Bringing new customers through the doors of your spa business is the only way to grow and prosper over time.
You’ll need to use a number of different tactics to generate and nurture leads so that this can be achieved, and text messages provide a uniquely engaging alternative to other modern marketing methods.
It’s not simply a case of setting up a contact list and firing off messages ad hoc; you need to think strategically and have a foolproof plan in place for maximizing the impact of each SMS. There are a few best practices to follow in this context, so read on for useful advice for all spa business owners.
Clarity is crucial
If you aren’t expressing yourself clearly in a text message, it will be ignored at best, and will actively frustrate recipients at worst, which could hurt your spa’s reputation.
Keep things simple, don’t use abbreviated words or complex industry jargon, and stick to a single topic for a message.
Brevity is a basic requirement
A single SMS is 160 characters in length, so you’re naturally encouraged to make your text message marketing short and sweet.
Aside from the role that simple wording plays in this process, you also need to think about any other elements that you need to add, such as a link to a landing page.
If the URL is too unwieldy, there are a few ways to shorten it. Once it’s trimmed down to size, it should slot into an SMS without hogging all the available characters.
Ensure recipients are expecting your text
Unsolicited marketing messages are an annoyance, and could contravene industry regulations in your region. That’s why you must only send promotional texts to people who have actively chosen to be on your list of contacts.
That’s fine if you’ve already got a good list of prospects, but what if you’re starting from scratch and looking to build a customer base for your spa from the ground up?
Providing attractive incentives for people to hand over their contact info, whether that’s a discount on a treatment or even a freebie when they book their first visit, is useful. You can do this via landing pages on your website, or via your social media presence.
Apply the personal touch
Your text-based etiquette needs to be just as on-point as your in-person customer service if you want to connect with leads and bring them onboard.
So rather than marketing messages feeling generic, it’s useful to include the name of a team member to anchor it to a real person, and also the name of the recipient if they’ve provided it along with their number.
The personal touch matters in many marketing scenarios, and it’s certainly a powerful ally when composing an SMS for your spa’s latest campaign.
Schedule a text for your prospect’s time zone
Wellness travel is an emerging trend, and that means more spas need to cater to customers arriving from far-flung places.
With the help of modern phone business solutions, marketing messages can be scheduled to be sent at whatever time or date makes the most sense. And taking a bespoke approach is wise if you don’t want to vex the leads you’ve worked so hard to earn.
So in the case that you’ve got customers in a certain time zone that’s different from your own, you need to arrange for promotional texts to arrive in their inboxes during the morning commute or the afternoon wind-down. If you don’t think about this, you could be disturbing their sleep patterns with notifications that wake the whole household.
Make the message relevant
This can be tricky when you’re dealing with brand new leads, but you want to make sure that any text you send out is relevant to their interests and delivers value in some form.
Generally speaking, this means giving them the opportunity to get a discount if they book for a treatment, or participate in any of your other spa day promotions.
It is possible to narrow down the relevance further depending on how you’re generating leads. For example, market research might tell you that the contacts you acquire from social posts are more likely to want a particular type of spa experience from your business, in which case you can be more targeted.
Include a call to action that’s interactive
Earlier we discussed how to include links in text messages from a technical perspective. Now it’s worth talking about why they are worth adding at all.
In short, an embedded URL means that any call to action that your message features can be acted upon immediately, without the prospect needing to manually type anything into their web browser.
So while a discount code is a good thing to add, also slap a link to the site where it can be put to work in booking a bargain treatment at your spa to get the best results.
Be sparing with your messages
Bombarding would-be customers with texts several times a day is a real no-no. Even sending more than one a week could be considered intrusive.
In this sense, less is more, particularly when you’re navigating the uncertain early stages of your relationship with a prospect.
Likewise, it’s better to keep things fresh with each message you send, rather than spamming the same old offers time after time.
The bottom line on using text messages to market your spa business
You shouldn’t expect overnight success with your new SMS marketing strategy. Nor should you stick to your guns in the face of evidence that your efforts aren’t reaping the rewards you’d dreamed of.
The best way to find out what’s not working is to ask prospects for their input. Feedback from the people you’re trying to target will be invaluable, although again you’ll need to incentivize this if you want honest answers from as many people as possible.
The one thing to remember is that spa businesses are well positioned to leverage text messages for lead nurturing, so it’s a journey worth taking.
