Driving More Revenue Without Sacrificing Client Experience

Rent, wages, and stock have all moved in one direction for Australian salon, spa, and clinic owners. Prices can only follow so far before clients start counting.

The businesses holding their margins are doing something less visible: taking more revenue from the clients already on their books, and losing less of the revenue they have already booked. We’ve put together six methods below, all of which run inside Phorest… and most of them take an afternoon to set up.

• Prepaid Courses: Cash in before the first appointment.
• Deposits: The diary held with money, rather than goodwill.
• Memberships: A fixed monthly payment from your regulars.
• TreatCard Loyalty: Higher spend per visit without discounting.
• Reactivation Campaigns: Bookings from clients you already have.
• Online Retail: Product sales outside opening hours.

How can a salon get paid before the appointment?

Sell multi-session treatments as prepaid courses. A six-week skin programme, a year of colour maintenance, a course of eight massages – the client buys the plan in one transaction, and you hold the money before the first booking.

In Phorest, this runs through Buy Courses Online. You build the package, publish it as a link, and send that link by email, SMS, Instagram, or your website. Nobody has to sell it at the front desk. The client reads it in their own time, and pays.

Two things change. Your cash position improves, because the revenue arrives before the work does. Plus, the client has committed to a course rather than an appointment, so the next four visits are already decided.

How do deposits protect revenue?

A deposit moves the cost of a no-show onto the person who caused it. With PhorestPay, you collect it at the point of online booking, so the slot is held with money, rather than goodwill.

You set the amount service by service: a flat $20 on a blow-dry, a percentage on a four-hour colour correction, more on a treatment that ties up a room and a machine for an afternoon. Card details are stored securely when the client books, so a late-cancellation fee is applied by the system rather than negotiated by whoever is on the desk that morning.

Front desk teams tend to resist this for about a month. Then, they notice the arguments have stopped. The policy was on the booking page, the client agreed to it, and nobody has to raise it.

Do salon memberships actually increase revenue?

They convert irregular visits into a fixed monthly payment. A client who came in seven times last year on no particular pattern becomes a client who pays you on the same date, every month.

Two formats work in this industry. A service membership covers a set treatment at a set frequency – one facial a month, a blow-dry a fortnight. A credit membership gives the client a monthly balance to spend across your menu, which suits clients with a long treatment list. Phorest Memberships bills both automatically, so no one chases payments.

Because the money is already committed, members use their allowance and come in more often than they otherwise would. Start with one service and twenty clients. A single tier built around your most-repeated treatment will tell you within a quarter whether your client base wants it.

Can a loyalty programme increase spend without discounting?

Yes, if the reward is a treatment rather than money off. A discount lowers what a client pays you. A reward gives them a reason to book something they don’t normally have.

Phorest’s Digital Loyalty Programme awards points automatically on spend, and you decide what those points buy – an add-on, a product, a service from the part of your menu you want to grow. Nothing comes off your price list. Points are tracked on the client card, so your team administers none of it.

The practical difference is this: a discount programme trains clients to wait for the discount. A points programme trains them to come back.

What is the cheapest source of new bookings?

The clients who have already been in. Most established businesses have several hundred of them – people who visited twice, liked it, and then let it slide.

Phorest segments your client list by when someone last visited and what they booked, so you can write to a specific group with a specific reason: colour clients who haven’t been in for four months, facial clients who booked once in summer and never returned. That is a different message to a promotion sent to your whole database, and it performs differently.

Every campaign is tied back to bookings and spend in Phorest, so you can see what actually returned, rather than what opened.

How do premium businesses sell more retail?

By selling when the client isn’t standing in front of them. Shelf sales are capped by opening hours and by whoever remembers to recommend something. 

Phorest’s Online Store puts a product list live quickly if you are starting out. If you already run Shopify, the Phorest integration syncs stock between the two every five minutes – one product entry, updated in both places, no overselling what you don’t have.

Orders from new buyers create a client card automatically, and every sale is recorded against the client’s history. Retail then feeds the same database your marketing runs on, rather than sitting in a separate system.

Which method should you start with?

Pick two, not six. Deposits and one prepaid format – Courses or Memberships – will show up in your numbers within a quarter, and neither changes what you charge, or how your team sells on the floor.