Tony

My discussions with Din has made it clear to me that there is both a general lack of texting knowledge and a PLATFORM for salon owners to engage properly in text marketing. Our discussions has also made it clear to me that there is not any real mechanism for salon owners to easily and legally engage is strategic text marketing.

Yes I know Helios has their marketing hub but it is VERY limited in its scope and creativity.

This post is not intended to criticize the other ways people market but to announce that i am going to attempt to launch a text marketing platform for tanning salons sometime in 2015. My plate is very full but I am going to push forward on it.

What is a marketing Platform? It is a cloud based system that will enable the following WITHOUT human intervention. If it requires human intervention then you run the risk of errors or worse the process not even occurring.

Here will be SOME of the features:

Target any client with a text based on any demographic and/or transactional history WITH a viral element to attack NEW clients as
well as existing clients.

- Marketing Texts: (all have a viral component)
Welcome texts
Birthday texts
Membership expiration texts
Package expiration texts
Package consumed texts
plus more.....

- Management Texts:
Bad/Dead credit card on file text - System Initiated
24 hour tan rule text - Client Initiated
Personal item left in store text - Employee Initiated
Wait list text - Initiated by employee OR system
EMERGENCY Text - Employee Initiated
Send package or membership info - Client Initiated
Store closings due to weather or power outage - System Initiated
plus more.....

-Sales Text (yes sales text)
Renew memberships via text
Buy packages via text
Buy prepaid dollars via text
plus more.....

Cost? .01 - .02 cents per text or $10 - $20 per thousand.

When? It will take me a 3-6 months to perfect our platform. We use it now but its not designed or ready for commercial consumption.

Now before the haters come out and attack this post please ask intelligent questions first. Then feel free to attack me if my answers
are insufficient in any way!

kookyguy

For the various sales texts, are you planning to deploy a proprietary system?

Will this be a stand alone system?

Can the salon operator opt out of certain features if they don't want to utilize those features?

At what level will the operator be able to interact with the system?

Where would customer payment data be stored? How would the data be secured?

How would sales data be communicated with the salon operator?

Tony

The system will work better on our platform but we will give a lot of functionality to the other POS backends too!

manbeer

Looking forward to it, wish most of the numbers in my system weren't either old or incorrect. I feel like half the time I have to call a customer the number is wrong :(

kookyguy

Well my only reservation to your system is the same issue that I have had in the past with your pos software and that is as the owner of a salon chain, you would have data on other salons/chains.

However since you're the only one I see innovating in the tanning space, I now think it would be worth the risk to salon owners to jump over to your products if/when they come to market.

So today we get to see history made, as one of Tony's most vocal detractors in the past...I will now say Tony's products look like they will be the best option for salon owners going forward, if and when they come to market.

Tony

We already have a verification system in place to fix that issue :)

kookyguy

You mean phone #s? For texts?

Tony

Kooky

I wouldnt expect people in my markets to sign up. Even when we get to 200+ salons we will only be competing with 2% of the market so
the other 98% wont take issue.

I also have a solution for the salons on this program to offer reciprocity. In theory it would be very cool. The franchises cant go there with the rest of us! In theory it will be a great feature. Not sure it will work in reality but its on the "to do" list!

kookyguy

Are any salons in California using your software yet?

Tony

no...it really needs to be brought up to commercial grade before we let anyone have it. Which means we need to make it a little more universal