Loyalty Schemes

Loyalty Schemes

Nearly every business has some form of loyalty scheme, whether it is your Boots, Nectar or Tesco Clubcards, Costa or Nero coffee cards, or your free meal after nine paid ones at Nandos.

Loyalty schemes are primarily there to reward customers and as the name suggests, help increase loyalty. For a salon, the idea of a loyalty scheme can seem great, but there a few checks to make before you start the journey.

What are you doing it for?
A lot of salons will start a loyalty scheme to reward their most loyal clients and that’s it. Why not take it one step further and use loyalty schemes to get your clients spending more money in the salon and having more services? That way it will help build your business in the long run.

Make sure you aren’t going to lose money
If today you have no loyalty scheme and tomorrow you start giving every client their 5th visit for free or at a discount, you will notice a drop in revenue. You are essentially giving your clients money off services that they would have paid full price for anyway and so you are going to lose out in the long run. A bit of planning is needed to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Keep it flexible
Maybe you want to change your loyalty scheme based on the time of year so you can link it to summer colour promotions, winter repairing treatments or Christmas retail activities. Or maybe you want to use it to promote a new service you are going to introduce into the salon. Make sure you remain flexible and don’t go printing 10,000 loyalty cards that you will be stuck with.

Make the scheme part of your client journey
Make sure you remind your clients about the loyalty scheme when they are in the salon. It should be incorporated into their consultation so they know how many loyalty points they are going to earn that visit or what rewards they can redeem that visit. If you are recommending an additional service then let them know that it will earn them extra loyalty points. When they are paying their bill and rebooking, tell them if they will be able to redeem any points at their next visit and what rewards they will be able to get.

 

So, how does this all come together?

1) Do some research
Look at your client base and split them into a few groups. This will help you work out what rewards can go to which clients. For example:
(A) Clients who just have weekly blow drys
(B) Clients who just have their hair cut and styled
(C) Clients who have colour, but not regular blow drys
(D) The magic clients who have everything

2) Pick the loyalty rewards
Now I know what my main client groups are, I can create rewards for them that will encourage them to try other services in the salon. So if I take the four groups I’ve just outlined, their rewards could be:
(A) Free treatment for every 6 blow drys
(B) 50% off a colour service on their 4th visit
(C) A free blow dry after 4 colour services
(D) A free retail product after 4 visits
Each reward is designed to let the client experience a service they would never normally have, which should help to recommend and sell it to them in the long run.

3) Make your cards
An easy way to keep track of a loyalty scheme is through physical cards that you give to your clients. If you use a salon computer system, then check with your supplier as it may already come with the ability to attach a loyalty scheme to clients. However, if you do go down the card route they don’t need to be overly flash or expensive. Your clients will just put them in their wallets and use them when they visit the salon, so normal business card size will work fine. You can create one card for all your clients and manually write in the rewards they receive. Remember to include your salon’s address, telephone number and website.

Loyalty-all

 

Colour Services
Cuts
Blow Drys

4) Go!
Launch your scheme and make sure you let all your clients know what is going on and how they can benefit from it.

5) Remember be flexible
If you launch a new service in salon, then you can also tell your clients that instead of redeeming their usual reward, they could try out the new service for free or at a discount. Make sure you keep any promises you make to your clients, but use the loyalty scheme to your advantage and if you need to focus your business on retail or a new treatment, then incentivise your clients to choose that over their normal reward.

 

Some Variations

You could offer points for different services.
E.g.:
Cut= 2 points
Blow dry= 1 point
Colour= 3 points
Retail product= 1 point
Treatment= 1 point
Then your clients can collect points and you can create a special menu where they can spend their points. You can change the menu every 6-8 weeks, this way you can control what they are able to spend their points on and feature services that need a bit of extra help or ones that no one is trying.

Make one mega loyalty card
Instead of having different cards, combine it all into one card that encourages your clients to try different services. This can save on printing and make it very easy to manage.

Loyalty-all-in-one

Link your client clubs with your loyalty scheme
By combining the scheme with your client clubs, you can make it even more targeted and offer each club targeted ways in which they can redeem their loyalty schemes. (E.g. give your trend club free temporary fashion colour services for X points, or get your VIPs special treatments with each visit and can earn double points on selected services.)

Give it a shot, and let us know how you get on. If you have any special loyalty schemes, we’d love to hear about them.

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