Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 88. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, Phorest FM is a weekly show that puts forth a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, salon/spa marketing tips, company insights and information on attending Phorest Academy webinars. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.

Phorest FM Episode 88

If aligned with existing email campaigns, SMS marketing becomes a direct and invaluable tool to get your clients back in salons and spas more often. To discuss this whole ‘SMS in support of Email’ concept, Killian and Zoe welcome back two Phorest in-house guests to the show: Luke Doolin and Helen Devenney, from the Grow and Education teams respectively. For this episode of Phorest FM, expect some in-depth explanations about what works best for the hair and beauty industry, some laughs and a few announcements!

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Transcript

Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast episode 88, I’m Killian Vigna…

Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer. In this week’s episode we are going to focus on client retention. We’ll be talking to some of Phorest’s in-house experts about messaging and automation, and we’ll share with you the secret to how you can reach 68% more clients in just one day. As always, we’ll top off the show with our latest announcements and upcoming Phorest Academy Webinars.

Killian Vigna: So grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, relax and join us weekly for all your salon’s business and marketing needs. Good morning Zoe.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Good morning Killian.

Killian Vigna: We’re doing a bit of a [inaudible 00:00:43] episode this week now.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so we are discussing a topic that we touched off, back, I want to say a year and a half ago, like episode 4, and episode 18. You came to me with this topic. Why was it important for you to revisit it? What have you been hearing from the Education department?

Killian Vigna: Well, it was something that keeps popping up time and time. So, every time we’re onboarding a new client we have, I suppose what they call a survey form, which kind of outlines their priorities, objectives, goals and how Phorest can help with that. One thing that we hear constantly, there’s one main priority that pops up in the Training department and the Grow department but certainly popped up a bit more now in Operations and Support. And that priority is basically, how as a salon owner, can I reach and retain more clients. So, what better people to explain this than the two people that we’ve had on the show before touch off the topic and we just said, “We get them back in, delve a little deeper into it.” So, without further ado, we’d like to welcome Luke Doolin from Grow and Helen Devenney from Training.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Welcome to the show guys. [crosstalk 00:01:47] Welcome back actually.

Luke Doolin: Crazy to think how big the podcast has got over the last year and a half, two years.

Killian Vigna: So, I think episode 18 was back in March sometime, which means episode 4 would have been… We started January so, yeah. Going between a year and a half, two years. And we’ve had you on for little bits. We’ve had both of you on actually for little bits here and there. So we just thought it was time to actually dedicate a full episode to this topic.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Since you kicked that off, I suppose, I mentioned in the blurb that we’ll share the secret to reach the other 68% of salon owners’ clients. What do we mean by that?

Luke Doolin: Yeah, so the reason why it’s all coming about is that we’re currently redeveloping our email editor and I’m putting some amazing changes in there. And we started to have a look at the salons’ behaviour around email marketing and we found that salons on average only gather 32% of their clients’ emails. And with email marketing’s open rates being so low, it’s actually really really worrying. So, put that in perspective: if a salon has 1000 clients, if they only gather about 32% of that and the open rate is only 23% on average, they’re probably only going to reach about 75 or 76 clients that will actually see that special offer when they send an email campaign. So that’s where this is all coming from.

Killian Vigna: So why exactly do salons have more phone numbers than emails?

Luke Doolin: It’s mainly just down to time. So I was actually visiting a salon recently, around the email editor to show them the benefits of it and what the new improvements are going to be. And when I was at the desk, somebody was coming up to hand in a delivery, somebody was handing their CV, there was two walk-ins and people cashing clients out. And I think it’s just mainly down to time. And I think that salons think that they are collecting more than they actually are. There’s a couple of ways on the system to check it, so in the templates and filters section you can actually check and see how many emails you have there. So definitely, if salons have a chance, come and check it out and see. Because I think it’s going to be a bit worrying when they actually have a look and see how many emails they have.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Between SMS, email and social media, I mean everybody’s now on social media, we did an episode about it even just few weeks ago with Jennifer Swaine, you know it’s important to be on it, but is SMS still to this day the most direct way of getting clients back into your salon, into to your business?

Luke Doolin: So it is, yeah. So we had a look at stats around that, and we know that SMS converts better than all all other channels. If we look at just the open rates between SMS and email, we know that email has an average open rate of about 23%, while SMS is at about 99%. So you’re getting your message out to more and more people. And in terms of Facebook then, you know organically, if you were to send out a post on Facebook without paying for it, the stats used to be that 16% of your page audience would see it, but that’s actually reduced down to about 2% now. So it’s pushing you down the road of having to pay for advertising. Which is still a great thing to do. We’re finding the SMS campaigns just converting a lot better. The majority of our salons, when we looked at it last month, 82% of our top performance salons who do market themselves, actually use all channels. So it’s just at different times. So they’d send an email campaign, they’d put their posts up on Instagram, up on Facebook and they’d normally follow up with a text message when it comes closer to the end of the offer. Just to kind of do like a last little push. We find that text message converts better than all the other channels.

Killian Vigna: Okay. So it’s got the best conversion and salon owners know that they have, what did we say, 68% more phone numbers in their system than email addresses. This is if you’re a Phorest user. Why are people still opting to send emails then? Is it to do with cost or?

Luke Doolin: We do find that salons actually send both. So they’ll send an email campaign and they’ll send a text message campaign as well. But the main thing is that cost would be an issue, and some people have never sent them before and I think there’s a perception that it’s gonna cost a lot more than it actually does. So with the Phorest system, you can use our filtering system which actually means that you’re not sending out a text message to your full client base. Your only tagging people who you should be sending the text message to. So if you’re sending an offer for a manicure, you should probably just be sending it to people who’ve previously had a manicure you know in the last 18 months or active clients that might actually go for it rather than just texting out your full client database. So there is a pre conception that there is a big cost related to it, and that’s why we started this month doing the Money Back Marketing campaign, where we’re gonna offer salons their money back if they don’t make twice their investment. But I know we’re gonna talk about that in a few minutes.

Killian Vigna: Are we? (laughs)

Luke Doolin: I think so yeah. It’s on my list of things to talk about.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: I’m curious though, just to get your thoughts on it before we dig into that. We ran this campaign last year, we’re running it again this year. What do you have to say when you analyse campaign’s and people don’t make that return on investment? Because we’ve seen those campaigns really work. But when it doesn’t work, what are the causes for it to kind of fail? Is it due to targeting? Is it due to not spending enough money? What is it exactly?

Luke Doolin: We actually had a couple hundred salons take part in it last year, and it was only 7 salons that didn’t actually make money. And there’s a couple of different reasons why. We’d always go with like 5 different rules of what makes a perfect SMS, and found that these text messages weren’t following these types of rules. What we’d always say to a salon, is that if they can personalise the text message, do it. So with the Phorest system, you can actually select tags, say client first name, last name and personalise it. To be clear and concise with it. Like don’t be offering too many things within the one text message. Don’t offer, you know, have 6 different offers. Just focus on the one and send that one out. Create urgency as well. When a salon sends a text message, to give it an end date. Give it like 10 days or finished this time next week. Because if you send a text message without having an end date you’ll find that the clients will just keep pushing it off and pushing it off. And then they never actually go for it at all.

Having a clear call-to-action was another thing. So having your online booking link in the text message, or your phone number so your clients know exactly how to make the booking. And also sending it at the right time. So we looked at loads of different times of when id the perfect time to send a text message, and normally it’s after work. So when someone is on their way home from work, they’re on the bus and they have their phone in their hands is probably the best time to send them a text message rather than at 3:00 pm in the day when they’re in work or 9:00 am in the morning when they’re just getting there.

So the salons for which it didn’t work for last year, I think 3 of them was down to timing, that they were sent early on a Saturday morning and it just didn’t seem to work. And the other salon didn’t include any call-to-action, so there was no phone number, there was no online booking link, so no one knew how to make the booking. And the other salon actually just forgot to add in their name. So there was small reasons why, but it was actually a huge success last year. And on average when we took everyone into account, on average salons made 22 times their investment last year. So if they spent 50 quid, I’m not gonna try to do quick math here, but it’s about…

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s Monday morning, (laughs). We forgive you.

Luke Doolin: It’s a lot more money anyway. And that’s the reason why we’re doing it again this year. Because it was such a big success last year.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.

Killian Vigna: I suppose we’re coming up to 5 months now since the General Data Protection Regulation, so that’s for anyone in the EU now. Have you noticed any kick backs from that or any knock on effects from that with SMS and email marketing?

Luke Doolin: In actual fact, there’s been huge positive in some ways. The amount of salons that have actually sent since GDPR has actually increased. Which – I actually thought it was gonna be the other way around. I thought a lot of salons would be a bit fearful to send. But we’ve actually introduced a lot of features on the software which will, if a client hasn’t been in the last 3 years, we’ll actually forget their marketing details and we’ll opt them out. So it means you’re not sending text messages and marketing materials to people who haven’t been in in years and years. And we’re finding more salons are sending, but they’re sending more specific campaigns. So rather than being afraid to send, they are just sending their manicure offer to people who’ve had a manicure before and were in the last year. Which is perfectly fine to do, but we’re finding that people are just becoming more aware of who they’re sending their message to, rather than just sending out blanket campaigns, which we don’t recommend salons do anyways.

Killian Vigna: So instead of blanket campaigns, instead of just sending the one campaign for 3000 clients in your client book, it’s now actually utilising targeting and segmenting and just being specific. So I’m getting a message that relates to me at a time that I need it, rather than I’m getting a message for a haircut when I just had one two weeks ago.

Luke Doolin: Exactly. Exactly. Or like you’re getting a text message from someone you went to get a manicure 4 years ago and you haven’t been back, and you’re receiving a text message about a massage. So people have become more specific in what they’re sending and send it to people who are active clients who are actually going to come back and avail of it. We are finding more and more salons are actually taking part in it, but a lot of salons have actually been calling us for advice. You know, if anyone does need any advice around GDPR or if they are a bit afraid to send it, do ring in cause we’ve got a team dedicated for SMS and it’s going to be focused on this campaign for the full month.

Killian Vigna: So I’m a new client, I’ve just joined your salon. As that salon, or how do I know I can now send you campaigns via SMS or via email?

Luke Doolin: I’d say actually Helen’s probably the best person to talk about that.

Killian Vigna: Are there any opt-outs or any requirements needed to be put into those messages?

Helen Devenney: So maybe what salons aren’t aware of is that there is two types of messages from the system. So apart from SMS and email there’s transactional messages and then there’s promotional messages. So transactional messages are the messages you send to a client that’s all related to the service, the appointment that they have, the follow-up from the service. And then the promotional messages is pretty much any kind of promotion that you’re trying to do whether it be about the salon, the services you’re offering in the salon, staff and events, open days, retail offers. So they do kind of fall into 2 different categories.

When salons- so this could be salons just joining Phorest or salons starting off from scratch, anytime that they have a new client come in, on our software it does a prompt as soon as you add them onto the system you get this prompt to ask them their marketing preferences. So they can obviously be clear, do they want to focus on email or do they want to focus on SMS or would they prefer both. But then that gives you the opt-in for that you can obviously promote to them going forward.

Now with the transactional messages as they are to do with their service, you don’t necessarily need their initial opt in to share the likes of your reminders, your confirmation, your reviews. And then the client can always opt-out in the future if they don’t want to receive them, but it would be very rare for a salon client to not want to receive details about their appointments. Whereas it would be more likely for a client to decide that they don’t want to receive SMS, but they do want to receive emails about promotions and offers that the salon has going on. Kind of following what Luke said there about keeping your costs at bay and using those filters. Getting clients to interact on those offers and campaigns that you’re sending by SMS and email. If a client has expressed whether they are opting in, that as well as ensuring that you have clients that are acting upon your messages that actually want to be included in those messages. So again, it’s kind of keeping your interaction rate at a higher kind of level.

Killian Vigna: That actually worked out to be a nice transition there. Now I’m wondering are you looking at my question sheet, ’cause my next question actually was about the difference of SMS. Just on the promotional SMS with the update, does that mean… you know how in an SMS you’re limited to 160 characters. Is that an extension on that now? Or is that taking away extra characters?

Helen Devenney: Yeah, it is taking away extra characters. Like as prior to that GDPR you always had to give your client the option to opt-out in the future. So what we would always recommend is, when you’re deciding on whether you’re using SMS… SMS are generally short anyway. You don’t want to have it too long. So I think it takes about 12 characters. But what I’m finding even when I’m doing training with clients, you just have to be smart about the choices of words you’re using, to kind of shorten them down. You know, using things like the @ symbol so you can still fit your promotion into the SMS and still having that platform to opt-out if they want to in the future. And then you’re still getting everything you need in there to send it out to the client.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: As you work actually with many, many salons and salon owners have you noticed if there’s a few different types of SMS that should be sent out to clients that would be most beneficial?

Helen Devenney: Yeah, so like there’s a lot of SMS on the system that salons can automate. We call them the automatic SMS, and there’s 7 of them specifically. And they go through like a different journey of when they’re actually being sent out to the clients. For example, when you’re booking a client in you’ll be sending them the confirmation message. So this is just to ensure that the conversation you’ve had with the client on the phone, getting the day, the time, what service that they want right; that is just being resent out to the client shortly afterwards. And then they obviously have it for their reference. Like some people make appointments 6 months in advance so that’s a super help to make sure that they can add that to their diary. They can kind of keep track of when their next appointment is.

Then you have like the next message would be sent out to them would be their reminder. That’s obviously to ensure that they turn up for their appointment. Now, that you would want to be sending out maybe 2 days before, on the off chance that clients are made aware that if they need to make personal changes to their schedule they can obviously do that. If they need to cancel with the salon, then obviously, it’s kinda leaving enough time for the business to find another client to book in or if they need to reschedule for the client they have sufficient time to do so.

On the back of that, most salons will find that their clients will turn up if they do receive the reminder. But on the off chance that a no-show doesn’t turn up, there is a message that you can then send to the client. Even just to make them aware that they haven’t turned up, and you’re inviting them to rebook. Salons need to be thinking about if they have one no-show on a Saturday morning that’s cost them, I don’t know, €200, $200, $200 pounds, that’s a lot of money. And even though that client maybe did receive their reminder, maybe they live a very busy life. That no-show reminder can even help them the client get back in contact, be very apologetic, and then they can be rescheduled you know very promptly so that they can actually fit it in in the next couple of days.

So they’re kind of the ones who go to the clients before their booking, and then there’s a couple of follow up messages that can go to the client thereafter. The first one would be kind of going back to the social media new client side. So there is a Facebook welcome email. This only goes to new clients, so it’s not being sent out too often to all of their base, but it’s kind of to convert new salon clients to new social media followers because you can promote your Facebook page in there. You can also add in your other social media handles but I would always recommend salons to use that as like a little customer service package. You tell clients loads when you’re in the salon and it’s good just to have that written down that they can refer back to it and be really clear on the points that their therapist made when we’re trying to remember it weeks after, as in “what was I supposed to do as my follow up?”

The biggest 2 I think thereafter when the client has left the salon, is encouraging the client to rebook the next visit, and getting feedback from their client. The rebooking SMS, that would go out the day after that the client has been in. And the interesting thing is that salon staff will have targets to get clients rebooked back in and that’s absolutely great. We want to retain the client, we want to get them booked back in for their service. But some salon staff would struggle with how to phrase that to a client. Some clients have to go and check their schedules before or after that they leave. So the rebooking SMS is a great tool to kind of take that away from that salon staff, take the pressure off. You can redeploy them, they can follow on with their next treatment. They can obviously retail a little bit better, they’re not trying to do too many actions thereafter the visit. And then if the client hasn’t managed to rebook it’s giving them that comfortable period that they can make that rebooking on their own time. They don’t have to be there, pressured to commit while they’re in the salon.

So it is a really good way to be able to use your time wisely, and where do you want to focus that time. So the system can do that for you. And then with the reviews, it’s obviously getting that client feedback. So all feedback is good feedback. Even if you’re getting a negative review, act on it, work on it. At least it’s kind of private between the client and the salon. But obviously with review, getting great reviews is key. I know myself if I see something about a salon and they’re promoting stuff, that’s all well and good. But general client feedback is where the trust really, really lies. So that will automate to go out after the client has paid for their visit and then the salon can obviously use the bonus of that to share it on social media.

Then there’s a couple of other messages thereafter that link in with other features of the system. If you’re getting word of mouth referrals, which are probably the number one form of building your client base, any salons that are incorporating the TreatCard they can award bonus points for word of mouth referrals. And then you can send that client a text message to let them know that their referral has come in, you’ve awarded them with a token of appreciation. The Snapchat message is obviously a key way to build your Snapchat following. Actually, for anyone who is a Snapchat user and a social media user, they’ll probably say Snapchat has taken a little dip, and Instagram is on the rise. What we and the training team encourage salons to do is change that Snapchat link to your Instagram link. You can also build followers on your Instagram if that’s your main focus of social media.

Then the last automated message would be ReConnect. So any salon will know that they have their automatic follow up period normally anywhere between 2-8 weeks. But the really interesting thing, and I find this really interesting as I’ve been in salons, I know how hard it is to ensure that your clients come back in that time. So the ReConnect is analysing every single one of those messages, or clients. How often those clients come in based on themselves individually. So if it’s 54 days or 62, it could be 96 days or like every 6 days – it’s totally different from client to client. So ReConnect does all that work for you and allows you to see where are your clients that you are at risk of losing. So it’s a really good area that you should follow up, I would say every week, every 2 weeks, every month. Because while most people will think, “oh yeah that client will come back to me,” we can never assume that client is going to come back to you. So you should still be contacting them.

It’s another way of like a reminder of them to make that booking. I’m super forgetful. I always say I’ll book that, and then a week later I still haven’t done it. So the ReConnect can be used to reconnect clients that you may be at risk of losing. But also reminding clients that are a day or two overdue and to rebook back in. So the main aim is for salons to be aware of these messages, really use them to what patterns they want to engage with the client. Because as I said earlier, all those messages trigger on different interactions you have with the system. So if you can have the system do that much work for you, it means that you can really use your time, your staff and your engagement way more wisely and customer service actually in the salon itself.

Killian Vigna: So Helen, you’ve listed off roughly 5-8 messages there, we’ll say 8 messages. How much roughly is an SMS? We’ll say what, 5 cent? 5 European cent?

Helen Devenney: I would say probably about 6-7 cents.

Killian Vigna: 6-7. So we say 7 cent. 7 by 8. What’s that. Quick maths, that’s like 48? So for 48 cents, you’ve confirmed the client of their booking, you’ve reminded them of their booking, if they didn’t show up… so basically you’ve got your client definitely coming in and paying for their 200 quid treatment. Then they’ve rebooked, they’ve left a review – which now all of a sudden your reputation is looking good, referrals, Snapchats all that. So for 48 cent, you’ve got yourself a lifetime customer. And that treatment could cost about 200 quid easy.

Helen Devenney: Yeah.

Killian Vigna: Right. Now we have 8 messages that you’re saying you should really automate these. So for anyone that’s not using the system, to be able to make sure you’re getting those lifetime customers, they have to send… well it’s not sending 8, it’s like sending between 5 really, because of with the referrals and social media and stuff like those. That’s still a lot of work for someone that’s not automating it. So are we seeing any move towards automation of SMS?

Helen Devenney: Yeah. I would say for a lot of salons it’s gone up since last year 25%. Different ones have gone up even higher. Like the reminders have gone up 37%, reviews 29%, and ReConnect is actually 49% increase. Even I know myself from working in salons, and this time of year it’s coming up to Christmas, a lot of salons dedicate time to ringing clients and confirming their booking. Or they’re more so reminding them of their bookings. So when you think about if you had 50 clients a day, if you’ve got 50 phone calls to make and you don’t really know on average of how long you’re going to be on the phone with those people, how could the salon be using that time so much more wisely. Are you spending with those phone calls the option to fit another client in? Why wouldn’t you just have the system do that on one trigger and it could just send that out to clients?

And then with the other ones you’re kind of engaging and building potential clients. What would you do if you weren’t getting reviews or reconnecting people. Are you just losing people just trying to get flyering in and out. Like you want to get really hard, trust worthy feedback so that potential clients really want to see it. So it’s mega time saving to be able to automate that and redeploy that time and that focus elsewhere by using those messages.

So yeah, a lot of salons would be now conscious of that and especially busy periods they just don’t have the time to sacrifice appointments or retail to be able to just kind of follow up with all that interaction of clients.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So if the secret to reaching 68% more clients, of your client base anyways, is to send more SMS what is Phorest doing to support salon owners in this?

Luke Doolin: For a full month of October we’re going to run our Money Back SMS Marketing again. So we ran it last year, and it was hugely successful, and we we’re seeing salons achieve 22 times their investment. And a lot of salons have asked for it again this year, so we said we’d do it and do it in one of the prime times really for salons to be sending. So we’re coming into their busy period. So what we’re saying is that if a salon sends a text message this month, and they don’t at least double their money, we’re going to refund it. So there’s a part on the software where salons can actually go and view how much money they’ve made from it. It’s in the campaign history performance, so they can see how well their campaigns have actually gone. What we’re saying is if they don’t double their money, we’re going to refund it for them.

And we’ve also got a team dedicated for SMS this month whose going to be focusing on helping salons create the SMS template for them and have them send it out, have them pick the right audience who they’re going to send it to as well. We’re sending out a lot of email campaigns and SMS campaigns over the next couple of days and you’ll see there’ll be a link in there. How you can opt-in and how you can take part as well.

Helen Devenney: So on the training team, we do currently offer text and email marketing training, things that we cover in that are tips on what information to be gathering from your clients and following on what Luke said we got through in detail like the filtering and just kind of generally how to actually functionally use the marketing areas with the texts and the email. But what we are going to be introducing is a new module, and it’s based all around those automatic messages. Where are they in your system, how to customise them to your salon brand, what you want to say to your clients. And really delve into the benefits of them, so as I was saying with different ones like what is the benefit of sending it, why is it good to be sending that, where could you possibly redeploy that time and what effect would it have on the salon overall. We’re going to be hopefully introducing that next week, and we’ll still be running the other regular text and email marketing.

Killian Vigna: So that’s all the Phorest related stuff. Is there anything non-clients can get their hands on out there?

Luke Doolin: Yeah, so, we actually have an eBook which I think was created by you Killian.

Killian Vigna: (laughs) [crosstalk 00:28:41].

Luke Doolin: So that’ll show you how to create the perfect SMS campaign, when’s the best time to send it, what you should be putting into your SMS campaign as well though an email eBook as well that’s been created. There’s a lot of stuff online and Zoe’s done a lot of great blogs about what you should be doing. So there’s a lot of stuff online for anyone who isn’t a Phorest client. And for anyone who is, we do have a team dedicated that can help you.

Killian Vigna: Just before wrapping up, I just wanted to… now this was completely by coincidence, but, my phone. I’ve got Gmail, Google calendars, Evernote, Slack, everything like that. And just when I was checking the time during this podcast I actually had sent myself an SMS this morning, just because (laughs) like what does that say? [crosstalk 00:29:24]. I’m not even joking. Absolute coincidence. This morning I was coming into work and I had 2 notes that I needed to remember. So rather than put it into my calendar or my Evernote, I actually texted myself. So there’s one way of ending the show about SMS.

Luke Doolin: Yeah, like I looked up mine and I’ve got 121 Whatsapp messages and about 1000 emails there.

Killian Vigna: But you can’t see what that message is [crosstalk 00:29:45] can you?

Luke Doolin: (laughs)

Killian Vigna: I can see that I have to get my food and [inaudible 00:29:48].

Luke Doolin: And then when I get to the text message on a Friday night about a take away, I’ll always order through it anyways.

Killian Vigna: Thanks really for joining us you guys on the show today guys, and I hope that cleared up a little bit more of the power of SMS and I suppose more importantly, what you said, it’s not all about SMS, it’s not all about emails, it’s not all about Facebook ads, it’s all about working in conjunction, so cross promotions.

For anyone else that wants to find out how to get involved with that SMS Money Back Campaign, or to join into one of our new training modules we’ll have the links in the blurb as well.

Luke Doolin: Great thanks a lot!

Killian Vigna: So that was Helen and Luke, and now for the second half of the show, the Zoe section.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yes, so, webinars, trade shows, announcements, all of that jazz, right?

First off, webinars. So we’ve been talking about this one for a while now, the Salon Email Masterclass. It’s coming up on October 15th, from 3:00pm to 4:00pm UK/Ireland time, or 10:00am to 11:00am US/Eastern Time. So that’s all about how to avoid that spam folder. It ties back into this episode quite nicely if you’re going to use SMS in conjunction with emails so you know how to create that perfect email and then follow up with your SMS, I suppose.

Trade shows. We were just at ProBeauty Dublin last weekend, but this weekend coming up October 13th to 15th, we’re going to be in London at the Salon International. So we are going to be on stand H170. Then the weekend after, October 21st and 22nd, we are going to be in Manchester at Professional Beauty North and we’ll be on stand E49. Don’t worry, all of these events, we have them listed up on our Facebook page in the events section, so if you’re interested in any of those webinars or trade shows, you just go on our Facebook page in the events section, find whichever of those events that you would like. For the webinar, you can save your spot through the ticket link, it’s free, it’s just to register your name on that list so you can get your invite link. And then for the trade shows it’ll redirect you to the actual trade shows’ websites so that you can get your ticket for the weekend.

To be announced on the Phorest Blog officially this week, it’s a brand new thing. There’s loads of things going on this month, I guess it’s coming up to Christmas right? It’s always that kind of end of year buzz. So we’re teaming up with a lot of our industry experts, and salon consultants, coaches, and all that that have been working with us on the Phorest blog or on the podcast and we’ve called it the Salon Mentorship Hub. We want to essentially facilitate your connection with a mentor. So coming up to Christmas, it’s probably the perfect time of year. If you’re stuck, if you feel kind of, “I don’t know where to go with this exact problem that I have in my business”, then we’re facilitating that connection with a coach, with a consultant. Obviously, we know that we have people all around the world, so in Australia and the UK and Ireland, but also in the US, so we’ve teamed up with people from those different markets as well. It’s all about learning, getting unstuck and making sure that you can have access to those expert tips.

So for the whole month of October, we are connecting you like I said with those experts. It’s going to be through a website. Everything is going to be 100% announced on the blog this week. So look out for that. But there’s nothing for you to do to prepare for it. All it is essentially is we’ll have a list of those consultants with the topics that they can help you with. And if you feel stuck on any of those topics, you book a 30 minute consultation slot with them and then you have that chat.

Our goal with this is to really initiate that conversation between you guys and them, and make sure you can grow your business as you need it to.

Killian Vigna: Great idea, yeah.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, no. It’s really exciting, I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been working on that for the past, I want to say month to chatting all our contributors and all and getting them hyped. So they are very excited to chat to you as well and help you with whatever struggle you have in your business, and I think coming up to Christmas… I’m actually pretty confident that this is going to be a pretty good thing for everyone involved. So that’s that!

Now was it last wee? We did a recap of all the Salon Summit announcements. There’s another one coming this week, so look out for that one as well on the blog. Other than that I mean, I think you’ve got loads to process, so I’m ready to call it a day!

If you know someone with a story who’d be great on this show, let us know. Slide into our DM’s, Phorest’s DMs, and if you have any feedback feel free to leave us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher. We’re always looking for suggestions on how to improve the show. Otherwise have a wonderful week and we’ll catch you next Monday.

Killian Vigna: All the best!

Thanks for reading! #LetsGrow


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