10 interesting ways to use beacon technology in salons and spas

Pavithra Ravindran
Last Updated: May 24, 2018

Beacon-based proximity marketing has become a boon to offline and omnichannel businesses in their battle to compete with online merchants and keep customers loyal and coming in through their doors. Beacons are being leveraged by a variety of offline businesses like car dealerships, amusement parks, museums, and restaurants because of their promising ROI. Businesses are coming up with innovative use-cases and recently we came across a lot of questions about proximity marketing using beacons in salons and spa. So this week we present to you ten innovative beacon use-cases for salons and spas.

1. Upsell services

You can use beacons to up-sell your services by suggesting a higher-end service. For example, when a customer that has booked for an appointment for head massage enters the spa, push a notification that would encourage them to take a hair spa that includes head massage as one of the treatments.

2. Cross-sell services

You can cross-sell your services by suggesting a service related to the one at hand. For example, a customer taking a pedicure is notified about a discount they can avail by taking a pedicure and manicure together.

3. Promote relevant products

In general, cosmetic brands partner with salons for product promotion. Some salons even have their own line of beauty products. For both the cases, leveraging beacons to promote their products can boost sales drastically.

For example, a customer in a hair coloring studio gets a notification about a color protect shampoo.

4. Enable customers to choose their favorite music using your app

This can be very effective when the customer is taking a spa treatment. Different people find comfort in different kinds of ambiance. With beacons, you can enable customers to change music, the color of the lights, the temperature of the AC, etc. through their phones.

5. Recognize when a user who booked an appointment arrives

Beacons can recognize if a customer that has booked an appointment (through your app) arrives. You can greet customers with a personalized welcome note when they arrive. You can also alert the stylist about the customer’s arrival. This way you can reduce the wait time for the customer.

If any customer that doesn’t have an appointment arrives, you can push a beacon notification with a list of available stylists so that they can book an appointment on the spot.

6. Announce your services and discounts

Beacons can help you get new customers. You can leverage beacons in public places like traffic signals and shopping malls to keep people informed about the list of your services, special discounts, etc. If you have an app, you can also push notifications that talks about your welcome offer with a link to download your app.

7. Push promo codes and reward points

Pleasing existing customers is as important as attracting new customers. Most salons keep their customers coming back by offering loyalty programs. You can use beacons in your salon to push notifications about your promo-codes, loyalty programs, reward points, membership plans, etc.

With Beaconstac, it is now possible for your customers to save your offers for later in Apple Wallet. This way you won’t lose your customers, even if they are too busy to redeem the offer instantly. Also, the markdown cards are synced to iCloud so that the customer can access them from a different device and even share it with others.

8. Ease payments

Relieve customers from having to carry their credit cards and wallets. Though digital payment platforms like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay already exist, they suffer from a limitation of being device specific. Beacon-based payment method solves this problem by being device agnostic. So to take your services all that your customers have to carry is just their phone (which they obviously will).

9. Automate the process of ordering beverages

Hospitality is one of the most critical parameters that decide the quality of your services. This is why salons take an extra mile and offer stuff like beverages and magazines. With beacons, you can offer a consistent hospitality irrespective of how busy the salon is. You can do this by helping customers order beverages through their phones without having to wait for someone to come and take the orders.

10. Get customer feedback

Salons generally have a customer feedback device in the billing section. This machine can only tell you if the customer found the service satisfying or not. But using beacons, you can push a form to customer’s phone and request them to take a survey. These surveys can give you a lot of insight of the pros and cons of your services and the things that need improvement. With Beaconstac, you can get a detailed analytics report of the surveys.

If you are planning to try out beacons, take a look at Beaconstac, that includes everything you need to get started. Using Beaconstac you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!