting their attention is much higher than emails, which people rarely check unless they really have to.

2. It’s interactive

Your exchanges with your customer are interactive and quick. Thanks to the push notification, people notice your messages quickly, hence speeding up their response time.

As it’s designed to be a 2-way conversation, text messages are the perfect channel to engage with your customers. Each party only gets 160 characters to say what they want, leading to a quicker sale and problem resolution.

3. It’s easy to set up and manage

Unless you want your thumb to fall off, using a tool to send bulk text messages for your campaign is the natural course of action.

Automated text marketing platform helps you manage tasks for your campaigns, such as tracking your metrics, adding autoresponders, personalizing your texts, tracking compliance, and eventually sending your messages.

Loading off these menial tasks to software lets you focus on what’s more important — nurturing relationships with your customers.

4. You’re talking to people who already care

You need permission from your targets to send emails.

Since they opted into your messages, it’s safe to say that you’re talking to people who are already aware of your brand AND want to hear about opportunities to purchase more from your business.

Sending relevant offers to people ready to buy makes it easier to produce a positive ROI.

5. It boosts the results of other campaigns

If you’ve been operating for a while now, chances are you have other marketing channels.

Adding business text messages to your army of strategies can help you boost the effects of your efforts, particularly with retaining and delighting existing customers.

Text message marketing is arguably the most intimate form of communication you can have with your customers, and a quick reminder to check out other marketing channels can boost your results.

While it’s an excellent channel to connect with loyal customers, text marketing for businesses has its disadvantages.

For one, it’s limited to 160 characters. And then there’s a strict law you have to follow, the TCPA, which forbids you from sending unsolicited messages to protect consumers from spam.

Despite its limitations, text message marketing is still a great channel to add to your toolbox. It’s all the more reason to combine business text messaging with other channels.

How do you create a text messaging campaign for business?

Here’s a step-by-step guide to make sure your first campaign is on the right track.

1. Create a goal

A successful campaign needs a SMART goal.

Running a campaign without a clear goal makes it harder to measure your success rate. With a goal set, you get clarity about the requirements you need to fulfill, and it gets easier to identify your mistakes.

2. Pick a mass text message marketing tool

Using a text message marketing tool takes a lot off your plate.

Find a provider that can help you not only with sending out bulk text messages but also with managing your SMS marketing campaign.

By automating your whole text marketing process, you can focus on optimizing your text marketing campaign to delight your customers and improve customer retention.

3. Check local guidelines

Rules regarding text marketing for small businesses vary for each country. Check to see that you’re not violating any rules determined by local authorities and what consequences you’ll face if you violate any.

If your targets live in the US, pay attention to the FCC’s guidelines, particularly the TCPA.

Here’s the gist for you: Always have written permission from your contacts before you send any promotional text.

However, transactional texts, such as order confirmations, appointment reminders, and schedule updates, are excluded from this rule.

This is a crucial step, as you’ll face a hefty fine later on if you violate the rules. Violating the TCPA can lead to a fine for up to $1500 for each message you send.

4. Gather contacts using opt-ins

The TCPA isn’t the only reason you need to ask for permission from your contact.

It’s a professional courtesy. It also boosts your ROI and helps you with your approach when you craft your messages.

Running an effective campaign becomes easier when you know that your targets are interested in your products and you have the data to help you create a relevant offer.

Use an opt-in campaign to gather consenting customers quickly.

You can gather contacts using a QR code, asking them to text a keyword to a number, or if you’re using online transactions, adding an opt-in at your checkout pages.

Here’s what you need to include in an opt-in text:

an explicit text stating your customer’s consent
an exit route for customers who don’t want to stay in your contact list
any terms or charges they need to know when they sign up to your list

If you’re interested in boosting your opt-in rate, you can also provide gifts for customers who signed up to your contact list, like a special coupon or exclusive content.

5. Segment your contacts

Personalization drives better results for many businesses.

By segmenting your contacts, you’re making sure that you’re targeting a specific target with offers you’re sure they would love. Personalization gets more results than blasting out a generic text message that resonates with only 1% of your target audience.

Having data like loyalty programs, past purchase history, and their interests also helps you design a much more effective campaign.

By only sending text messages relevant to your target customer, you’re saving resources and making your customers anticipate future messages.

6. Plan your texts

Planning the who, when, and what of your business text messaging campaign is a big part of it. Let’s break them down.

Who’s your target?

This is where the personalization you did earlier comes to play. It’s easier to plan a campaign when you know exactly who your targets are. The more data you have, the easier it is to pick a relevant offer.

What do you want to say?

What you say in a text matters more than you think, especially as you only have 160 characters to attract your customer’s attention. Follow the 4 golden rules to make sure you’re getting the optimal response from each message.

When do you want to run the campaign?

Scheduling timely offers can help you drive up your sales quickly. For example, if you own a restaurant, blasting out a pre-lunch text message for a coupon can drive up your sales during lunchtime.

Other timely offers you can target include special events, such as holidays, birthdays, or even change in seasons.

7. Track your metrics

Tracking your metrics is essential if you want to improve future campaigns.

By gathering more data, you get a deeper understanding of your customer’s preferences, which helps you design future texts so it produces better results.

What you need to know before starting your first SMS marketing campaign?

Before sending your first text, here are some rules you need to follow to craft an irresistible message.

Rule 1: Personalize your texts

Personalizing doesn’t only help you come up with relevant text ideas, it also works great to catch your customer’s attention.

Greeting your customer using their names is a great tactic and can increase engagement up to 20%.

To save you from awkward mistakes, make sure your customer’s information is accurate and updated. It seems trivial, but sending out texts with the wrong detail will hurt your company’s image.

Rule 2: Identify yourself

SMS is an intimate channel.

Often, businesses forget that their customers also get a lot of messages during the day. They can’t keep track of every unknown number coming their way!

Identifying your business in your message proves your credibility, and will get your messages opened much faster.

Use something your customers can recognize. If they know you by name, then use your name. If they know you by the name of your company, use your company’s name.

Rule 3: Percent, not dollars

This is a technique you should use when sending out discounts and coupons.

Hooking customers in with a clear value increases the chance of your coupons being redeemed.

Customers are thrifty. They love discounts, and they need to know how much they’re saving.

Make it easier to recognize the value of your deal by using percentage instead of prices. Not everyone knows your prices by heart, and even if they do, they still have to do some mental math.

Tip: When sending out offers, ones with 40% discounts or more are far more likely to excite your customers. Texts with less than a 40% discount get much less response.

Use offers like this to nudge passive clients and fill up your cashbox when business is slow.

Rule 4: Create urgency

Another tried and tested trick. It’s a technique you see often with deals.

Words like ‘limited,’ ‘today only,’ and (on follow up texts) ‘ending soon’ are ones that get your customers so anxious.

The kind where they feel the need to buy from your business before missing the chance to save.

Limiting the number of purchases also works well with creating urgency, as it lights up people’s competitive spirit, and you get your sale faster.

How businesses use Text messages?

Text messages are great if you want to interact with your customers and improve engagement. They’re also excellent if you need to blast short bursts of urgent information.

However, you can also use text messages as a channel to:

1. Attract past customers

Nudge past customers to win them back via text.

Any customers that haven’t been around for a while?

Shoot a quick text signaling you noticed their absence and offer an incentive to make a purchase.

It’s a highly effective win-back campaign you can use to regain past customers and grow the loyalty of your existing customers.

2. Build your reputation by asking for feedback

Feedback and social proof are necessary if you want to grow your business.

Shooting a quick customer satisfaction survey through text after an interaction with your customer yields a 22% response rate, double the response rate of surveys sent through email, as reported by Delighted.

Great responses?

Awesome, ask them to post a review!

Bad ones?

Still awesome, now you know what you need to improve in your business.

To boost your chance of success, offer something in return, like an exclusive coupon or discount.

3. Ask for referrals

There’s a reason referral marketing is the oldest technique in the book. Even today, word of mouth is still the most effective way to get new customers.

There are a couple of changes, however. Rather than waiting to get recommendations, you can get them yourself by asking for referrals from your loyal customers.

Offer a referral program to satisfied customers and create an army of brand advocates to help you get more buyers.

It’s a win-win-win.

You get more sales, your loyal customers get rewards, and more people can benefit from your products!

Great products and services + recommendations from people who love your brand?

Your marketing army is going to grow exponentially.

4. Promote coupons or services

Texting your customers of events, discounts, or coupons can boost your sales, keep your customers happy, and improve customer retention.

Offers and discounts delivered to your customer’s phone alert them of any opportunity to save money on their next trip to your store.

Exclusive coupons, on the other hand, are a great way to show your appreciation to loyal customers. They are usually marked with a unique code your customers can exchange when they visit.

Tip: combining text message marketing with your loyalty program to deliver the best deals to your best customers also helps you reward your customers appropriately.

How Referrizer can help?

Text message marketing is a simple and cost-effective way to boost your sales and connect with loyal customers. It’s a growing trend among businesses, and it’s only getting started.

Implementing the suggestions written in this article will help you launch your first successful SMS marketing campaign.

As we’ve said, text marketing campaigns are best combined with other campaigns, like email marketing, loyalty programs, and referral programs.

Integrating a text marketing campaign into your existing campaign is as important as planning the campaign itself, as a full set marketing strategy helps you get better results.

Referrizer combines local marketing tools into one platform to help you automate all your marketing efforts.

Referrizer helps you integrate your marketing campaigns so you can get the best results possible from your efforts. We also help you partner up with local businesses so you can grow your economy together.

Want to power up your business using the local community? Sign up for free to find out how we can help.

How to get more paying members – 4 powerful methods for fitness businesses

One of the most difficult things in running a fitness business is attracting new customers, especially with all the competition out there these days. You know that the more members you get, the more profitable your business will be.

When it comes to getting new members, you can’t expect people to simply walk in and sign up.

It is a more complex process. First, you need to catch people’s attention, turn them into leads, and then – hopefully – some of those leads will become paying members.

Here are 4 powerful ways to get more paying members:

1. Word-of-mouth marketing

Referrals, also called “word-of-mouth marketing,“ have always been an effective method for acquiring new members. In fact, a Nielsen study found that 92% of consumers around the world said they trust word-of-mouth, or recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

The good news is that people are already talking about your business. Existing members casually mention an amazing training session they had and, in this way, they spread the word about your business.

By doing this, they certainly brought in some new people. But the truth is that this is only the top of the iceberg.

The goal is to get your existing members to work hard to bring people for you, the same as they work hard in your gym.

But how do you do it?

To make it easier, you can look at it in 2 parts.

Offer special rewards to your members for referrals.

Studies indicate that more than 50% of people are likely to give a referral if offered a direct incentive, social recognition, or access to an exclusive loyalty program – Software Advice

So, providing rewards works. But is a bottle of water enough for a referral? Probably not. The more attractive the rewards you have, the more referrals you are going to get. Here are some rewards you could offer:

A discount on their next membership extension
Premium memberships options, such as scheduling before regular members
Free services that aren’t an expense to you (e.g. diet plans)

Now that you have people to refer friends, you want to make sure referrals are converting.

To do so, you can create a two-way incentive program. This means that you reward your existing members after the referral results in a new member, and you welcome the new member with an incentive.

For example, you can give the existing member a 20% discount on their next membership extension, and you can give the new member a 10% discount on their first month.

Promote your referral program.

This is commonly overlooked. After investing so much effort and resources in a good referral program, members aren’t aware that it even exists. That’s why it’s important to promote the program, and this means taking the extra step. In the end, this is the most cost-effective marketing method you can find.

How do you promote the referral program? Here are some ideas:

Use your social media platforms: You already have an audience there. Let everyone on your social media know about your new referral program by using engaging images and short descriptions. Explain the rules and make sure that everyone understands that their engagement will be rewarded.

Staff: Encourage your staff to casually remind members about the great advantages of your referral program.

Make use of empty surfaces in your business: Sometimes you won’t be able to inform your members about the referral program by communicating to them directly, therefore you should resort to indirect communication – posters in your own business. Set up conspicuous posters in different parts of your fitness studio where members will notice them, such as:

At the entrance of your business – doors, gates, windows, etc.
Inside the fitness studio on the walls
Locker rooms

Print out regular size flyers containing information about the referral program and keep them on your front desk.

Website announcement: If you have a website, it would be a waste not to mention the novelty there. You can use the same image you used on your social media with a short description.

Email/text promotion: If you collect your members’ information when they sign up, use email and text marketing to promote your referral program.

In contrast to these tips, there are a few red flags with referral programs that you can easily overcome by paying attention to the steps below.

Make sure members are not abusing your referral program. If you’re offering rewards to members, you don’t want to spend resources on giving them dozens of rewards while your member count stays the same. Give rewards to your members only if the referrals become members of your fitness studio. When the new member gets his membership, then give the reward to the member who was the referrer.

In referral programs, simplicity is key. To avoid unnecessary confusion make sure not to overcomplicate your program, and define the rules clearly.

2. Social media

Social media is not just a place where you can build your brand, it’s also a great place to generate leads. It’s cost-effectiveness is proven in a Quicksprout statistic which states that 63% of companies using social media saw an increase in marketing effectiveness.

There are two types of social media marketing – organic and paid.

Organic involves posting content regularly on popular social media platforms such as:

Facebook – With almost three billion active users, it’s a must!
Instagram – A platform where 90% of users are up to 35 years old, which makes it a big potential for fitness studios.
Pinterest – Yes, Pinterest is a great option for raising brand awareness

So, the question is, which type of content should you put out if you want to generate leads from your social media?

The goal is to stop the average person from scrolling down the feed and taking a few seconds to actually read your post. In order to do this you must make your post interesting and useful:

Here are a few ideas for high engaging content:

Common mistakes among popular exercises – educate your audience. There are certain exercises members tend to do wrong, over and over again, which can result in serious long-term injuries. Inform them about the possible injuries and educate them how to do the exercises correctly.

Workout systems for targeting specific muscle groups – this is always useful. Post tutorials of a 5 minute morning abs exercise tutorial for your members to do at home, or a full booty workout program at your gym.

Nutrition and diet tips – “You are what you eat.“ Remind your followers that the most intense workouts in the world won’t bring them much muscle gain(or weight loss) without a proper diet plan. Don’t just remind them not to eat junk food – instead, post recipes for a healthy pre-workout shake, or a nutritious post-workout meal.

Even though social media is a cost-effective method, it will take some time to actually get members to utilize it. You have to generate content on a consistent level (daily, or at least three times a week) and make sure that it is quality content, with attractive designs.

Also keep in mind that besides posting images and textual posts on your social media, you should also focus on putting out video content – videos of challenges, workshops, demonstrations of exercises, etc. Video content is very powerful as it is shared 12x more than images and texts posts combined.

3. Facebook ads

Opposite of organic social media marketing, Facebook ads is a paid, lead generation tool, done through the ad platform of Facebook. Even though it is a very popular method for generating tools, it can easily become a bottomless pit. Here, we will focus on what measures you should take to prevent that from happening, while successfully generating leads from your Facebook ads:

Promote special offers – Free intro week, discounts for certain programs, VIP one-day pass (which would give them exclusive privileges).

Promote special events – Host fitness seminars and workshops in your fitness center in which experts will educate your audience in different aspects (e.g. benefits of a healthy diet). You can also contact popular athletes or celebrities that enjoy grinding in the gym and host a meet and greet.

Time your offers correctly – Sometimes timing is everything. People tend to make the decision to become healthier and fit at certain periods, such as the beginning of the year, or during the spring, in an attempt to get that summer body. Use that to your advantage by incorporating their needs to your ads. Create a special 30-day New Year’s challenge, or a last minute “summer body workout.”

Want to see a good ad in practice?

Here is an example:

Don’t forget to use the simplicity and power of the AIDA formula in your ad.

AIDA stands for:

A: Attention.

I: Interest.

D: Desire.

A: Action.

First, there is an attractive video that clearly shows online training (Attention).

“Don’t hit pause” in the first sentence is so powerful because it directly speaks with the target audience who may lack the motivation to train from their home (Interest).

“Science-backed” and “technology-tracked” represent the principle that separates them from others. It is something unique about their proposition (Desire).

“Sign up for a live coach-led workout today” is a simple but powerful call to action. In the description of the ad, we can also see the same call to action, the only difference here is highlighted that it is free (Action).

Need more ideas? Check out 25 offers that attract potential customers like a magnetic force

4. Partner up with local businesses

Last – but certainly not the least – partnering up with local businesses is a very effective method for generating leads. In fact, 54% of businesses say partnerships drive more than 20% of their total revenue. (Partnerize, 2018)

If you are looking for new members, a good thing would be to look at places where they already hang out. This doesn’t mean that you should reach out to other gyms – instead, find local smoothie and protein bars that your target group already visits.

They will be willing to do this because it is mutually beneficial. For example, your members get a discount in their products, and in return their guests can get a discount on your membership. It is a win-win situation. They get returning customers every day, and you get new members.

No smoothie bar or any similar businesses near you? Contact local businesses and offer to give their employees a discount on your membership. You can also offer them a unique team building experience by organizing group challenges for them with a prize at the end. Organize the challenge into several different stages, a point system and whichever team has the most points – wins. Keep in mind to make challenges in which everyone can participate such as:

Longest rowing distance in a certain time frame per team.
Tug of war – a classic competitive game everyone is accustomed to since childhood.
Shortest time for a ten-yard sprint per team.

Once their employees come to your fitness studio for the challenge, they’ll see what you have to offer and some of them will become regular members of your fitness studio. And even better – they’ll talk to their friends about the experience which will result in a huge increase in word of mouth marketing. It’s a win-win situation!

Now, with this newly acquired knowledge you can start implementing our methods – but only one method at a time. Focus your time and resources on improving one method to perfection and then move on to the next.

You can speed up the process if you know a friend that could have use of these methods.

You can start to implement one, and your friend can implement another. Once you both develop each method to perfection, you can share valuable experiences and knowledge with each other. For example, notify each other about challenges that could happen or show more efficient ways for implementation.

Do you send emails to your members? Here you can find 10 best performing emails for Fitness studios.

Referrizer Launches $1 M Fund to Support Texas Businesses

Launching a Fund for Texas Local Businesses

The recent unprecedented storm in Texas has made it incredibly difficult for businesses to communicate with their customers. Temperatures dropped to freezing levels, and since the state’s energy infrastructure was not built with the cold in mind, millions of Texans lost power. As the storm ravaged the state, companies that had seen a slight improvement in business in recent months started to struggle again. As restaurants and small businesses struggle to stay open amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and recent natural disaster, Referrizer gives a helping hand to business owners by launching a $1,000,000 fund.

Two-Month Trial

We are now offering two months of our services for free to every Texas business that has been affected by the storm. Our autonomous marketing platform is built to empower businesses. Technological innovations like our Smart WiFi are pivotal in maintaining business as people seek to support their local businesses and communities. Remaining visible to new and old customers is one of the most important ways to keep up customer engagement during such difficult events.

Texas Disasters

Since so many are still without power and water, even weeks after the storm first struck, people rely on their local restaurants for food. Referrizer can help direct people to local businesses, so they can support them. Now more than ever, Texans need to work together to help one another, support local businesses, and ensure the survival of communities. The state motto of Texas was designated as the word “Friendship” nearly a century ago, and we hope to help the people of the Lone Star State live up to this ideal.

Referrizer’s New Solution

Businesses in Texas and all across the country have already been utilizing Referrizer’s innovative solutions and technical expertise, and with this new offer, we hope to help 1,000 by offering a free Setup worth of $599 and two months of services worth $199 each. While our Smart WiFi has been one of the most popular solutions for the organizations we serve, Referrizer offers a suite of useful programs and services that benefit our clients, including:

Email Marketing to stay in touch with your customers
Reputation Management to increase positive reviews
Retention and Loyalty Programs to reward your most faithful customers
2-Way Text Messaging to help you communicate with clients

Referrizer’s Background

Referrizer is known for helping clients thrive during hard times, and the challenge presented by this storm is another struggle that we can overcome together with our clients. Our platform is built with relationship-building in mind. When disasters strike, the people of a community pull together to take care of one another, but pulling together is difficult without the proper infrastructure to enable it.

Re-creating Local Community.

The spirit of Friendship that carries through Texas communities will encourage Texas and its people to persevere, even against these difficult odds. If your business is based in Texas, feel free to contact our team, and we will help your business!

Best tips for creating a winning spa loyalty program

The profitability of spa businesses mostly depends on returning clients. Clearly, you want to find a way to get your clients to visit you more and spend more money.

Among plenty of methods for increasing retention, loyalty programs have been shown to be the most effective method you can implement without extra effort.

Why you should use a loyalty program in your business?

Everyone has had at least one experience where a regular client stops patronizing your business. Not the best feeling, right?

On the other hand, you have clients that have been with you since day one.

The purpose of a loyalty program is to create more of those clients and help you prevent repeat clients from leaving. The best clients are loyal – they cost less and visit more often, therefore, their loyalty guarantees future success.

Spa centers around the world are now using loyalty programs more than ever before. They are aware that by forming a program designed to directly increase client loyalty, they will improve their client retention rates.

When you set up your loyalty program in a proper way, you will be able to encourage clients to visit you more often. Moreover, you will directly affect your clients’ satisfaction, which leads to building a strong relationship with them.

And once you build a strong, healthy relationship with your clients, they are more likely to spread the good word about your business and recommend you to their friends, which clearly indicates that loyal clients are worth more than regular ones.

A 2018 Motista study proved that clients who are emotionally connected to a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value than regular clients and recommend you at a much higher rate.

Let’s take a look at the key elements of a successful loyalty program.

Key elements of a good loyalty program

Get to know your clients.

The goal is to find out your most popular services among clients, so you can use them in your loyalty program to make it more appealing.

So, how do you rank the popularity of each treatment?

Reviews are key! Clients who are interested in your services tend to rate your business online, where they commonly write about their experience with your staff and services – which you can use to find out what services are a hot topic in your business.

Business reviews are a good starting point, but why stop there? Clients overwhelmingly share their experience on social media, which is a great source of data. Check out a comment on your Facebook… tagged photos on your Instagram… and you don’t want to forget to use hashtags on Twitter.

If you don’t find this enough, there are numerous other ways, such as your employee’s experience with clients. Or even better, let your clients know that you are creating a loyalty program and want to hear their opinions.

Set polls on social media or send a friendly email to clients.

You will get valuable insight, and they will feel appreciated because you showed that you care about their opinions. This is what you call a win-win situation.

Defining the rewards and incentives.

Now that you have valuable knowledge about your clients, the next step is to decide the incentives you want to offer in your loyalty program.

The best choice for spa centers would be a ”points” program. This is the most popular approach because it is simple: clients earn a proportionate number of points by booking treatments. More bookings equal more points and more points equal bigger rewards, such as free treatments, big discounts, etc.

One thing to remember is to carefully analyze how many points are to be awarded for every booking.

You want your rewards and incentives to be appealing to your clients, but at the same time, you don’t want to drive yourself into bankruptcy with financially unsustainable rewards.

Also, keep in mind that while bookings are the main source of profit for your business, there is a lot more than your clients can do for your business in exchange for points.

Think about using loyalty program points to encourage people to leave you reviews on Google and Yelp.

Or – even better- give them points for referring a friend or sharing your business on social media.

Loyalty program ready? Let your clients know about it!

Everything ready? Now it is time to let everyone know.

How can you make a big announcement?

Email: Use an email blast to notify existing clients about a brand new loyalty program and invite them to start collecting points right away.

Social media: Make sure to use all social media platforms and notify more people about your loyalty program. You can make a big announcement to existing clients while also generating new ones.

Website: This is one more place where you definitely want to include a simple notification about the new loyalty program. It is the same situation as with social media, as both potential and existing clients visit your website. It would be a waste to let the effort you put into creating an amazing loyalty program go unnoticed.

In your business: This is the most overlooked method. Yes, you covered the digital part… and you did an awesome job! But, don’t forget this important part: set large posters in different places in your business and even directly ask them if they heard about your loyalty program.

Need more bookings? Check out The best way to get more massage bookings: Easy and affordable way, broken down into 5 steps.

Managing and tracking loyalty programs.

Forming a loyalty program is one thing, but maintaining and improving it is a much more complicated process, as it becomes more complex over time.

How do you know if your loyalty program is working? How do you know when and in what way to improve it?

Tracking plays a huge role in discovering that kind of information.

If you are a hands-on type of business owner, keeping track of your program by yourself is the way to go – if you have enough free time, of course.

As mentioned earlier, the best approach for a loyalty program is the points program. It is a fail-proof approach that a lot of businesses use.

How do you keep track of these points?

The most common method is – loyalty cards. Here are some of the pros and cons of using loyalty cards to track your loyalty program.

Pros

Affordable: It is one of the top inexpensive solutions you can get.
Simple to create and implement: There are actually many companies that offer to do the whole service (creating gift card software, printing the cards, etc.) for a fixed price.
Commonly used and proven method: Clients already have experience with them and tend to use different loyalty cards on a day-to-day basis.

Cons:

Time-consuming: Your staff will have to spend a significant amount of time registering clients, keeping track of each booking, etc. Also, there is always the chance that a client might lose his/her card, which is an additional burden on your staff.
Loyalty cards are small physical items and clients are known to lose them or forget to bring them to your business. Also, people carry a lot of different types of cards with them all the time (ID, driver’s license, credit card, membership, etc.), and adding another one to the pile is not practical at all.
Clients tend to lose track of how many points they’ve accumulated, which brings unnecessary obstacles in your relationship with them.

If doing all of the work yourself doesn’t seem appealing, you should consider using tools that are specially designed for managing loyalty programs. These tools will do all of the work for you, which would give you more time to focus on something else, or just simply have some free time.

So, how do you choose the right loyalty program tool?

The key features are:

Possibility to create and customize the offers in your loyalty program to the fullest extent
Ability to track the points of each client with the click of a button, which would relieve your staff of unnecessary tasks while also minimizing the chance for human error
Makes it easy for your clients to earn points and redeem rewards
Good protection from your loyalty program being abused
Available free trial so you have enough time to test if the tool fits your business

Need a loyalty program solution that will work for your spa business? Check out why local businesses use Referrizer.

International Women’s Day Presents

As International Women’s Day is approaching, Referrizer wants to bring attention to the amazing and excellent women in business. Since this holiday is very important for the company, Referrizer wants to propose a competition which will bring attention to the exceptional women in business who didn’t get the right recognition.

History of the Holiday

International Women’s Day was first proposed in New York City in 1909, as a day to celebrate the wonderful women who have improved the world with their innovation, intelligence, and care.

Statistics about women-owned businesses

According to a study commissioned by American Express, 4 out of every 10 American Businesses are owned by Women. The amount of women-owned businesses has increased 31 times since 1972. Despite the recent boom in female-driven business, there is still a significant gap between the amount of male and female-owned businesses, and many women struggle to get their businesses going, especially now during this unprecedented pandemic.

Women’s Day Celebration

Today, more than a century later, it is still celebrated every March 8th in countries around the world. Women’s History Month was created to celebrate the wonderful women that have made incredible contributions to the world and our lives.

One-month trial

Referrizer is seeking to close this gap with their new fund: every woman-owned business in America is eligible for a free one-month trial of our Automated Marketing Platform.

Women will grow their customer bases and develop businesses quickly and easily. Referrizer’s technical expertise is already used by businesses across the country, and we hope that this new push will help create a more diverse and balanced group of business owners in America.

During this free month, Woman-Owned Businesses will gain access to:

Smart WiFi that prompts customers to provide feedback when they connect with their devices, which is then posted on Google Reviews
Reputation Management to help increase the number of positive reviews about your business
Retention and Loyalty Programs to reward your most faithful customers for sticking around

We believe there’s no better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than by helping America’s female-owned businesses thrive.

The best way to get new massage bookings: Easy and affordable way, broken down into 5 steps

How do you get new massage bookings? If you are running a massage therapy business, this question probably often comes to mind. Sometimes, new bookings can mean growing a business, while in other cases, a business’s survival can depend on them.

When dealing with this challenge, the first thing that might come to your mind is focusing on ads and building brand awareness on social media.

This is a method that works, but sometimes it can be too slow and expensive.

However, most massage businesses forget about one affordable source of new bookings available to them: past clients.

It may seem like a strange idea to focus on people who once used your services and didn’t become the most loyal clients, but according to Marketing Metrics, you have up to a 70% chance to re-engage inactive clients as opposed to a 5-20% chance to attract new ones.

Your previous clients expressed a need for your services in the past, so most likely, that need still exists. They are already familiar with your expertise and how skillful you are and, thanks to that experience, it is much easier to engage them.

Winning back previous clients helps you regain lost profit and decreases the need to invest in expensive marketing campaigns to acquire new clients. To more easily win back past clients, we broke down campaigns into five simple steps.

1. Find out why they are past clients.

The first step in solving any problem is to clearly identify the problem.

Clients leave for different reasons such as bad experiences, prices, or too hectic lives(which means it’s the perfect time for a massage)!

How can you find out what is the case for your clients?

Here are 3 easy ways:

Reviews: Check out your reviews to see if clients indicated some kind of problem with your business.

Private feedback: If you collect feedback from your customers or frequently ask them about their experience, try to determine a pattern that may be causing them to stop visiting your business.

Listen to your clients: In most scenarios, there is nothing wrong with your business, and there isn’t a particular reason that causes them to leave. In most cases, your clients totally forgot or didn’t have time to take care of themselves and relax.

2. Segmentation

If you are collecting data about your clients, you can use that data to segment past clients. Segmentation will make it possible for you to make more personalized offers and messages that will see more engagement than a generic, one-fits-all campaign.

How to segment your clients.

The types of segmentation you utilize are highly connected to the data you collect. Some of the most straightforward segmentation is:

Previous services.
Latest activity.

Segmentation based on previous services.

Since your previous clients have already sampled your services, you could segment them based on their favorite type of massage. For example, some clients prefer a sports massage instead of a deep tissue massage. This kind of data can help you to send more personalized and appealing offers to your former clients.

Segmentation based on the latest activity.

Another form of segmenting your clients is based on their activity level with your business. You don’t want to send the same message to people who visited your business in the last 3 months than you do to those who visited a year ago.

3. Forming a strategy

Once you have a clear image of which type of previous clients you want to target, you can easily craft your win-back campaign.

Sometimes, a simple reminder is all that is needed, such as a “We miss you“ email. This works best for clients who have never complained about your services but simply stopped coming.

Clients who left your business because of prices are more likely to return if you offer them a discount on their favorite type of massage.

For some clients, such as those who were unsatisfied with your service, your best chance to win them back is to inform them of a new type of massage you are offering or that you have improved existing services.

4. Win-back campaign

After completing your first three steps, you now have everything you need to execute your win-back campaign. You can reach out directly to every previous client individually (which some clients appreciate), but the process can be overwhelming and time-consuming.

Whether you would like to launch an email or a text campaign, you can find software that will help you effectively complete the task in just a few clicks.

Need help? For busy owners who don’t have time to manually reach out to past clients, Referrizer allows you to automate your campaign so you can win back clients easier. Here, you can schedule a one-on-one, personalized demo to find out how Referrizer can make your win-back campaign successful.

Before launching your text campaign make sure that past clients are opted-in to receive promotional messages from you.

5. Keep track of results

Sometimes despite your best efforts, you won’t manage to launch a successful win-back campaign on your first try.

That’s why it is important that you have easy access to your campaign results, which clearly indicate its performance.

Using those results, you can easily find room for improvement to make your win-back campaign more effective and eventually receive more engagement.

The important thing to remember is that the purpose of your win-back campaign is not to bring back every single previous client. The goal is to bring back clients with high lifetime value that will make a difference in your monthly revenue.