Do you want the secret to retaining tanners in EFT memberships? I’ve been a tanning salon business consultant for two decades. In that time, I haven’t met a tanning salon owner who doesn’t want to increase revenue. I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my clients – EFT memberships are one of the best ways to be profitable. One of the keys to a successful tanning membership program is retaining as many of your tanners as you can. Here are two tips to help you keep those tanners enrolled.
A Recap for Tanning Salon Owners
I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating. There are just two important tips for having a successful EFT membership program at your tanning salon:
- Dump your signup fee during peak tanning months. You want to sign up every tanner you can. To do that, you have to reduce as many barriers or objections you can.
- Set realistic goals. Sell as many EFT memberships that you can knowing that some people will jump in for temporary cheap tanning then leave prematurely. It happens. Instead of getting discouraged, focus on servicing those tanners who stay in the program.
These two tips are very important to running a successful membership program at your salon. While these form a solid base for any EFT membership program, there are other things you can do to retain your EFT tannings, even through the slower months. I’m happy to share these tips with you here.
Tip Three: Offer Tanners Incentives to Stay
While I tell my tanning salon clients not to freak out of EFT cancels, I also coach them on ways to retain their members. Across tanning salon America, cancellations vary from a loss of 20-50 percent of what salon owners had during the third quarter. It’s not too late to strategize your approach to reducing EFT cancellations.
Here are some methods to keep your hard-earned EFT tanners by giving them reasons to maintain their memberships:
- If a tanner signs up for a six-month reduced price membership and fulfills that commitment, give them a $50 in-salon credit for lotions or upgrades.
- If an EFT member uses their $50 in-salon credit toward a lotion purchase, the raw cost for salon owners is about $10.
- It’s good business to offer a $10 costed benefit to keep a member enrolled in their EFT membership.
- It’s a real benefit to set up the new EFT member with an incentive to stay in their EFT plan.
- By getting the $50 in-salon credit, it usually inspires tanners to continue their membership. This is empowering to your sales staff.
Tip Four: Tracking EFT Cancels
One of the best ways to retain EFT tanners is to understand why you’re losing them in the first place. One of the ways to do this is by tracking EFT cancels by sales associate. You’re looking to obtain a ratio of their cancels to their transactions to get a relative measure of who’s doing a better job of avoiding cancels. When you acquire this data, I recommend you publish this information in descending order within your tanning salon. This benefits your tanning salon’s EFT program in many ways:
- Publishing of these results motivates your sales team to want to not be on the bottom.
- It reveals those sales associates who do anything to get clients to sign up so the employee can get the bonus. (These are usually the same employees who encourage tanners to cancel their memberships any time they want.)
- This will help identify which members of your team need more sales training and motivation. Hint: It’s usually those who have a high number of EFT cancels.
You Need EFT Memberships
So what’s the biggest reason for a salon owner to offer EFT memberships? Longevity. Revenues that have no longevity means that the business won’t have longevity. EFT memberships provide revenues for up to an entire year. This can handsomely offset any additional costs for software, employee incentives to sell, or the cost of recruiting employees who WANT to sell. These tips will help you track EFT cancels as well as maintain them. Just remember, EFT memberships are a numbers game. If you play the game correctly, you and your tanning salon will win!
