Pay Attention to Your Existing Clients Customer service experts agree that your existing clients hold the key to your success. Porter Gale, former vice president of marketing at Virgin America says,“ Keeping existing clients happy is a more cost-effective route to success than just going after new clients.”
Tanya Chernova, founder of Courageous Living and vice president of Time Reverse Inc. echoes Gale’ s statement by explaining,“ It’ s a marketing fact that it costs five times more to create a new client than to keep an existing one.”
That’ s not to say that building your client base isn’ t important, but you might find that your best recruiters are your loyal customers. Dr. Bryan K. Williams, chief service officer of B. Williams Enterprise, LLC agrees.“ Existing clients are often times a business’ s best source of marketing. Positive word-ofmouth and advocacy on your business’ s behalf, by existing clients, can be more potent than a company-generated ad campaign,” he says.
Creating Incentives for Loyalty Developing incentives to maintain repeat customers has been a trend in the spa industry since the economic recession. According to Gale, some ideas to implement in your spa include: Frequency programs, refer-a-friend discounts, birthday rewards, bridal packages and special events that can help boost loyalty and repeat business.
To introduce and help promote new or lagging treatments, Chernova suggests creating loyalty programs that reward customers with untried services when they book their usual preferred services. Another incentive idea is to“ consolidate purchases on a card and provide cash back towards a guest’ s favorite service. Add-ons and upgrades like a free scalp massage or an extra 15-minute massage are other nice ways to show gratitude.
According to ISPA’ s research, spas are actively implementing referral incentive programs, free gift-with-purchase specials, membership programs and special offers for local members of the community. While some of these programs will prove to be very successful for your business, Gale looks beyond incentive programs and recommends taking advantage of social media to help build a dialogue about your business, donating to high-value auctions to get your name out and keeping a close eye on your reviews through Web sites like Yelp. com.
Building a Relationship The single most important thing you can do to create loyalty is to work on building your relationship with the guest. Williams says,“ Looking for general incentives for the spa’ s client base is good, but finding out, then acting on individualized preferences is a very powerful incentive to retain customers. Spas can start by finding out what is most important to their customers. Through feedback, a spa operator may learn that one of their loyal guests prefers to receive his / her massage in a certain room, with a certain therapist, at a certain time of day. Savvy spa operators would use that information to proactively tailor their guest’ s experience every time.”
The relationship you’ re building with your guest is reflected in everything you do.“ The best relationship is built based on the experience and maintained via personalized or segmented communications( for example, don’ t send a male guest a female-oriented offer),” Gale points out.“ It’ s in how the receptionist greets [ guests ], the attitude of the spa staff and all the little details along the way [ that make the most impact ]. In the spa space, you have a very emotion-driven environment. Think about the lighting, the aromas— those are the items that will make a difference.”
PHOTO © HYATT REGENCY KEY WEST RESORT AND SPA
November 2011 ■ PULSE 27