As a small business owner, you’re probably used to receiving a ton of different advice about what you should do to get ahead, especially when it comes to marketing your salon. Two of the most impactful ways you can market your salon are through email or text messages. But as a salon owner, with clients to serve and a business to run, how do you decide where to devote your time? Which practice is going to generate you the highest return for your effort? Let’s dive in.

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Email Marketing: The Pros

Email marketing is an effective tool for reaching your clients en masse. You can share coupons and specials, advertise new services in your salon, distribute news and content from your blog or social media account, and more. You can even put together newsletters to highlight several different topics at once to keep clients engaged between appointments, and make sure your salon is top of mind the next time they need some beautification.

With GlossGenius, you can send emails to all clients or targeted lists for free.

While there are so many benefits to email marketing, here are some key reasons why you should start using it for your business:

Owning Your Client List

You can send emails to anyone you have permission from. As your client list grows, you’ll have more clients to promote to, and email is the perfect way to reach all of them. Whether you own your own salon or are renting a booth, no matter where you move, you can take those clients with you. GlossGenius’ email marketing feature enables you to email anyone who’s booked an appointment through your website so your email list can grow with your business.

Personalizing their experience

The most powerful part of email marketing is segmentation, which for salon owners, means you can send personalized emails to specific groups of clients. This is especially effective for promotions that re-engage clients who you may not have seen in a while, are due for a touch-up, have been waiting for a certain product to be in stock, or should be aware of your upcoming availability. With technology like GlossGenius, you can understand and target exactly who those clients are. 

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Email Marketing: The Cons

Although email marketing is an effective tool to reach a lot of people at once, there are some drawbacks to consider. First and foremost, the average email open rate is around 20%, meaning as much as 80% of emails go unread.

Why is that? Emails can be tough to get right. They have to be enticing, be formatted in a way that they’re easily legible, and can easily get filtered out amid a sea of spam. Think about how many emails you get a day, and how many are completely irrelevant to you – even if your subject lines are perfect, there’s always a chance your clients won’t see your emails at all.

Text Message Marketing: The Pros

Text message marketing is a great way to reach clients on the devices they’re glued to: their phones. With open rates as high as 98% for some campaigns, it’s a surefire way to share information with your clients and trust they’ll receive it. If you’re sharing vacation notices, flash deals, or coupons, it’s a great way to inspire immediate action since delivery is instant and most of your clients are probably reading all their texts anyway. With GlossGenius, you can easily text clients in your list directly from the platform.

The top pros of text message marketing include:

High open and click through rates

90% of people read text messages within three minutes of receiving them. Texting your clients is a great way to share appointment reminders, follow ups, flash deals, and more, thanks to the high likelihood that they’ll read your message.

Personalizable

Text messages tend to feel more intimate than emails, and adding a personal touch through things like exclusive deals can help your text messages stand out from the crowd.

Quick and to the point

Texts are limited to 160characters unless you use MMS. You need to be concise – and your clients will appreciate that. That brevity is what makes text message marketing so effective at inspiring action.

Text Message Marketing: The Cons

The biggest difference between text messages and email is that nowadays people typically text their friends and family informally, while email is reserved for more formal communications. Since text message marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular marketing channels for small businesses of all kinds (including salons), your texts are competing for airtime in a channel that is supposed to feel more private compared to email.

The major cons of text message marketing are:

You have limited space to engage

Although the brevity of text messages can be beneficial for inspiring action, you need to make sure that your messages are clear, engaging, and to the point. That takes more effort than writing an email, because every word counts. You need to hook people right away, and typically only have room for one key takeaway in a message at a time.

Spam texts are becoming more common

While you’re competing with more businesses for room in the iMessage inbox, you’re also now competing with spam texts. While people aren’t going to delete your texts on principle, the air of skepticism, paired with the increased competition, means text message marketing might not be as effective as it is now in the coming years.

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How to Choose the Right Strategy for Your Salon

Text message and email marketing have their pros, cons, and purposes. You should ideally choose a combination of both, with different goals and metrics for success. You should use emails to engage clients between appointments, while you should use text messages to inspire immediate action.

Emails are great for:

• Re-engaging clients who you haven’t seen in a while
• Notifying clients of new services and offerings
• Sharing coupons and deals
• Detailed holiday opening hours

Text messages are especially suited for:

• Flash deals and midday specials
• Last-minute openings
• Appointment confirmations and reminders
• Vacation notices and cancellations

To put it simply: with emails, you can add more text and multiple calls to action, and can help your salon stay top of mind when your clients aren’t with you. With texts, you can engage them immediately like you would a friend, to motivate your clients to take an action, or to notify them of immediately pertinent information.

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With GlossGenius, You Don't Have to Choose

GlossGenius’ salon booking software includes email and text message marketing tools to contact clients in your contacts list. You can segment lists, input your copy, and even use templates, all from within the app. To find out how GlossGenius can help you take advantage of the pros and cons of email and text message marketing, start your free trial today.