Running a beauty business is rewarding, but it can be daunting at times. Particularly when you have to find a balance between booking appointments, managing inventory, following up with customers, and coming up with marketing strategies.
Administrative tasks take time, which leads to less energy and time for clients and business growth.
Automation comes in to save the day. Streamlining repetitive tasks helps beauticians save hours every week and reduce stress. The client experience improves as well, so both parties win.
Below, you will find 10 smart ways to make the most out of automation and make working in your salon more pleasant.
1. Online Appointment Scheduling
The days of back-and-forth texting, phone calls, or customers coming directly to a salon to schedule an appointment feel like ancient history.
Automated booking systems like Goldie let clients schedule their own appointments 24/7 by viewing available slots and selecting one that works.
2. Automated Reminders
No-shows or last-minute cancellations are detrimental to a business. Automated text messages or emails that remind clients about appointments help reduce no-shows and save staff time that would be spent solving the issue.
Most modern tools also have features to confirm or reschedule instantly, making the process even smoother.
3. Digital Intake Forms and Waivers
Rather than handling client paperwork such as forms at the front desk, send digital forms via email that they can complete in advance.
Once the information is submitted and stored, it remains in the system with the customer profile, saving time and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
4. CRM Automation
Modern CRM solutions offer more than just a place to store client contact information. Such software tracks visit history and preferred services.
It can even remember birthdays, which is a great opportunity to send out special offers for a special occasion.
5. Email and SMS Marketing
Keeping clients engaged requires regular communication. Automation helps streamline welcome emails for new clients, promotions, and seasonal offers, as well as retargeting campaigns for clients who have not shown up in a while.
Make sure to segment the clientele so that the right message reaches the right client at the right time.
6. Loyalty and Referral Programs
Rewarding loyal clients is a sure way to keep them coming back. A system that tracks points (number of visits, money spent, referred clients) and applies discounts eliminates manual oversight.
Clients can also visit their profile and view progress, which makes the whole thing even more engaging and fun to participate in.
7. Inventory Management
Imagine a situation where you run out of products mid-service just because somebody didn’t have the time to double-check the stock.
Forget about these stressful situations with inventory management automation. A simple thing like an automated reminder that sends an alert when the stock is low can be enough to save you from a headache.
8. Social Media
Having a consistent presence on social media platforms is a great way to keep your regulars happy and reach new potential customers.
Having said that, posting daily can eat up a lot of time. Since consistency is imperative to maintain social media audiences engaged, it makes sense to utilize scheduling tools. Create content in batches and then publish it automatically across different platforms.
9. Payment Processing and Invoicing
Manual billing is not just time-consuming. It’s also error-prone. Automation makes checkout smooth thanks to recurring payments for memberships, instant digital receipts, online pre-payments, and other options.
Streamlining this aspect makes the cash flow more predictable and the administrative work shrinks, freeing up resources for other tasks.
10. Reviews and Reputation Management
The more positive reviews a business receives, the more it can expect to stand out among the competition and attract new clients.
Automation lets salons send follow-ups to clients and ask them to leave a review. Tools also filter feedback, for example, by redirecting unhappy clients to a private channel and happy ones to public review platforms.
How to Choose the Right Tools
The demand for automation is huge, so it makes sense that there are a lot of different tools on the market.
Not every tool fits every business, so pay attention to the following when choosing:
- Priorities, or which tasks you want to automate first.
- Simplicity, if you want something that’s easy to use.
- Integration, where you need to choose platforms that can work together.
- Budget, since you don’t want to spend more than you can afford.
Conclusion
Automation saves hours every week, but that’s not the only win. The real benefits also include reduced errors, room to grow the business, and a better overall client experience.
So start small, by prioritizing one task at a time, and build everything from there. Over time, you will have a streamlined system that makes running your business much smoother.
