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So what’s happening in the April Newsletter? We have improvements to the loyalty system, and a new way of marketing your booking website – that’s just what happen in April.
April is over, and May is already off to a good start. Unless you missed it, we had Easter in April, and it was a lovely one. So, now the sun is shining (sometimes), and we’re looking forward to a profitable and exciting Summer.
Our people in Ukraine still feel the effects of the conflict, but they are still working hard to maintain the development and enhancement schedule, ensuring that everything runs smoothly. They are superheroes, every one of them.
New in April
How to help your clients stay loyal and a way to encourage more people to book appointments with you! That’s what April has brought to the SimplyBook.me system.
Loyalty System Enhancements
Now that the loyalty system has been out for a while, we’ve been able to take on feedback and apply it to enhance the loyalty points scheme.
To help both businesses and clients understand the number of points involved, we have added loyalty points to the service options within the booking process – so clients know how many loyalty points they will accrue with each service.
We have also added the appropriate Loyalty Points related variables to the email and SMS messages and reminders in the standard and flexible notifications.
QR Codes for Your Booking Website – It’s super cool!
Get ready for a whole new way to entice people to book with you from even more channels!
If you’ve ever wondered how to draw potential clients who find you in print publications, flyers, or business cards, this new feature is for you.
We have added the option to download an image with a QR code (or copy its link) to the Marketing Suite page. The QR code redirects your interested clients to the booking website when scanned.
Imagine being able to save and print the direct link to your booking page from anywhere, whether it’s on a business card, billboard, magazine ad or article, or a promotional flyer. So many more clients you can access.
Coming up in May
We have several more developments scheduled for May, some of which we know you have been awaiting with bated breath.
Mobile Admin App Enhancements
Even though the admin app has been with us for a good long while, we are always getting requests to make it more functional. Particularly for those of you that are ALWAYS on the go. What’s the point of a mobile app if you can only manage part of your business from it?
The newest developments for the mobile admin app support cloud fields and invoices “in-app.”
One of our newest features was the ability to request file uploads from clients using the Google Drive file uploader. However, that is currently not available to use on the mobile app, but with another round of testing, we expect this will be available before the end of May.
Another one for those of you who don’t have the time to sit down at your computer, you will soon have the option to view and approve all generated invoices within the mobile app.
We know many of you will be happy when these two features go live this month.
Data Reporting for Cancellations and T&Cs Agreement
Reporting will always be necessary, so we take a lot of notice when you want to add more information to the reports you can export from the SimplyBook.me scheduling system.
Firstly, we have the cancellation data from your booking reports. You need to be able to see who has cancelled an appointment, whether it’s the client, one of your team, or maybe even you. If you spot specific clients who frequently cancel, you will try to mitigate that. Also, if things are happening that means you or other staff members have to cancel more than you would like, you can potentially try to change your scheduling to prevent that from happening.
Secondly, we know that some of you require confirmation or proof that your clients have actively adhered to your terms and conditions. If you need that proof, it will display on your clients’ personal data reports.
Keep an eye out, and you should see those options on your reports pretty soon.
Theme Enhancements on the Gift Cards Page
Sometimes, your clients have found purchasing gift cards tricky, depending on the theme you use for your booking website. To help prevent this, our UX/UI designer is currently developing those theme pages to make the gift card purchasing page much easier to follow and improve the flow.
It will be systematic, and clients will find the experience far better.
Okay, so that’s it for this April Newsletter, and I hope there was something here for you – or at least coming up for you.
In Case you Missed it!
Have you been keeping up with the blog this past month? If you haven’t, it’s no problem because here’s what we had in summary.
Since I took some vacation time over the Easter holiday, you will have seen more from our guest posters this month, and that’s no bad thing because they can bring a whole range of new ideas to the fore.
From our guests
So if it’s marketing tips you’re after, Meenz Nautiyal started the month with insightful ways to attract clients to small businesses. Small businesses often don’t have a lot to spare on their marketing budget, so there are some handy tips for making the most of it. Victor Blasco from YumYum video had some fantastic ideas for video marketing to help your sales funnel. And Travis Jamison had some great ideas for making the best first impression with your web design.
If you’re looking for ways to grow your business, we have some for you. Matt Diggity had some amazing email drip campaign ideas to help you grow your business, while Michael Tayco gave us some insight into cloud-based tools that can help small businesses grow.
A regular contributor, Anand Srinivasan, had some valuable information on building a successful membership programme for your coaching business.
And we have a new contributor, Ron Stefanski, talking about how to best welcome new team members to your company. It’s not all about your clients; you need to keep your staff happy too.
From us
This week we published a case study on The Gray Lab, a co-working space and photography studio, using SimplyBook.me to make the business as streamlined as possible. At the same time, they are allowing the partners more time to pursue other avenues. I strongly urge you to take a look at what they have done.
You may have already noticed if you use dyspatch.io for your transactional and email marketing campaigns. Still, if not, they have a new integration with SimplyBook.me that allows you to integrate your booking calendar into your emails – A great way to reduce the friction between mailshots and getting a booking.
For the beauty entrepreneurs out there, you might want to take a look at our advice for all those things you need to think about before starting your beauty business. And lastly, we had a comprehensive guide to setting intake questions for the most valuable data collection and securing the right clients for your business.
Stay in touch, and you’ll see more tips, advice, tutorials, and more coming your way throughout May.
See you soon.