Salons, spas, beauty schools, aesthetician’s offices and tanning salons

Salons and spas

Consumers opt-in to a mobile marketing list and the salon or individual beautician can then send special offers, coupons, or event notifications.
Segment the list down to those who want to be notified about specific events, like peel or Botox parties, and send text message invitations that recipients can then forward to their friends.
Run contests where a beautician or salon gives away a free haircut and color if consumers text in. Providing incentives to opt-in works wonders.
Track when a customer last visited and program the system to automatically send them a reminder text message three to four weeks later to return.

Send a text message instead of leaving a robo-dialer appointment reminder voicemail. Consumers constantly share their frustration with long voicemail messages, which they dread the prospect of listening to. Integrate the appointment system with a text messaging platform that sends out text reminders automatically. Statistics show that 95% of text messages are opened within 5-14 minutes [1] and can reduce no-shows by up to 70% [2].
Don’t make customers waste time waiting around in the lobby. Have them check in at the counter and provide their cell number to the receptionist. When the beautician frees up, they can send a text message to the customer to come back in.
Start an “ask us anything” campaign. Consumers can text in their questions and get answers directly on their cell phones from professional beauticians. Build rapport with customers, capture their information and then ask them to come in for a service (or just use it to build brand value). At the very least, you can find out which services potential customers are most interested in when you develop marketing initiatives.
Run feedback campaigns with subscribers, asking them what they most enjoyed or disliked about their experience. Consumers can text back free-form responses, which can then be organized and cleaned up for reporting and evaluation purposes.

Beauticians are rarely sitting in front of their computers waiting for emails or available. Calling each one individually is a management nightmare. Use SMS to communicate time-sensitive information to the entire staff in seconds. Staff can be segmented down by specialty, location and more so a manager only needs to select the recipients, type up the message and hit “send.”
Use SMS to run polls across the organization. Does the majority of your staff like chocolate or vanilla ice cream with their cake? How about finding out which hair style or nail color is in season?
Similar to polling, use SMS as an RSVP application to see who can make it to, say, a training session.
Finding a replacement for an absent beautician is often a challenge. Send a text message to those with the day off and offer a small bonus to the first that can take the appointment. Someone will grab it quickly.
When beauticians encounter a support or maintenance issue, have the staff text in the problem. Requests can be organized, routed and responded to quickly when in an inbox, manually or with more automation. Staff will love it because they don’t have to call in, wait on hold or turn on a computer.

You can use SMS to improve recruitment campaigns.

Most schools do out-of-home advertising; flyering, outdoor, TV and radio advertising. These methods rely on “ad recall rates,” which means they’re betting that potential students will later remember the ads they’ve come across. Use SMS to extend that advertising without incurring any marginal printing costs by including an opt-in call to action along with an incentive for the prospect to text in. When they do, you capture their phone number for later followup or as part of a drip campaign.
When a recruiter goes into a high school or university to pass out flyers or to make a presentation, ask the student audience to text in their email addresses. Have the system send each student an email automatically containing a special prize or other offer. The recruiter now has access to all of the phone numbers and email addresses for further followup.

Use SMS to quickly find a substitute teacher. Maintain a small database of all available substitutes and send out a text message to all those that might be interested. First one to reply can fill the slot.
Communicate school delays, closings, lockdowns, or other time-sensitive information to all students, parents and staff at once.

We’ve deployed some version of all of these applications in the past. If you’re curious about how they work, feel free to get in touch!

Sources
[1] Jared Reitzin, MobileStorm, 2009
[2] Recess Mobile internal research