How salon email marketing can help you grow your business

Salon email marketing can seriously help you grow your business. It's an effective marketing method that can help you fill schedule gaps, remind clients of appointments, and inform them of special offers or new treatments in the salon. It can completely transform how you connect with your clients as a salon.

By keeping your community updated with targeted messaging, personalised promotions, and business updates, you can enhance customer engagement and build lasting relationships that foster loyalty and drive revenue.

Here's everything you need to know about salon email marketing and how to harness its full potential for your business.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy that involves sending emails to a targeted audience. With salon email marketing, it's usually your clients that you're targeting, though you might break them up into subsections, known as segments.

Most businesses use email marketing to promote products, services or build relationships. It's a direct form of communication that allows businesses to reach their customers in a personalised and cost-effective way.

Essentially, email marketing is about building and nurturing relationships with current and potential customers. This continuous engagement helps businesses build trust and brand loyalty over time.

Being able to segment your audience is one of the key strengths of email marketing. You can split them by demographics, the type of services they use or how engaged they are with your business. This means you can tailor your messaging to the audience, making it more likely to be meaningful to them.

Email marketing is highly measurable too. You can usually see how many people opened emails, how many clicked through to your bookings or promotion page and who it was who did this. This can help you with future marketing strategy and to understand what to do for other campaigns and email marketing.

What are the benefits of email marketing?

Millions of businesses, including salons and beauty businesses, use email marketing. It's more cost-effective than other forms of advertising, especially if you've built up a large-scale client base over time. This cost-effectiveness can mean that there's a better return on investment than other methods of marketing - especially when it comes to things like print advertising and direct mail. Many salon booking systems already have email marketing built in, or you can use a system specifically designed for that purpose.

There are minimal expenses associated with designing and sending emails, and you can usually reach a lot of your client base in one go. Email marketing lets you contact and communicate with your clients directly, and you can usually personalise them so it feels more like you're addressing them directly. This can lead to better open rates and more direct action from your client base.

The measurable results that come with email marketing are a big deal, too. This can help you identify your strengths as a business and the best ways to communicate with your audience. It can also help you identify trends and improve your marketing going forward. Salon email marketing gives you a lot of data to help you make business decisions.

Why is email marketing important for a salon?

You might think that email marketing for salons isn’t that big a deal, and that social media or print advertising is more worthwhile. That isn’t always the case - salon email marketing is important, and can seriously drive growth.

• Retaining and attracting customers: Email marketing helps you nurture relationships with existing clients and stay at the top of their minds with things like appointment reminders, personalised tips, salon news, or exclusive rewards.
• Promoting salon services effectively: Whether it’s highlighting seasonal promotions, introducing new treatments or products, showcasing results or raising awareness of services, you can target your audience with email marketing.
• Optimise appointment schedules: If you have spaces, short-notice cancellations, or updated availability, email marketing can help you fill them. You'll likely have data on which clients book certain services so you can target them accordingly. This targeted approach ensures that promotional activity gets the results you're looking for.
• Awareness of special offers, events and promotions: If you time your salon email marketing right, you can make sure you stay booked and busy. Raising awareness of your activities is an important part of marketing your business.

Read our blog on why a salon should go digital for more information on how understanding digital marketing can help your business grow.

Potential downsides of email marketing

While email marketing offers plenty of advantages, it's important to consider some potential drawbacks and challenges that you might experience. These are all usually experiences that you can learn from, but they’ll make a difference to how you operate in the future.

Sometimes clients don’t keep their emails up to date. Or things like spam filters and email providers can block emails - sometimes it’s all down to algorithms or technical issues, which can affect how successful your email marketing is.

You also need to ensure that you don't overwhelm your subscribers or send out poor-quality emails, as this might make them unsubscribe. Sending out too many emails or irrelevant content can lead to your email list feeling annoyed.

It's also important to ensure that your emails and the data you hold are legally compliant. You need to understand the legal issues surrounding sending emails before you start. While email marketing can be cost-effective, it can be quite resource-intensive. Creating content that looks good and works for the audience takes time and effort.

Emails, unlike face-to-face or phone conversations, lack immediate feedback. Misinterpretation of tone or intent in email communications can occur, potentially leading to misunderstandings or negative perceptions among recipients. This can be damaging to your reputation, so you need to be careful with who you let loose with your email communications.

How to start email marketing for your salon

The chances are, you've already been collecting client email addresses as part of running your salon and sending booking reminders. You need to have their permission to contact them for marketing purposes before you start your salon email marketing, but the good news is that most salon booking systems already have this built in.

If your salon booking system doesn't allow you to send out email marketing, you need to choose a reputable email marketing platform that suits your salon's needs and budget. Popular options include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and ConvertKit. These platforms offer user-friendly interfaces, email templates, automation tools, and analytics to help you manage campaigns effectively. Set up your account and familiarise yourself with its features.

Start collecting email addresses from current clients and prospects if you haven't already done this. Here's some ideas for how to do it:

• In-salon sign up: Place a sign-up sheet or tablet at your reception desk where clients can enter their email addresses.
• Online sign-up forms: Embed a sign-up form on your salon's website or Facebook page. Offer an incentive, such as a discount or freebie, for subscribing.
• Salon Management Software (CMS): If your salon uses a CMS or booking system, integrate it with your email marketing platform to automatically sync client contact information.
• Events and promotions: Collect emails during events, competitions or promotions where attendees are encouraged to provide their contact details.
• Social media: Promote on social media that people can sign up to your emails. Our blog on building your salon’s social media can help with tips on this.

The next step is to start creating your emails. Think about who it’s going to and what you want to say. Some basic design skills come in handy here, though the email platforms are usually fairly easy to use in this regard.

Use the templates provided by your email marketing platform to create visually appealing emails that reflect your salon’s branding. Ensure emails are mobile-friendly, as many recipients will view them on smartphones - most platforms have built in previews so you can see what they look like. Schedule campaigns strategically to reach clients at the right time.

Track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversions to evaluate the success of your campaigns. By following these steps, your salon can establish a strong foundation for effective email marketing. You’ll also learn along the way.

Email marketing tips for salons

When it comes to top tips for salon email marketing, there are some easy wins. Here are some top tips for effective salon email marketing:

1. Segment your audience - Divide your email list into segments based on factors like client preferences, purchase history, or demographic information. This allows you to tailor your messages and offers to specific groups, making them more relevant.
2. Personalise your emails - Use personalisation tools in your email marketing platform to add in things like first names and customised content. Personalised emails are more likely to capture attention and build a stronger connection with clients.
3. Create strong subject lines - The subject line is the first thing your audience will see and can be the difference between your email being opened or not. Keep them concise, clear and relevant to the content inside. Experiment with different approaches to see what works best.
4. Offer value - Provide valuable content in your emails that goes beyond promotional offers. Share beauty tips, styling advice, industry trends or client testimonials to keep subscribers interested. Establishing your salon as a trusted source of information can enhance client loyalty.
5. Promote special offers and events - Use email marketing to announce exclusive promotions, seasonal discounts or special events at your salon.
6. Include Clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs) - Clearly state what you want recipients to do after reading your email, whether it's booking an appointment, purchasing a product or following your salon on social media.
7. Optimise for mobile devices - Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly as many recipients will view them on smartphones or tablets. Check previews before you send them out.
8. Check previews, proofread and do test emails - Sometimes you might not see a mistake until you’ve sent an email, which can be a nightmare. Check previews and send out test emails before you commit, as well as proofreading (or getting someone else to proofread for you).
9. Maintain consistency - Establish a regular sending schedule for your emails to maintain engagement with your audience. Whether it's weekly newsletters, monthly promotions or quarterly updates, consistency helps to keep your salon top-of-mind with clients.

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