Boosting efficiency the smart way with spa software for small businesses

As a licensed esthetician, former spa director, and consultant to the world's top skincare brands, Daniela Woerner has spent the better part of her career mastering the finer points of marketing strategy and retail sales in the spa industry.

More recently, as the master crafter behind Addo Aesthetics, she has helped transform countless overworked estheticians into successful spa owners who turn chaos into confidence and prosperity in their businesses.

Daniela sat down with our own co-founder and CEO, Daniel Lang, to talk efficiency, profit margins, and spa software for small businesses, as well as the growing role that tech plays in shaping the industry's future. Featured below is an excerpt from that interview featured on episode 302 of the Addo Aesthetics podcast:

Spa Management Made Easy

AA: You know, I love this word “efficiencies.” That's what makes me very happy. So what are some of these efficiencies that you're talking about in the software? How can they make the spa owner’s life easier?

DL: Absolutely, and I'll give you a very practical example. We have this feature called Express Booking, which our customers love...Even though everyone understands, on the business side, the benefits of online booking, what we see today is still that around 60 to 65% of appointments get booked over the phone. So 10, 15 years into online booking, the majority of appointments still happen over the phone.

And if you [call into] a really nice spa… they're like, “Great, we got you a spot. All I need is your first name, last name, your email address, and your phone number. Oh, and by the way, we have a cancellation policy, which is yadda yadda yadda, and I'm gonna need your credit card, so would you please give me your credit card details over the phone?”

That whole interaction takes like four or five minutes to get just the information. And it's not pleasant for the front desk manager. It's not pleasant for the client. Nobody likes reading [out] credit card numbers.

So we said, why is it that we have all of this tech? Why can we not automate this process a little bit better? Still having the human experience of talking to a real person on the phone but, at the same time, using the tech where it makes sense?

So, the way this works in a Mangomint spa is you would call and they would say, “Great, I got you in Saturday 3:00 PM. And, Daniela, please look at your phone right now. You're gonna get a text message where you can complete the details and enter your credit card in order to complete the booking.”

Run Your Business From Anywhere

AA: You said you work best with teams of around ten. Is that ten providers or is that ten employees in the location?

DL: There's no hard limit. We have probably a few hundred customers that have less than five providers as well, but the vast majority have somewhere around 10 to 20 providers. And that's usually the sweet spot.

Oftentimes, that means they have perhaps two or three people working the front desk. They have one manager, if it's not the owner themselves, and everybody uses the system in some way.

Also, we have native apps for both iOS and Android. Unlike some of the other software companies, we have a hundred percent of the functionality on all platforms.

So you could, in theory, run your entire business, including reports and all the most advanced settings, from your iPhone or Android phone. That was one of the things that was always important to us from the beginning: To make sure that it's not only a great experience on the computer [but also] a great experience on the phone.

Employee Scheduling and Flexibility

AA: With the scheduling, how are you actually doing that with your providers that are actually seeing clients? Do they have a set schedule that's in there? Are you able to change it easily? How does that work?

DL: Yes, so basically you can do both. You can do a recurring schedule where you say, I'm gonna work every Tuesday from ten to five, but you can also change it every week. And you can also have overrides. So you can have a set schedule and say, okay, but I'm gonna take this day off or I'm gonna open up that other day. So, it's up to you. There's a ton of flexibility in terms of how you can structure that.

Spa Marketing With Software Integrations

AA: So, talk to me about some of your integrations. You mentioned a Shopify integration. Something that we're really passionate about and care about a lot is digital marketing, and, with emails and landing pages and funnels and all of that, it's challenging to do everything well. So with the Shopify integration, Shopify works with Klaviyo a lot. Do you have a Klaviyo integration or are you doing emails? Or how are you doing digital marketing?

DL: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that I always tell spa owners when I talk to them and they're just getting started in the marketing space is: Crawl, walk, run...If you don't do any email marketing today, don't go from doing nothing to the most sophisticated like sequences and segmenting, right? Just start somewhere and then build on top of that.

And the way we think about that progression from doing no marketing to being very sophisticated is that we have different integrations for each of the stages where you are at in your marketing journey. So, for the very basic use case, we have a MailChimp integration that pretty much, just like in real time, synchronizes your client's database with MailChimp so that, if you have an announcement, you can go into MailChimp, you can send, and it goes out to everybody. You don't have to import any CSV Files.

AA: That is amazing! We have been teaching [our program,] and I'm like, I'm so sorry you guys, this is the only way that I know: Export CSV, import CSV. The front desk is doing that every Friday to send out their list. So, you guys actually have the automatic integration?

DL: We do, and it's in real-time. It's literally like two seconds after a client books, they pop up in MailChimp and—

AA: Oh my god, that would sell me right there! That alone would literally sell me right there. That's huge! Okay, so is it just MailChimp or do you guys work with ConvertKit or any of the other softwares?

DL: Totally. So MailChimp is kind of like that simple use case. And then as you get more advanced with your marketing, you know, we have some customers that say, “Hey, whenever somebody signs up for a facial membership, I wanna send them a custom sequence: First of all, thanking them for being a valued member, but then also send them a sequence where two weeks in to get this message and maybe it talks about how to take care of your skin after you had a facial.” Four weeks in, maybe it introduces them to some products that you might be selling in your spa, and those sequences ideally are specific to who the client is and what services they have received from you.

And once you start getting into that, there's a whole world of marketing tools out there. You mentioned Klaviyo, we love Klaviyo. I think it's a fantastic tool and, especially for those spas that use Shopify already, Klaviyo is a really good fit because Klaviyo and Shopify talk really well together.

Yes, we can integrate with Klaviyo as well through something that we call webhooks. And you can literally go in and say—this is getting a little bit technical—I want to send an event to Klaviyo every time a client books a brow lamination.

AA: So, it's not just a [situation where,] “Here's my seven email sequence that automatically they're gonna get on day one, on day three.” It actually has if/then rules or triggers.

DL: Exactly. If they have the brow lamination, then send them this.

AA: That is…oh my gosh! You have no idea how huge this is. This is such a big deal!

Continue The Conversation With Addo Aesthetics

For more from Daniela and Daniel, listen to the entire episode on your favorite streaming platform:

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To watch the full video episode and learn more about Daniela and Addo Aesthetics, check out the Addo Aesthetics blog.