The Money is in the…[fill in the blank]

The subject line is referring to a old adage that marketers have long believed to be true.  When it comes to business (and that includes the salon business) the saying goes “The money is in the list”…meaning the client list.

And with the cost of postage going up seemingly every day, that “client list” is really an email list…and to a lesser degree…a cell phone list.  It would be great if the cell phone list could be used consistently for client contact (via texting), however, that is not really feasible.

The current laws regarding privacy are pretty strict.  Then you have the whole 140 character limitation with texting.  No branding in text messages.  So for hair salons and spas, the value of cell phone numbers will be limited to appointment confirmations for a while.

Not so with email.  With email you have tremendous capabilities today.  And emailing today is where texting will be 5 years from now.  It’s really just a matter of time.

But, here is the elephant in the room.

Most salons have done a terrible job in collecting client emails.  So, no emails…no money.  Also email lists have to be cleaned every once in a while.  Let’s face it, email addresses change.  How often?

Well, how about every 18 months or so on average.

People go from AOL to Verizon, or Verizon to Comcast, or Yahoo to Google.  Look, it happens.  So, every once and a while you need to get the email list cleaned because your email list of 1500 names might really be a list of 1000.

The best way right now to do that is by using a program like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp.  Both are great email marketing programs that give you a list of all bad email addresses when you send out any email.

Note: This “bad email” detection will be included in the new HairMax Concierge System coming out soon (click here for more info)

And with your HairMax salon software, you can clean that list manually by simply pulling up the bad email addresses (in Client Maintenance) and clearing them out.  And if you were really cutting edge…and you integrated your credit card processing with HairMax…you could have a very simple way to have missing  email collection as part of your sales process.  (Click Here for Details)

Your client email list can be extremely valuable.  If you use it right.  But, before you can really make that system work for you…you have to start by developing a great client email list.

So, don’t put the cart before the horse.  The money is in the client email list.  And the big money will be made by monetizing the list.  And in future blogs, I will show you the best ways to do just that.

As always, aim high…and dream even higher…

Steve Sampson