We’ve all heard the old adage before: work smarter, not harder. This is especially vital for spa business owners, who work long hours to grow their spa business and, as such, need to automate repetitive processes that drain your time and energy. If you remember from my last 3 blog posts this month, I’ve been extolling the virtues of the book “Company of One”; and his concept of growth through scaling systems rather than hiring or facility expansion.  

The Joy of Automation

Automation, when done right, can not only improve existing spa systems but also aid in marketing, self-care, and burnout management: writing this here from Marketing Connect, a digital marketing conference hosting speakers from HootSuite, Forbes Magazine, Lyft Rideshare, and Ecologyst, I was reminded of how vital it is to be allocating the minor-yet-essential tasks to automation to give ourselves room to manually improve other areas of our spa businesses.

Today, I’m covering the processes you should already be automating-- and which of my top spa business automations you shouldn’t be living without.

So, Which Common Automations Are You Already Utilizing?

The first spa business automation that springs to mind is, of course, online booking. A staple of spa businesses, online booking ensures that clients can automatically select their preferred appointment date and time and also receive automated reminders through their phone or email. Ease of booking is a growth tactic that can’t be ignored. 

One of my personal favourite CRMs (client relationship management systems) that offer online booking is Meevo2, which also includes beneficial add-ons such as email marketing and reporting. Remember: the more automations you can have in one place, the better! The difficult hump in your business steepens when you don’t have a reliable technology or automation that is dependable and consistently collects client data for you, which can be gleaned for marketing, client relationship management, and revenue predictions. 

The last common automation that you likely already utilizing? Bill-paying automations. If you are not currently automating the paying of your bills and are struggling to do so on time, then this is one of the easiest automations to implement if you select money to come out on a specific day of every month.

My Recommended Automations for Your Spa Business (That You Likely Aren’t Using Yet!)

• Your paycheck. Pay yourself first, right? Right. Well, on the topic of banking, I’ll wager that you probably aren’t automating your paycheck… which is a shame, because it can be done in a blink! If you are a solopreneur, your personal finances must be  separate from your business finances, so to make sure you get paid regularly, set up simple weekly automation from your business account to your personal account.

• Your reviews. Whether it’s Meevo2, Booker, or a combination of a few different spa business CRMs, prompting for online reviews is as easy as it is essential: linking to your review space (on either your website, Google My Business, or Facebook) in an email receipt, for example, is a seamless way to remind your clients that their review is important to you. You can also prompt for reviews via chat bots, which leads us to…

• Chat tools. Chat tools, on both your website and your Facebook page in particular, are handy automations that can make it so clients’ FAQs can be answered preemptively without you having to lift a finger. Chat tools are free automations that you can place your FAQ list and curate automated messages for when potential clients click on a question from that list. For example, if you include your booking link and process in your FAQ and a potential client clicks on that to learn more, they will receive a message such as, “Hey! Sorry, we’re currently unavailable to answer right now. However, if you’re looking to book an appointment, please find our booking link attached to this message!”

You can also integrate a chat button into your website to either pair potential clients with live support staff or auto-generated responses. 

• Lead generation. If you haven’t heard of lead gen before, don’t worry-- it’s just marketing speak for capturing consumer interest so that they purchase your products and/or services. One method that we here at Kirsten Foss Coaching love to use for capturing leads for our social media management clients is to create a new client opt-in page where new consumers input their name and email address in order to receive an email that contains a coupon or welcome discount. Why automate this? Well, having leads be generated consistently means that you can utilize email marketing to nurse these leads into being long-time clients. And speaking of email marketing...

• Email. Email marketing is approximately 40x more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined when it comes to acquiring new clientele. If you’re not jumping onto the email marketing bandwagon then I have to say that you’re missing out! On top of the high ROI that email marketing provides, it’s also fantastic due to its  level of personalization and customization, which is perfect for fostering long-time client trust and brand authority. 

One of my favourite tactics is birthday emails: the majority of CRMs allow you to pull data such as birth dates from their record system and allow you to automatically set up emails to go out to clients on their birthdays. They don’t necessarily even need to come with a gift; just showing that you, as a spa business owner, pay attention to the little things will go a long way. 

And on the topic of automated emails, prioritize implementing a reengagement emails for those clients who haven’t booked a treatment in 3-6 months. Automating a reminder for clients can be the difference between never seeing them again and seeing them regularly! Increasing the number of client visits per year per client really adds up!

• Social media. If you’re not scheduling your social media content then you are missing out! From both a time and marketing perspective there is nothing worse than pushing last-minute, on-the-fly content out on your socials and crossing your fingers that it’s well-received. With digital marketing becoming more and more saturated by the day, a focus on high-quality, results-driven content has become invaluable-- which you cannot accomplish if you’re not automating your social media posts. 

There are a variety of social media automation tools that can help you to perfect your messaging, steer those clients who are still in the decision phase to book their first treatment, and strike that perfect balance of educational and promotional content (without being too sales-y!) for consumers who just discovered you or are still making a decision to book. 

For the best social media content, I recommend, from my experience, creating in a batch in order to maintain a cohesive voice and branding across the board. Later.com, an official partner of Instagram that also provides posting to Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter as my top recommendation for those of you looking to take this advice onboard!

• Recruitment. For those teams reading this, an automated recruitment page on your website is an invaluable tool for when you want to grow your team but are strapped for time: by crafting a section on your website that contains your spa business’s values, testimonials from previous and current staff, and if you are actively hiring, you can direct potential applications to fill out a form. That form will then be sent directly to your email, the applicant will be sent an automated “thank you” message, and they will then be notified at a later date if they are shortlisted for the position. 

I love this automation because let’s face it-- the interview process takes a long time. Between weeding out candidates, cataloguing incoming applications, and setting up phone and/or face-to-face interviews, anything that you can do to lift the time-burden from your shoulders will be worthwhile in the long-run.

--And those are my top automation recommendations for spa business owners! I want to know: do you plan on implementing any of the automations listed above, or, if you have already implemented them, how is it going so far? If the answer is “Not well”, then be sure to contact me or join my free Facebook group for fellow spa business owners so that we can discuss how we can adjust your automations for success.