Loyalty programmes for hair salons: how they work

Most salons live off the customers who return. A regular knows her stylist, books the next appointment before she leaves and sends her friends your way. Yet most of the marketing effort tends to go on finding new customers, while the regulars get very little back for sticking around.

A loyalty programme turns that round. The message is simple: the more often you come, the more you get.

What is a salon loyalty programme?

It's an arrangement between the salon and the customer. She collects something for each visit and swaps it for something she wants. The stamp card in her purse is the simplest version. An app does the same job, except it remembers the balance for her and lets you reward more than every tenth visit.

The building blocks

• Points. The customer earns points for what she pays. The rule should be simple enough for her to work out in her head.
• Tiers. Frequent visitors move up, to silver and gold for example. A tier is recognition, and it costs you nothing to give.
• Rewards. What she can spend the points on: a discount, a conditioning treatment, a free service.

What makes a good reward?

A conditioning treatment at the basin takes ten minutes and feels like a treat. A free service on a quiet Tuesday fills a chair that would otherwise be empty. Both cost you little and mean a lot to her. Money off is different: ten kroner off is worth exactly ten kroner, to you and to her.

Five pieces of advice

1. 1Keep the rule simple. One point per krone is something anyone understands. A table full of exceptions isn't.
2. 2Let her see her balance. Points she can't see don't exist for her. The balance, and how far she is from the next reward, belong where she books.
3. 3Mention it in the chair. “You’ve got enough points for a treatment today, would you like to use them?” does more than any poster.
4. 4Reward what you want more of. If you want to fill the mornings, give double points then.
5. 5Leave the programme alone. Customers saving up for something hate it when the rules change. Adjust rarely, and only going forward.

Common mistakes

• The first reward is too far away. If it takes two years to reach, she gives up before she starts.
• Everything turns into a discount. Customers learn to wait for offers, and you give away margin to people who would have come anyway.
• Nobody in the salon mentions it. A programme the staff never talk about won't get used.
• Points are recorded by hand. Then they get forgotten on a busy Saturday, and the customer stops trusting it.

Setting it up in Stamly

• Points are added automatically. When the appointment is settled at the till, the customer gets points for what she paid. Nobody records anything by hand.
• You decide the rule. How many points each krone earns, and whether points expire.
• Tiers are based on everything she has earned in total, so she doesn’t drop a level when she spends points.
• You create the rewards yourself, and can pause them whenever you like.
• She uses the reward when she books. It’s waiting in the app, and staff can see it at the till.
• Double points for a period are set up as an offer in the app.

Loyalty is included in the package. See how the Stamly loyalty programme works, what Stamly costs, or read more about Stamly for salons.