A loyalty card for hair and beauty salons

Why a salon needs a different threshold than a coffee shop

In a coffee shop the regular comes in a few times a week, so a five-stamp threshold is reached in about four weeks and the offer stays visible.

A salon runs on a completely different clock. A gel refill comes back every three to four weeks, a cut and colour every six to eight. It reads like a detail, but it changes the whole calculation: at 5+1, a client who visits every six weeks reaches the reward only after seven or eight months.

A card that fills very slowly loses its relevance, because a reward expected a year from now no longer influences the client's decision.

So a threshold in a salon is measured in months, not weeks. A reasonable target is a reward at around three months: 3+1 on the services that repeat often, or points, where the threshold no longer depends on the number of visits.

Some loyalty solutions limit the number of cards or customers. Stampino does not limit the number of enrolled customers on these plans, and the cost of the plan does not grow with the number of enrolled clients, so you can sign up your whole appointment book.

Stamps for nails, points at the hairdresser

Stamps are suitable when the service repeats often and costs about the same every time. A gel manicure is the classic case: the same treatment at a predictable interval, so one stamp per visit explains itself in a sentence.

At the hairdresser the tickets vary a lot. A cut runs roughly 25 to 45 EUR depending on length, and a wash, cut and style package reaches 45 to 70 EUR. Add colour on top and the gap between two clients can be several times larger.

On stamps those two get the same thing for very different amounts, and the client with the bigger ticket notices this first. Points are more suitable there: the reward grows in proportion to the value of the purchase.

• Services that repeat every three to four weeks (nails, pedicure, waxing): stamps, threshold 3+1.
• Hairdressing and anything with widely different tickets: points, 1 point for every 10 EUR spent, 1 point worth 1 EUR. That is 10% back.
• A mixed salon, where the same client does both nails and hair: points on the whole ticket, so you are not keeping two separate records.

You can run both types on the same card, depending on the plan, so you do not have to pick one mechanic for the whole salon.

The reward does not have to be a whole service

🎂

Stampinonow

Happy birthday!

There is a care treatment on the house for you this month. Come and get it.

This is where a salon differs fundamentally from a coffee shop, and this is usually the most expensive configuration mistake.

A free coffee costs you the beans and the milk, a few cents. A free cut does not cost you the materials, it costs you the slot: an hour you could have sold to somebody else. The real cost of the reward is the appointment, not the consumable.

So the suitable reward in a salon is something added to an appointment you are charging for anyway, not something that occupies a slot on its own.

• A care treatment added to a wash, the kind you usually charge separately.
• Nail art or two accent nails, on top of the manicure they paid for.
• An upgrade: an ampoule, a mask, a better product, the same working time.
• A discount on a value rather than a free service, if you want something simple to explain.

All of those are redeemed during a paid visit. The client perceives a real gain and you do not give up a slot in your schedule.

If you do want to give a whole service, schedule it in the free slots. A free service at 11 on a Tuesday makes use of an hour you were not selling anyway.

Loyalty card for hair and beauty salons: how you start

You offer the card at the desk, at the moment of payment, while the client is standing in front of you anyway. Adoption of the program also depends on staff involvement: where the offer is mentioned at every checkout, results appear much sooner.

The first time: the client scans the sign-up QR code at the desk or on the mirror and the card lands straight on their phone, from a single scan. No account, no email, no password. The card can also live in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, so it does not depend on an app they might delete.

After that, on every visit: the client opens the card and you scan the code on their screen with the phone or tablet at the desk. No separate reader.

A salon has an advantage a coffee shop does not: you know who is walking in, because you work by appointment. You are not asking in a hurry over a queue, you have a whole minute while you take payment.

The reports show how many clients signed up, how many stamps or points you gave and how many rewards were redeemed, so you can adjust the threshold after the first few months, on the basis of the data.

What it costs and how the investment is recovered

A plan with a listing in the Stampino app starts at 36.50 EUR a month, plus VAT where applicable.

A gel manicure runs roughly 35 to 55 EUR, and the materials on a treatment like that are a small part of the price, so a large part of what you take stays above consumables.

As an indicative example: at a margin of that kind, a small number of additional appointments in a month can cover the cost of the subscription. These are not new clients, only visits that would otherwise have happened later or somewhere else. The real result depends on each business's costs.

A client who comes back every five weeks instead of every eight brings two more visits a year. If the program brings a few existing clients back more often, the investment can be recovered quickly.

As with any calculation of this kind, what is left is margin over consumables: rent, wages and utilities come out of it afterwards.

You can also set an expiry period

You can leave the offer with no expiry, or set a term in days, weeks or months. The term appears on the client's card, and when it passes the card resets.

In a salon the term is worth looking at carefully. Thirty days looks reasonable, but a client who visits every six weeks loses their progress between two perfectly ordinary appointments, without doing anything wrong.

If you set a term, a starting point is at least three or four times the usual gap between visits. At a hairdresser that means six months rather than one.

The client is informed automatically seven days before and one day before expiry, so progress is not lost without warning. Expiry comes with the Standard plan and up.

Push notifications and the birthday reward

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Stampinonow

We have a slot on Thursday

A slot opened up on Thursday at 3. Message us if you want it.

A salon has gaps in the diary that you can see a day ahead. A notification to your clients is one of the few channels through which you can make use of a free slot in the same week.

The birthday reward appears on the card automatically on the day and is redeemed in the window you set. You keep no dates in a calendar and send nothing by hand.

For a salon this is one of the most useful features in the program, because a birthday is exactly the occasion a client was going to get their hair or nails done for anyway.