Guest Article: You’re All Set… by Michael Caruso

1. What is Free Tan Days? 

A: Free Tan Days or Free Tan Weekend is an event where you let any and everyone come in and tan for free. I know the concept might sound scary, but I promise if you plan it correctly it can be one of your biggest money making events with the correct marketing and determination to make sales. Really, the free tans are just a hook to get people into your salon. Think of it as like an open house. Let these new guests come in and try you out no strings attached and see how many new customers you can convert into memberships / monthly’s!

Terms and conditions for free tan: 

•(Depending on state) Anyone that comes in must show us their tanning eyewear, if they do not have any they will have to purchase a pair. We sell ours for $5. Boom, that free tan just gave you $5. Now with your killer lotion deals that you have going on, you should be explaining to each person the benefit of tanning with lotion and that this sale will only be for 3 days (create a sense of urgency with the specials, make them have FOMO. 9/10 they will buy a lotion). So now let’s say you got them into a top shelf lotion (start with the best to sell the rest), and eyewear. You’re now looking at $128 for that free tan. I always tell my staff that their goal should be to sell between $150 - $200+ to each person that comes through that door. Give your staff goals to work towards. 

• While they can come in each day for the free tan, we do have a limit of one free Diamond (our top level) session per non autopay customer. Autopay members can use the Diamond bed each day if they want to because we want them to get hooked and upgrade their membership to that higher level.

• They can receive one free spray tan during the event however they will only receive a level 1 or 2 for free. If they want our darkest spray it would be a $5 upgrade and our sticky feet and CT Towelette are not included in this free spray. We sell the sticky feet for $2 and the towelette for $1.50 

• They can come in each day and do any of our spa services for free. Just make sure your staff tries to do add on sales for the spa services (restored, fit burn, sweat suits, smart water, etc) 

So while yes, essentially the service IS for free, it’s up to your staff to include add ons to make money 

2. Why do I do Free Tan Days instead of Free Tan Weekend?

A: 5 years ago, I tried doing Free Tan Weekend but noticed 2 things:

• 1. Our foot traffic was always down during the weekends (we’re located in Florida so during the weekends, most people would be at the springs, the beach etc)
• 2. Our sales were low due to low foot traffic. So a year ago I decided to try doing it during the week. I noticed the “sweet” spot for foot traffic was Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays. So I changed it from Free Tan Weekend to Free Tan Days and oh my god what a DRASTIC difference it made in all aspects!
  • Our traffic was up and our sales were through the roof. Last year was (at the time ?) our best free tan days in sales. We had made a little over $7,000 for three days as to where when we held it over the weekend, we were lucky to make $1500. My advice to salon owners is study your traffic and hold your event during your highest traffics days. 

3. Autopay members

A: over the years, I’ve realized that a lot of sales we put out to try and get new customers in the door, also shorts us when it comes to our eft members. So what I started doing a few years back was Exclusive sales that only autopay members could get. We’ve always told our eft members that they always have the best rate and the best deals so we had to stay true to that when doing our events. They are the only ones who will get free gifts during the event because we want them to feel spoiled and special. They’ll also always have higher discounts than our non autopay members to stay true to our promise. A lot of salons think, “well I already have them, I don’t need to do anything else” and I can’t stress enough how bad of an idea that is! My autopay members throw down hard during events and spend so much money! I couldn’t imagine leaving them out and not getting that stream from just them. This year, to make them feel extra special I decided to do a special called Early Access. What I did for this special was allow ONLY our autopay members to come in the day before the event starts and they get first dibs on products. We made $3,000 alone yesterday on just eft sales. And a majority of our efts didn’t come in yesterday because they forgot. So, the point I’m getting at is never leave your eft customers out of specials and spoil them as another way to say thank you! 

4. The specials 

Autopay Members:

• Early access/extra day - to specials & free upgrades 

• 40% off lotions

• 35% off tan extenders - 2 per member

• 25% off spa products for spa memberships 

• Bogo free upgrades (spa services and tanning) - 5 max 10 total

• Waived prorates for new autopay members

• Free gift while supplies last - this is the goodie bag that has three lotion packets in it. I try to always do lotion packets that we sell so that way if they love it we just got a lotion bottle sale 

• Extra entry into giveaways 

• Free mystery box with $95 purchase- this seems to be a big topic in the group and probably my best special. What it is is any autopay member has to spend $95 BEFORE TAX during the event and they get a free mystery box. I like to call this my incentivizing special. You wouldn’t believe how many members yesterday were adding things to their “cart” and then asked how far am I from $95? And then proceeded to add more which went over the $95! You want to make deals that help you get more money from customers. This also makes it easier to sell top shelf lotions because then they’re guaranteed a free mystery box (while supplies last) 

What’s in the mystery box? 

Each one is different. But I will NEVER put tanning lotion bottles in those boxes. Why? Because I know my customers will buy that from me so I don’t want to give it away for free. What I end up doing is putting at least one full size after care product in the box. This is hopefully going to help increase our tan extender sales in the near future. Then I add an energy drink (we sell them in salon), and some other misc items like mini tan extenders and mini sunless products, lip scrubs & body scrubs etc. The MSRP value came out to about $82. My whole goal for the mystery box was to put products in that I want my customers to buy from us so it’s like an introductory box in a sense. Remember, you want to create FOMO. I do this by saying we only have 30 mystery boxes in stock so once they’re gone they’re gone! This helped us get a line right at opening. Our customers love our mystery boxes and they tagged us in their stories yesterday showing off what they got and thanking us. It was awesome and they helped promote our event! 

Nonautopay: 

• 35% off lotions 

• 20% off tan extenders max limit 2 per person

• 20% off selfie sunless 

• Bogo month 20% off 

• Buy 5 sessions any level, get 3 more for $5

• But 3 months any level, get 2 months free 

5. Planning & Marketing

One of the things people don’t realize is that it takes months to plan a successful event. It’s not something that you can just advertise the day before and think it’ll do well. You have to be very methodical about everything. I started planning free tan days back in January. I Started coming up with my specials, my theme (if you make everything cohesive, it not only looks nice but your customers will also be able to pick up on it and remember that somethings coming up) and how I wanted everything done advertising wise. My biggest piece of advice is to start making videos rather than still pictures. We’re in the day and age where our customers will stop scrolling to watch a video as to where if they scroll and see an image, there’s no motion to stop their eye and make them look at it so they scroll past. I ended up teaching myself how to make videos on after effects (Adobe Software) 6 years ago and I truly believe that has played a massive part into my event success. But you don’t have to learn after effects, you can use Canva. 

From there, once your video is made, it’s now time to start dropping bread crumbs. I like to release my video two weeks before the event and I’ll boost it on Facebook and Instagram to get the word across. But prior to releasing the video, I’ll start doing teases (I posted pineapple pictures 5 days prior to the video drop and had my customers guessing what was coming. By doing this it boosts your engagement on your social media and Facebook will start showing your posts in feeds better if there’s enough engagement. So make sure you have your staff/ family & friends like and comment on it so you can have a better outcome for when it’s announcement time). Once the videos been released, and you have the engagement, DONT LOSE IT! If you stop posting, your engagement will be gone. What I like to do is a couple “leaks”. Where I’ll leak one or two specials to get people excited. Then the week before, I’ll release the non autopay specials, then the following day I’ll do the autopay specials. Then to get more attraction to my video I’ll do our first giveaway where they have to like and comment on the video and share for a bonus entry.

Also be sure to have your staff post about the event every day in the stories. We also make event shirts that we have them start wearing once the announcement of the event has been made public on our social media. 

Once you’ve gone live, you should also decorate your salon to match the theme. This makes people in store ask questions about what’s going on. I also make postcards for the event and we put them on the beds. If the customer takes them and writes their name on it, hands them out and its returned during the event, that customer will get a $10 credit to use AFTER the event.

Another thing when it comes to marketing is keep your ads writing short and sweet, don’t over cram the graphic with information. Make a headline in the ad and then use your caption as the way to thoroughly explain the specials. 

6. Staff Meeting 

A big thing you should do is hold a staff meeting a couple weeks before your event and go over each and every special with your staff and all of the terms and conditions. Make them learn the specials so they’re not struggling during the event. Have them prepared. Another thing you should do is incentivize them and motivate them by giving them a goal. Our goal this year was to make $8,000. If they make that will get them each a gift. We also tell them that for every $500 they sell during the event they’ll automatically get money back as a bonus. Make them excited about the event. If they’re passionate and money motivated, just sit back and watch them go. It’s amazing! Be sure to explain your expectations, what they should be trying to sell the most of, how you should sell etc. For example, for my autopay sales I told my staff that I want them to try and sell each member at least 1 tanning lotion, 1 tan extender, one spa product and upgrades. (But I urged them to sell more than one bottle of tanning lotion). They are getting customers to buy 3 bottles and more specials because we’re creating urgency. We only do 4 sales events a year and the next one won’t be until November so we’re telling them to stock up. 

7. Salon Tour 

Make sure every person that comes in gets a tour of the salon. Now is the time to impress them and wow them to where they WANT to stay here after the event is over. Be sure to use enticing descriptive words and be excited when showing off the equipment. 

Disclaimer that we have to put at the bottom but don't really want to: Four Seasons does not claim that you will experience the same results included in this blog post. This is for reference only and was written by a third party. Evaluate your business and implement the ideas included at your discretion.

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