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These days, running a salon beauty business can be hard work. The competition is everywhere, usually in the form of local businesses and chains, plus all those running freelance or home-visit treatments as their side hustle.

You've got your work cut out to stand out from the crowd, but thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do this. You can opt for strategies like:

• Offering discounts and sale days
• Improving your customer service experience
• Running social media accounts
• Offering and diversifying your services
• Running advertising and marketing campaigns

However, perhaps one of the most overlooked and heavily under-utilized tools is the humble gift card.

Not just a mere present, gift cards can drive loyalty, increase profits, and encourage new customers to walk through the door.

With the right design and marketing strategy, a simple piece of plastic or digital voucher can elevate your salon business to new heights.

We'll explain everything you need to know below, so let's get into it.

Understanding Gift Cards

Gift cards, true to their name, are a form of gift certifying the predetermined value of products or services, redeemable at your salon. They come loaded up with cash value that customers can use to cover their bills at your premises. It's as simple as that!

They come in various forms suitable for spas or salons:

• Physical: Traditional printed or plastic cards are given directly to your clients. Physically tangible, they can make impressive and thoughtful presents!
• Digital: Delivered via email or through mobile apps. Convenience is the key, with them being easily accessible and harder to lose!

Now, the idea behind this is simple - consider a last-minute shopper looking for a present.

A physical gift card, beautifully wrapped in your salon's branding, could save the day!

Or imagine a regular client living abroad wanting to treat their friend to a day at your spa. A digital gift card takes the hassle and distance out of the equation. Gift cards can be enticing tools to attract customers of all types to your salon!

The thing is, the typical gift card customer is someone who already loves your business and is a loyal customer (otherwise, they tend to not risk sending a loved one there as a gift).

If you can put on a good show and your gift card recipient loves your experience, the chances are they'll come back again and again, or at least will get a gift card for another one of their loved ones.

Therefore, you're growing your business by attracting new customers via a unique opportunity to sell yourself and your brand.

Importance and Benefits of Gift Cards

Believe us when we say that gift cards are way more than just convenient gifts. They're strategic business tools with numerous advantages! In addition to bringing more people through the door, they can help you:

Boost Sales & Revenue

Gift cards are an upfront payment for your services, leading to immediate cash flow. Furthermore, customers frequently tend to spend more than the card's value, meaning bonus profits for you!

Increases Customer Loyalty

Try offering customized gift cards to regular clients. It reinforces their affiliation with your business and increases the probability of recurring appointments.

Promotes Brand Awareness

Well-designed physical or digital cards carrying your brand assets keep your salon fresh in the minds of both existing and prospective customers, acting as mini billboards.

To illustrate, let's look at the case of "Blooming Beauty," a local salon that introduced gift cards. Within six months, they saw a 20% increase in their customer retention rates and a noticeable lift in their profits. An anonymous survey carried out by them also revealed that gift cards were a significant part of their boosted brand visibility in the community.

Gift cards, thus, hold the potential to become game-changers for your salon!

How to Create Easily Redeemable & Attractive Gift Cards

Okay, so the crunch point is actually creating gift cards. What do you do, and how do you make it work?

First, you want a system. There are plenty of platforms out there designed to help you make gift cards, either physical or digital so that really depends on which one works for you.

For the most simple and practical approach, get yourself a system that gives you gift codes when someone books online. They may provide you $50, and you'll provide them with a code like "AGSK3348SD," and they can use that when booking online or in-store to get that money off their booked service.

You can then print off some funky designs on paper cards that match your branding, perhaps some for love, birthdays, and Christmas, and just some good-looking ones your audience will love, for those codes to be jotted down on the back.

That's the TL;DR, so let's break it down a little more.

Step 1: Understand Your Audience

Identify who frequents your salon: busy professionals, beauty enthusiasts, students? Consider preferences in your programming, from services to designs that might appeal. This will be the foundation of how you design, market, and implement your gift cards. For example, students might want to use digital gift cards, perhaps via an app gift card or a QR code. Elderly people are much more likely to want to employ a physical card.

Step 2: Design Gift Cards

For the best results, align the design with your brand's aesthetic for instant recognition. Make sure all the information needed on the card is clear and easy to read. You might want to include space for people to write their own personal messages to their loved ones. The design and theme should always match your branding in some way or another! Professional and inviting are the two best words here. You don't want your design so niche that no one will want to use it because it "looks weird."

Step 3: Determine the Right Value

Next up, take a moment to offer a range of values that accommodate different budget types to attract a wider clientele. Remember, you want people to have enough to dent a large chunk of the services you're offering, but you'll probably want them to spend a little extra in-store as well. Of course, the classic way to do this is to simply offer $5, $10, $20, $25, and $50 variations while also allowing for a custom amount, as long as it is an interval of $10.

Step 4: Set Up an Easy Redemption Process

Remember, someone using a gift card is probably doing so for the first time (who gets gift cards for the same place repeatedly), and the chances are the customer will be dealing with you for the first time. Therefore, you need to make the redemption process as simple as possible, both booking online and in-person. Essentially, set up your process and then get your staff to go through the process and call out any issues they have and resolve them. You'll always want to train your staff on the process so they can help customers as and when it's needed. Remember, these customers could be lifelong if you treat them well, so do your best to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Gift cards are not just gifts; they're an extension of your salon's commitment to elegance and customer satisfaction. Make them irresistible!

Conclusion

Gift cards can be a strategic game-changer for your salon or spa. They grab attention, boost sales, and build customer loyalty while retaining your brand's top-of-mind presence.

Don't miss out on this lucrative opportunity!

Take the leap, start creating your salon's gift cards today, and observe the positive impact they have on your business.

Oh, and don't forget to manage your scheduling of both your existing and gift card clients effectively. For easy scheduling and appointment management, check out MyCuts, an intuitive application perfect for the job.

Jumpstart your salon's success because the future of beauty is in your hands - and in your gift cards!