Some of you are feeling exhausted just because of all the time and energy you’re having to spend on new safety procedures and protocols. Some of you are feeling overwhelmed just thinking about “Is my practice is ever going to get back to where it was before I had to shut down?”

Whatever your case may be, I know it can be tempting to think that putting any effort into holiday marketing might seem like a burden, but I don’t want that to stop you from giving it your best shot.

The next two months are the perfect opportunity to make up for some lost ground and to set yourself up for greater success in the coming new year.

So over the next 15 to 20 minutes or so, I’m going to guide us through MassageBook and show you how to implement easy marketing strategies that can help boost your sales this holiday season and beyond into 2021.

But before we begin, you should see a chat menu in your window. Feel free to say hey to the group if you’d like. If you have any questions that come up along the way, ask them in the chat and a member of our support team will try to answer as many as they can throughout the presentation. Once I’m done, I’ll stick around for a bit and try to answer as many as I can that are left over.

That should cover everything for now, so if you’re ready, I’m going to switch us over to MassageBook and let’s get started.

Alrighty, here we are under the Marketing section of Andy’s Massage Business. We’re going to be exploring Andy’s account to see what he’s got planned for this holiday season.

The first strategy I want to cover is how Andy is going to be using email marketing to stay top of mind with his clients and keep them up to date with what’s new at his business.

Sending the right email at the right time is one of the simplest, most direct ways for him to get the word out online, and with the help of MassageBook’s campaigns feature, he can queue up a series of well-written, professional-looking emails ahead of time to send on the dates of his choice.

Andy has decided to focus his email marketing efforts on selling two things this holiday season: monthly membership plans and gift certificates.

Let’s start with membership plans. Andy started a membership program a few months ago for two very important reasons: he was looking for a smart way to grow and predict his monthly income and he was looking to make it super convenient for more of his clients to keep coming back for monthly appointments.

He’s had some success getting people to sign up in his office just by talking about the program and the many benefits of joining it, but he knows the coming new year and the resolutions that come along with it is the perfect conversation starter for getting more people to become members, so he’s going to drop a few emails on his clients to gently remind them about his new program.

Before we go any further, I’m going to take us over to the memberships tab in the service menu of Andy’s business setup. MassageBook makes it incredibly easy for you to start a membership program of your own. If you haven’t already, you can add your first plan on this page. I’m not going to get into all the details now, but if you want to learn how, select this videos button and then you can watch an in-depth video on how to create a membership. If you don’t see the videos button, select help at the top where you can turn video help on or off.

Let’s head back to marketing now where Andy is going to select new campaign to start scheduling his membership emails.

If you’ve ever sent a campaign before, the first thing you’ll notice is this new memberships theme right here at the top that has four brand new templates made exclusively for selling membership plans.

Our goal here at MassageBook is to do everything we can to help simplify your day, so instead of you having to sit down and rack your brain over what to say, we decided to get rid of that headache and do it for you. Each of these pre-written emails is focused on the benefits of becoming a member and includes instructions for how to purchase a membership plan on your MassageBook website.

Now in this case, it’s going to be really easy for Andy to get his email marketing done this holiday season with minimal effort and not a lot of time. All he has to do is pick and choose from any of these templates, select who he wants to send it to, and schedule the date that he wants it to send.

If you’ve never sent an email campaign in MassageBook, it’s as simple as selecting a template and completing the rest steps the software will walk you through. Real quick, I’m going to hop over to the design and touch on a few things regarding the email subject.

At this time, you’ll still have to enter an email subject of your own. That part is not filled in by default for you, but we’ve made it really easy for you to copy and paste one from a selection that’s in our help center.

The quickest way to get there is to select this marketing 101 link. That’ll open the help center in a new tab, and then you’ll see this article about email subjects right here.

All you’ve got to do is find the matching template name, copy the text here, and then paste it back into the campaign.

In this example, Andy selected the template for memberships 1, so he’s going to copy the subject first, go back to campaigns, and then paste in the subject.

Now you are more than welcome to come up with your own subject if you’d like, so if you decide to go that route, always keep this in mind: the subject has one job and that’s to get the recipient of the email to open the email. Because if the email doesn’t get opened, then the rest of it doesn’t do you any good. Whenever you’re writing an email subject, think about why someone should care about opening this email. What’s the benefit to them? That kind of stuff will help with your brainstorming.

Sending one of these emails is great, but oftentimes, people need multiple reminders to act. Earlier, I mentioned that it’s easy for Andy to queue up a series of emails to send on the dates of his choice. He can pick a send date for each email on this schedule step, but let’s fast forward to what that’s going to look like once all of his membership emails are ready for sending.

Under the scheduled tab back on the main campaigns page, all four of the new membership emails are primed and ready to go out over the course of December. That way Andy is hitting up his clients in intervals just in time for them to sign up for his membership program right before the new year begins.

And it’s a great tactic that you can easily apply as well. Add your first membership plan if you haven’t already done so. Head into campaigns, select each of the templates I just showed you, make any written changes if you need to, and schedule them to send on the dates that work best for you.

That covers email marketing for his memberships, so let’s switch over to gift certificates now.

Andy knows that promoting gift certificates at key times of the year can have a tremendous impact on the amount that he sells, so obviously, the holiday season is the perfect time for him to make sure that his clients know he’s got them for sale and that they can easily be purchased online through is MassageBook website.

If you haven’t already, you can get set up to sell gift certificates by going to the gift certificates tab that’s also under the marketing section. You’ve got two options for the types of gift certificates that you can sell: either by the services you offer like what we see here on the service certificates page, or by a dollar amount like what we see here on the custom certificates page. Andy prefers both just because he likes to give his clients some added flexibility when making a purchase.

Now, in years past, Andy has sold gift certificates at discounted prices during the holidays, but this year he’s going to do things a little differently to make up for lost income from his temporary shutdown.

Instead of using deals and promotions to make people want to buy gift certificates, he’s going to focus on why massage is needed this season now more than ever. It’s been a stressful year. People are looking for a little slice of relief, and he knows that’s exactly what he can provide. Plus, his gift certificates can be purchased online. There’s no need to go out and fight the crowds, especially when people are trying to keep their distance. There’s no shipping required either. If you buy a gift certificate from Andy, all you’ve got to do is email or print it. Super convenient and it makes a great gift that everyone will enjoy.

Plus, gift certificates are one of the most powerful and profitable referrals a massage therapist can receive. Whoever is buying a gift certificate from you is basically telling the person they’re giving it to, “Hey, I’ll pay for your first massage with this therapist — that’s how awesome I think they are!”

Okay, now that we know why Andy is selling gift certificates this year, let’s talk about how he’s actually going to generate some sales. As you might’ve already guessed, we created a series of email templates made exclusively for selling gift certificates, so let’s go back to campaigns and take a look at those under the gift certificates theme.

Holiday gift certificate 1, 2, 3 and 4 are pre-written emails that are focused on the benefits of buying a gift certificate and include instructions for how to purchase one on your MassageBook website. Just like the membership emails we discussed earlier, all Andy has to do is pick a template, paste in the corresponding email subject from the help center article, and schedule it to send.

Back under the scheduled tab, he’s going to take a very similar approach with these as well, but he’s going to start a little bit earlier and send one right around Thanksgiving and three more throughout December leading up to Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. On a side note, anybody who is purchasing a gift certificate through Andy’s MassageBook website will have the option to pick from a variety of holiday-themed designs that will go on the email or printed version of the gift certificate.

Again, this is another simple, effective tactic that you can knock out in no time. Set your gift certificate menu up, go take a look at those email templates I just showed you, and get them scheduled.

At this point, some of you might be asking, “What about Black Friday and Cyber Monday? I want to run promotions. What should I do about that?”

Great question, I’m going to take us back into the gift certificate campaigns and briefly touch on that before moving on to the rest of what Andy has planned.

We also added two pre-written emails specifically for gift certificate promotions. That’s these two templates right here: holiday gift certificate promo 1 and promo 2. I’m going to open the preview for promo 2 and show you how these are intended to be used.

When you’re setting up a gift certificate promotion in MassageBook, you’re selling a gift certificate at a discounted rate for a certain amount of time. For example, $15 off from now until December 15th.

After you’ve created your promotion, all you’ve got to do is pick one of these templates, and when you get to the design step, you can remove this placeholder text for the amount off and the end date and replace it with the specifics of your promotion.

Very important, if you’re using either of these templates, make sure that you choose to display the promotion on your MassageBook website at the time you are creating the promotion. You’ll find that setting on the summary step before finalizing the details of the promotion. That’s because the button at the bottom of this email is assigned to go to the gift certificates page of your MassageBook website where the promotion can be purchased once you have selected to display it there, and the link in this button cannot be altered.

If you’re interested in learning more about different types of holiday promotions you can run in MassageBook, go back to the marketing 101 link and take a look at the 2020 holiday marketing guide for more tips, tricks, and videos on best practices.

That’s enough email marketing for now, so let’s go business settings and talk about the next strategy that Andy is going to implement.

Let’s start under availability. The goal of Andy’s email marketing this holiday season is to fill up his schedule with a healthy number of new and regular clients as he moves into the new year and beyond, so he wants to make sure that he can accommodate what he hopes to be a steady uptick in booking activity.

And even though it’s hard to classify anything as normal these days, he’s still aware that as the end of year approaches and the new one begins, everyday routines for his clients are probably going to become not so normal from time to time, so he’s decided to adapt his availability to roll right along with the changes.

Andy’s office is closed on Saturdays. As we can see down here, he doesn’t have any hours listed, but he’s decided that opening up for a few during December and January might make it easier for some of his clients to come in for appointments at times that work best for them.

And there’s good news — MassageBook makes it really easy for Andy to open up his online availability for single dates only on days that he doesn’t normally work. He can make all that happen by going to modified availability and selecting to add one-off availability.

As we can see here, he’s all set up and ready to take online bookings for these select Saturdays throughout December and January.

If you want to learn more about modified availability, go to video help and you can watch a quick video on how to add it.

While we’re here, there might be some times this holiday season when you’re unavailable to work during your normal hours. If that’s the case, be sure to add blocked time to your schedule so that you can’t be booked during those times. If you need help with that, check out this video here on how to block time.

Now that Andy’s availability is just how he wants it, let’s go to online booking rules and talk about how MassageBook can help send Andy new clients who already have a gift card for use at his business.

Down this page, Andy has selected to join the MassageBook gift card program. As we talked about earlier, he’s selling gift certificates of his own because they’re a great way to bring in cash and new clients through his door without too much up-front work, but that doesn’t mean that all the marketing efforts have to be on his shoulders alone.

MassageBook gift cards are advertised to consumers all across the United States who are looking to share the many health benefits of regular massage therapy. These e-gift cards can then be used at any participating business that takes them as payment in the MassageBook public booking directory.

They’ve been a huge hit over the past few holiday seasons, and we plan to promote the heck out of them again this year, which means that there are going to be thousands of potential new clients out there who are looking to use their new gift card with a provider near them.

If you haven’t already joined the program, now’s the perfect time to get on board. It’s really easy to sign up. Just go to the online booking rules page, and check the box for MassageBook gift cards. If you want to learn more about the program or need help getting started, guess what, we’ve got another video you can watch that covers everything you need to know.

Andy’s online booking availability is now all set up to keep him with busy with clients who want to escape the holiday stress, so it’s time to move on to his last strategy, and that’s making sure that anybody who interacts with his business on MassageBook is always being reminded of the value he can provide now and into 2021, so let’s start by going to outgoing messages and then client messages.

Here’s the truth: not everybody who gets Andy’s marketing emails is going to open and read through them. That’s just the nature of the beast. But, most people are very inclined to carefully check any emails about their upcoming appointments. Nobody in their right mind wants to get the time wrong and miss out on their next massage.

At the bottom of this page, Andy is going to utilize the custom text option to add a blurb to his appointment emails about how quick and easy it is to buy gift certificates on his website. That way, anybody who is coming in for an appointment knows beforehand just how simple it is to share the wonderful experience they’re about to receive with loved ones who could use some peace and relaxation as well.

If you want to give this a try just like Andy, you can find your MassageBook website address by going to Setup and then Share Profile. Copy your address on that page, and you can paste it into this section. Don’t worry about this caution statement down here. Copying and pasting within MassageBook shouldn’t cause you any trouble. A quick heads up though, your website address will look like plain text down here, but once it arrives in a client’s inbox, it should hyperlink and be active for clicking.

Finally, let’s head to the about section under Andy’s business setup and take a look at how he’s updated his MassageBook website for the holiday season.

If you caught my last webinar, Top Tips for Getting More New Clients from the MassageBook Directory, then you know how important it is to spend some quality time working on the tagline and description for your MassageBook website. It’s the first thing visitors see when they come to your page. Use this space to speak to your audience. It’s easy to update periodically with anything new that’s going on at your business.

Andy’s goal over the next few months is to grow the number of regular clients that he sees monthly, so in addition to his email marketing, he’s decided to use the main page of his site to focus on the benefits of joining his membership program and how to get started.

Think about what you’re trying to achieve this holiday season. Are you trying to sell more gift certificates? Are you running limited promotions? Whatever it may be, don’t forget how valuable this space can be to helping you reach your goals.

Thank you so much for joining me on this tour of MassageBook. I hope you learned some valuable tips along the way to help you end this year on a high. I’m going to hop out of MassageBook now, and we’ll start the Q&A.

If you have questions but you can’t stick around, you can email us at support@massagebook.com, call us at 843-352-2026, or live chat with us in your MassageBook account.

I forgot to mention, I’ll be sending out a replay of this webinar to your email within the next 24 hours, so be on the lookout for that.