Two Tips for Mass Email Marketing

Since clients typically provide an email address when scheduling online, chances are you already have a sizable mailing list.  Email marketing to existing clients is a great way to drive repeat business – just be careful not to abuse it.

Opt-in

Ask your clients if they want to receive promotional emails from you. This sounds pretty basic, but it helps ensure your messages are welcome. And it’s easy to do – you can add an “Opt-in” checkbox to your online scheduling form under Setup > Booking Details (just don’t make it required). Email marketing opt-inOr you can ask for permission in person at the end of an appointment and check the box yourself under Clients > Details. Then before you send a mass email from Clients > List or export your mailing list, filter to “Opt-in only.”

Small Batches

To safeguard against spam, Full Slate limits the number of recipients on a bulk email to 500. If your opt-in list is larger than that, you can still send to the entire list by breaking it down into smaller batches. To select a range of records in your Clients > List, click one at the top then hold down “shift” and click another at the bottom; all the records in between will be selected.

Different Email Templates for Different Services

Ever want to send different messaging or instructions to clients based on the service they scheduled?  Now you can with service-specific automated emails.  When adding or editing an automated message (under Messages > Automatic Messages), you can specify which services you want the message to apply, as well as which message template to use and at what time interval.

There are a number of great uses of this feature:

  • Provide different instructions to new clients by creating a service (or services) just for new clients
  • Remind clients what to bring to appointments for specific services
  • Establish a different time interval for reminder or followup messages, based on the scheduled service

This is another example of a feature resulting directly from customer feedback.  Keep those ideas coming!

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More Options for Client Payments

Advanced options for requiring payment at time of bookingNow you can make payment info ‘Required for new clients’ only so just the people you haven’t seen before have to put a credit card on file or pay in advance when scheduling appointments online. You can also have different payment settings for each service – even individual clients. Check out the new options under Setup > Client Payments or click here to learn more about collecting credit cards during online scheduling.

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Find Openings on Mobile with Ease

You can easily find openings for a selected service when scheduling appointments on your mobile phone. You know the scenario: A client calls when you’re away from your computer and wants to know what times you have available. Now you can see at a glance all your openings for the service your client wants and know with confidence you can book it without disrupting your schedule.

To use the ‘Find Openings’ feature on Full Slate Mobile, go to the Schedule tab on your iPhone or Android and press ‘+’ for a new appointment. Select the desired service and press ‘Find Opening’. Just like that, you have a list of all the openings that meet the duration, setup/cleanup time and other booking parameters you’ve set. Select the opening that works best for the client and you’re done!

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Turn Off Email, SMS for Individual Clients

Have a client who doesn’t want to receive automated emails or SMS messages? We recently added new settings to allow you to turn off automated messaging for individual clients.  You can turn off automated emails, SMS messages, or both.

To update these settings, go to Clients > Details and find the client record you want to update. Check ‘No automatic email’ to prevent the client from receiving email reminders and other automated emails. Check ‘No SMS’ to prevent the client from receiving SMS reminders.

Also, notice the ‘Marketing opt-in’ checkbox next to these settings.  You can use this to track which clients have opted-in to receive marketing emails from you.  You can edit this setting yourself, or give clients the option to opt-in by adding the ‘Opt-in’ field under Setup > Booking Details.  When you send a marketing email from Clients > List, just be sure to check the ‘Opt-in only’ to only send to those clients who have opted in.

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Add a 'CC' on Emails to Clients

Did you know you can add a ‘cc’ on reminder emails to a client?  That’s right, you can ‘cc’ a child’s parent or a client’s spouse so that both parties receive reminder emails in advance of appointments. You can even add more than one ‘cc’ so you can carbon copy mom and dad.

To add a ‘cc’ to a client record, just go to Clients > Details, find the client record you want and add the ‘cc’ email address to the ‘Email Cc’ field. That’s it!

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Hide Client Names to Maintain Privacy

Do clients sometimes look over your shoulder when you’re scheduling their next appointment? Now you can maintain client privacy by hiding client names on your Schedule tab.

After wrapping up a session, a natural way to find an opening for the next appointment is to view your schedule in Full Slate. But if client privacy is critical to your business, then letting clients see your schedule — and therefore your other clients’ names — is not an option. With ‘Hide client names’, now it is.

All it takes is a couple of quick clicks. Just click ‘More’ on the Schedule tab and then ‘Hide client names’. Poof, client names are hidden and you can share your schedule with your client to find the best time for their next appointment.

So whether you’re a counselor, physician, massage therapist, chiropractor, or anyone else striving to maintain complete client privacy, give it a try today!

Adding an Appointment Scheduler to Your Massage Website

With online scheduling, your website can become more than a brochure – it can actually turn clicks into confirmed appointments.  In marketing lingo, that’s called “conversion,” and it’s key to growing your business online.

Massage Appointment SchedulerWhen someone visits your site, you want them to take action right away before they click off or get distracted by something else.  To that end, consider adding a call-to-action like “Make an Appointment Now” to every page on your site.  The Specials/Call-out Box under Set Profile in ABMPs website builder is a great place to highlight that clients can make appointments online.

You may also want to name the page with your appointment scheduling widget something like “Online Scheduler” or “Appointments” and include that link in your navigation bar so it’s easy to find.  You want to be sure clients know they can book on your website instead of having to pick up the phone and call.

ABMP’s website builder provides a special place to put an appointment scheduler on the Hours & Scheduling Page.  Simply copy the code from Full Slate under Web > Widgets into the box labeled “Online Scheduling Module” on the Hours & Scheduling page.

Full Slate has two types of widgets to choose from.  Both work the same from the clients’ perspective but look a little different code-wise.  The javascript widget uses the styles defined in whatever template you choose for your website, so the fonts and colors should automatically match.   However, if you don’t like the way the widget looks, you can’t change it without changing the entire template.

The iframe widget, on the other hand, uses the styling you pick on the Web > Look & Feel tab inside Full Slate.   You can change the basic style, color, font and size in Full Slate, and they’ll automatically update on your website after you save your changes and refresh the page.

No matter which widget you use, clients will be able to make appointments right on your website.  They’ll stay on your page the whole time and never link off to another site (unless you use PayPal), which makes for a seamless experience.

The first screen of Full Slate’s online scheduler lists your services and rates, so it’s not necessary to have a separate page with this info.  You can remove the standard Services & Rates page in ABMP’s website builder by going to Manage Pages and either unchecking the Visible box to hide it or clicking the X to delete it.  If you choose to keep the Services & Rates page, you may wish to describe each service in detail using the Page Text box rather than simply listing them in a table.

To see an example of a site on Massagetherapy.com created using ABMP’s website builder that includes Full Slate’s appointment scheduler, go to http://fullslate.massagetherapy.com.

Did you know you can also add online scheduling to your result page in the “Find a Massage Therapist” search engine on Massagetherapy.com? Here’s how:

  1. Log in to Your ABMP Account and go to Update Massagetherapy.com’s referral listing.
  2. Click on the Listing Detail Link.
  3. Scroll down and paste your Full Slate widget code into the box labeled “Online Scheduling Code.”
  4. Save Updates.

Voila!  Before you know it, you’ll be getting new clients and more appointments through your website.

Pay Annually – Get A Month Free!

Would you like a free month of Full Slate? Take advantage of our annual payment plan and get 12 months of Full Slate for the price of 11.

Annual rates are:

  • Single-schedule:             $329.45
  • Up to 5 schedules:          $549.45
  • Up to 10 schedules:        $879.45

Please note the annual discount cannot be combined with other discounts.

If you’re interested in the annual payment plan, email us at [email protected] and we’ll set you up!

Getting The Most Out Of Daily Deals

Daily deals aren’t for every business owner, but for those who decide to give daily deals a try, it’s important to do as much as possible to increase your return on investment and minimize disruption to your business.  Full Slate can help.  Here’s how:

  • Save time – Depending on the number of offers/vouchers you sell, you could spend hours – even days – answering phones to schedule (or reschedule) new customers.  That’s time you might otherwise spend serving other customers or managing your business.  Online scheduling can reduce that significantly – or eliminate it entirely if you require deal buyers to schedule online.
  • Enable add-on purchases – Full Slate allows clients to schedule multiple services and/or add-ons in a single appointment.  Each full-price add-on helps off-set the initial discount and make the customer more profitable.
  • Capture contact information – Not all daily deal sites provide businesses with the email address of customers who purchase vouchers and few of them share telephone numbers.  You can require one or both of these items in Full Slate, enabling you to communicate with customers before or after their appointment.
  • Encourage return visits – The best way to increase your return on a daily deal offer is to turn those ‘one-and-done’ customers into repeat customers.  With Full Slate’s automated follow-up messages, you can check-in with a customer days after their appointment (“how was your service?”), then a few weeks later encourage them to come back (“time to schedule your next appointment?”).
  • Reduce impact on your existing customers – Many businesses worry that daily deals will damage relationships with existing customers by making it more difficult for them to schedule appointments.  Full Slate allows you to control when daily deal customers can schedule by limiting days or hours that voucher services can be scheduled.  You can also assign vouchers to specific staff members (perhaps a new staff member who is trying to build his/her clientele).
Here’s a brief ‘case study’ of a Full Slate customer who has run several daily deals:
Rob Albiston runs a chain of laser teeth whitening clinics throughout the US.  Before using Full Slate, Rob ran an offer for his Denver location that sold over 400 vouchers.  All of the appointment requests came in over the phone.  “The phone was ringing constantly while I had clients in the chair.”  That’s when he decided he needed online scheduling.

A few months later, he ran another deal to launch his newest location in Washington, DC.  This time, the offer indicated that clients had to schedule online.  In 3 days, he sold over 1,400 vouchers.  A day after the deal closed, he had over 380 appointments scheduled and had only taken 4 phone calls.  He called to tell us “Full Slate is saving my life!”

We’ve had numerous Full Slate customers find success with daily deals.  Feel free to contact us to help you make the most of your daily deal.