As a beauty business owner, you feel consistent pressure to stay relevant, keep growing, and maintain your reputation as new salons and spas are opened in your area.

You know that your clients have lots of options out there, and especially once you’ve “grandfathered in” your regular clients (and sometimes, your prices) you might start to worry that your business will hit a standstill at some point.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know how much I love using advertising to grow - especially when I get to encourage my students to be creative, be themselves, and have lots of fun with it to attract their ideal clients!

But I also know that when you over-rely on advertising as the main way to build your business, you’re in for a world of trouble when it comes to the natural slower months for beauty: in between holidays, early in the calendar year, etc.

Attracting new clients is just part of the equation of owning a healthy, sustainable, and profitable business.

You need to make sure that the clients you attract want to keep coming back to you and stick with you whether you raise your prices, a new competing salon comes to town, or there are no major events to get beautiful for.

If you’re unable to retain clients, it’s like trying to fill a leaky bucket to the top. Water goes in the top, and leaves shortly afterward through the bottom. Your clients are the water, of course, in this metaphor…and they’re leaking out to spend their money elsewhere, or just aren’t interested in spending their money with you anymore. Not a good situation to be in!

So what’s the best solution to keep growing and building your books, while also making sure you don’t start losing clients you haven’t seen in a while?

Today’s blog post will teach you how to tighten up your customer service + client experience, but also how to reconnect with clients if you seem to have lost their attention (for any number of reasons!)

Whether you’re a salon or spa owner, run a beauty business out of your home, or rent a booth from someone else - these tips will ensure that no matter what happens in your clients' lives and in your neighborhood, you can depend on your clientele to keep showing up and showing you love!

How to provide a magical client experience every time at your salon or spa

A classically tried-and-true method for keeping clients on your books is ensuring they have an amazing time when they’re in your chair or on your treatment table.

A lot of that has to do with setting expectations, being a great listener and communicator, setting clear boundaries, and of course, being the best at what you do.

But here’s the most important part of that: you have to maintain those ‘new-client’ levels of customer service always - even for long-term clients you’ve become really comfortable with.

As my friend Dawn Bradley of Dawn Bradley Hair & Academy (an absolute master of the client experience, as you’ll read about here) says:

“Whether [a client] is brand new to you for the first time, or they’ve been coming to you for ten years, that consistency and experience need to stay there. The moment that people feel like they’ve been put on the back burner, [it’s over.] If the experience doesn’t line up with their initial first impression, it doesn’t matter how many people you get coming in.”

It can be easy to bring your A-game to a new client relationship - providing your very best customer service, slipping in freebies to make them smile, sharing laughs, and bonding.

But over time and many appointments, you might start to naturally see and treat your regular clients as “old shoes”.

And you had better believe that your clients will notice if their experience with you starts to slip! So don’t let it happen…because that’s how you lose clients.

Give your clients the best experience before and after they leave your chair or table

Creating the perfect client experience isn’t just about how much fun they have while they’re with you, or how beautiful they look when they leave.

It’s just as crucial to make sure that their experience from the very beginning (when they first find your beauty biz!) goes well - as well as after they leave your salon or suite.

Because here’s the truth, again:

If you haven’t developed a gold-standard guest experience from beginning to end, it doesn’t matter how big your marketing budget is or how talented your team is. You will be losing clients left and right.

You can enhance the pre-booking experience by making it super easy to find you online (spiff up your Google My Business account, like, NOW!), easy to book, and easy to remember the appointment with auto-reminders through SMS or email.

And as for the end of the appointment, be sure to ask every client before they leave if they’d like to book a follow-up appointment.

Whether or not they say yes at that time, ask them for their email address so that you can follow up with them in a month or two.

Check out this blog post for more tips on creating a flawless pre and post-appointment experience for every client.

And speaking of email….

Send this ONE mail if you haven’t heard from a client in 6 months or more

Even if your clients absolutely love their experience and results after their first, second, or fifth appointment - sometimes they don’t come back for a while.

Maybe it’s been 6 months, a year, or even two years and you haven’t heard from them.

Life circumstances, moves, money, schedule changes, or even just forgetting… there are lots of reasons that someone might not book with you for a stretch of time.

Does that mean they’re lost forever? Absolutely not!

Sometimes they just need a good nudge and reminder. Don’t assume because they’ve been silent that they went somewhere else and you’ll never see them again.

It’s about that time for you to run a “long time no see” email campaign to bring them back.

If you have 100 clients that you haven’t seen in the past 6 months, and 10 of those clients instantly rebook you as soon as they see your email (which is totally doable) - you could easily book $2000+ in appointments by sending just one email.

Not to mention, these reactivated clients will likely get back on your books and continue building a relationship with you - like a comma, instead of a period.

Here’s how to set up a simple “long time no see” email campaign:

In your booking software, find the list of “Cold” clients who haven’t booked with you in x period of time. It could be 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc. Obviously the lower the number, the more people who will be included and the more results you’ll likely have. If you’re not sure how to do this in your software, search on Google for your software name, plus “filter customers” - for example with Square you can use this tutorial to find a list of “cold” clients who haven’t been in a while. You can also contact customer service for your booking software.

Once you have that list ready, it’s time to send an email to them! You can email them directly from your booking app usually, or you can export that list of cold clients into your favorite email software and email them there (I love ConvertKit and Mailchimp!) Pre-write your email in Google Docs and then copy/paste it into your email composer - I find it so much easier that way.

Below is a “Come back and visit me!” email template I wrote up. You’re welcome to literally copy and paste and use it yourself!

Subject line: I missed you! :(

Can you believe it’s been more than 6 months since you’ve been in my chair, [name]?

[include a photo of you at your chair or treatment bed]

I’ve been thinking of you and hope you’re doing well! How is your hair doing? Anything I can help with? 😍

On my side, I’ve had quite a few new/exciting things happen since we last saw each other:

[include some business and personal things happening recently. It doesn’t need to be anything big, either! Just write as if you were catching up at the grocery store!]

I’m re-doing my kitchen! I probably told you about what a big cook I am (when I have time!) - so I’m so pumped up about my reno (you can peek at my Pinterest inspiration board here to see the style I’m going with)
I brought in a new line of products to the salon! This brand [name] is absolutely gorgeous and smells fabulous, but most importantly they work so well! [why you love it]
I’ve been taking educational classes to learn how to [what you’ve been learning recently]. I plan on offering this new service in the fall, and I’ll keep you updated when I do!

I’d love to hear what’s new with you, too, [name]. I know sometimes life gets crazy, but I thought I’d check in!

If you’re ready to book an appointment with me, you can either reply to this email or click here to check out my booking calendar.

Some of my most popular services right now are:

[List your services and one short sentence about what it’s for/why they’ll love it]

Hope to see you soon!

Xo Stephanie

I hope that this email will help you reactivate clients who haven’t been in in a while with a bunch of new appointments!

As far as when to send emails to clients, I like to send my emails around 10 am in the morning on Mondays and Tuesdays, because I find they get opened the most often at those times.

Afterward, I resend them on Thursday or Friday to anyone who didn’t open them previously. Most email software has the ability to “Resend to Unopens”.

It’s so important to stay in touch with clients you haven’t seen in a while. Sometimes, all they need is a reminder you’re still around - and if your email is warm, inviting, and helps them feel reconnected with you, you just might see them in your chair in a week or two!

Feel free to use this as a jumping-off point to write more emails to your whole email list - new, loyal, lapsed clients alike.

You can literally grow your beauty business beyond what you could have ever imagined by staying in touch through email and providing great client experiences from beginning to end.