Email Marketing: Spas Are Doing It Wrong

Last week's Social Media Marketing Strategies for Spas was a raving success. In fact, one attendee deemed it “…the most useful social media webinar I've attended.”

To layer up your marketing knowledge, this week I want to hit home that social media marketing is only one part of your total marketing strategy. There’s also email marketing, website client attraction and paid advertising, to name a few. To leave one piece of marketing out of your strategy, especially a superstar like an email, means you’re not getting enough eyeballs on your brand, and you’re leaving money on the table. Your spa business really should be using multiple marketing avenues to reach the masses.
 
You see, it’s a numbers game. You need scads of eyes on your brand to generate a few sales. It's simply how marketing & business works. I’ve spoken about the sales funnel before, but here’s a refresher. The top of the funnel is the widest and where you want the most people to see your brand. As they move through the funnel, fewer & fewer consumers will become paying guests & advocates.

This is why you need to be marketing on multiple channels...so you get as many people aware of your business and entering your sales funnel as possible. 

Photo Credit: https://petovera.com/best-sales-funnel-examples/

It was when I start to move my coaching to an online business model that I noticed the spa industry was completely dropping the ball on email marketing, not seeing the brilliant processes & huge opportunities for growing our companies.   

Learning how to optimize email marketing with a heart-centred focus, opened my eyes to a whole new way of reaching my tribe, even when I needed/wanted to do an “ask”...and not feel icky-sales-y about it. And, NOT have dozens of people opt out of my list. Btw...I hardly ever have opt-outs because I only email you (a) useful information I know you can implement as DIY spa biz development and (b) when I have an offer I know you will find it valuable to improve your pain points/frustrations.

And over the past few years, as I've been getting better and better at refining my marketing, particularly email marketing, the ROI shows up in my bank account. 

This brings me to why I’m so compelled to teach you, dear spa owner, how to understand, organize & strategize your marketing while maintaining your purest intentions for your spa's target audience. 

Here’s why email marketing is the bee's knees:

Your email list already trusts you.

People won’t book with you unless there is a perception of trust coming from your website, social media and referrals. The names on your email list have either already been to your spa or have some level of confidence from these sources to opt-in to your newsletter. Those people are now called “warm leads”, consumers who have shown interest in a product or service you offer, and they've proven to give you the best ROI on your marketing efforts. It’s effective, inexpensive and targeted.

It’s about nurturing relationships...with a bonus.

If the idea of email marketing makes you queasy, do a reframe. Shift your perspective of email marketing from “I’ll be bugging them, then I’ll lose business” to “I’m providing valuable content they want/need to strengthen our relationship.” 

“Companies using email to nurture leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads and at 33% lower cost. And nurtured leads, on average, produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities compared to non-nurtured leads. (Hubspot)”

Feel free to put a clear Call to Action on your emails (ex: drive traffic to a blog post, case study, testimonials or interesting articles on your social channels) and a “book now” button for easy scheduling, but steer clear of overly promotional "asks" 80% of the time. 

You may have heard the saying “people hate being sold to, but they love to buy.” Be THE spa resource for your email list. Here's where the magic is: if you've been providing useful information for them, they are more likely to say yes to your email offer or call you for an appointment when they need it.
 
For the most part, spa owners view marketing, in general, as an annoying task they grudgingly have to do. For me, I find this piece of my business fascinating because, at the root, it’s all about communicating our value clearly. And selling or not, I want to be a good communicator.

If we can use marketing via email to precisely reveal our value, all of a sudden sales start rolling in, clients seek us out, and your marketing has become a system that keeps generating consistent revenues. Would you be willing to rethink your previous beliefs about email marketing if this is the case?