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Originally Posted On: https://www.massagebook.com/marketing/do-this-to-sell-more-massage-gift-certificates/

You keep hearing it.

I know that you do.

“Gift Certificate sales are wildly profitable and a key part of building a successful practice.”

But are YOU benefitting from gift certificate sales as much as you could and should be?

Probably not.

Gift certificates grow your practice and increase your profitability.

When someone purchases a gift certificate, you don’t have to worry about not getting paid for your work. No matter what, once the client has purchased the certificate, the money is yours immediately.

Second, selling a gift certificate helps you grow your client base. Usually, businesses have to advertise extensively to build their clientele. Yet, when someone buys a gift card and hands it to their friends, it essentially says, “I’ll pay for your first massage with this therapist — that’s how awesome I think they are!”

[Increase Your Sales Now]

There are two important ways that gift certificates directly help grow your practice and increase your profitability:

First, selling a gift certificate is immediate money in your bank. Getting paid well in advance of doing any work is pretty great in and of itself.

But the kicker is that many gift certificates are never redeemed.

However you may feel about the fairness of receiving something for nothing, that money belongs to you.

Second, each gift certificate you sell is a guaranteed personal referral.

Let’s think about it in a different way to highlight the value of this.

Imagine a client taking some of your business cards, handing them out to their closest friends, and saying, “I’ll pay for your first massage with this therapist — that’s how awesome I think they are!”

How much would that benefit your practice?

That’s exactly what happens each time you sell a gift certificate. It could be argued that you should be paying your client for doing this, not the other way around!

At this point, if you’re a rational person, you should fully understand the reasons why you should have an effective gift certificate program in place and should be asking yourself:

How can I create a gift certificate program to dramatically increase my sales?

It’s important that you realize there are multiple levels of gift certificate programs. Let’s call them:

• Beginner
• Intermediate
• Expert

Many practices have gift certificates for sale. In most cases, this involves pre-printed certificates that live somewhere in a drawer and are occasionally pulled out when a client asks about purchasing one.

Tracking them is done on paper or a spreadsheet that may or may not be up to date.

If this (or some variation) describes you, I have good news for you…

You can do a lot better without much more effort!

The next level up involves promoting your gift certificates more actively and making it really easy for them to be purchased and redeemed — online and in person.

People who visit both your office and website should see several highly visible callouts about gift certificates being available for purchase.

This level will require massage software that not only allows people to quickly and easily purchase gift certificates online but also allows them to redeem the certificates when they book appointments online.

And don’t about forget about managing all those gift certificate sales. You need to have something in place that makes it easy for you to track and redeem outstanding certificates within your business.

In case you’re wondering — yes — MassageBook’s Gift Certificates makes all this super simple.

While still a fairly passive technique, upgrading your gift certificate system and approach is guaranteed to increase your sales significantly. No question.

But now what?

What needs to happen to get to the expert level?

Let’s take a look!

Now that you have an efficient and easy way for people to buy and redeem gift certificates — and you have some basic signs and callouts on your website and in your office — you can get serious about boosting your sales.

To dramatically increase your income and new client traffic from gift certificates, you’ll need to do a little marketing.

Luckily, it’s not too hard.

But you should know a few things before you begin.

The expert concentrates their efforts during those times when a lot of people are looking for gifts to give. Holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Christmas are slam dunks and a great place to start.

Experts realize that sending the right message to the right person at the right time is the secret sauce that unlocks the riches of gift certificate sales.

So let’s get specific.

Let’s take Mother’s Day as an example — always a big time for massage gift certificates.

The beginner will send their clients an email the week before Mother’s Day that says, “Hey, we have gift certificates!”

The expert realizes that approach will offer only limited results.

The expert knows that most people need multiple reminders to act, so, therefore, creates a series of four emails that are “dripped” onto clients throughout the two weeks leading up to the holiday.

The timing and subject lines for these four emails might go something like this:

• 12 days before: 3 ideas to make Mother’s Day stress-free this year
• 9 days before: 3 things moms don’t want for Mother’s Day
• 5 days before: The perfect Mother’s Day gift: massage from [your business name]
• 2 days before: Still stressed about a last-minute Mother’s Day gift?

This creates an inviting progression that gradually engages the recipient and captures early shoppers as well as the “oh no — it’s this weekend!?” crowd.

The result?

In my extensive experience as someone who is in the business of helping LMTs operate more successful practices, this approach is not just a little better…

It’s waaaay better.

Like 3 to 4 times better.

Are you among the top 5% of practices that apply expert strategies to how they market their gift certificates?

No?

That’s why I created MassageBook: to give you the same tools and abilities as franchises and larger spas who have big marketing budgets and full-time staff to help drive sales.

We just learned that an efficient gift certificate system that allows people to easily make purchases online and in the office — and one that allows the practice owner to easily manage and track purchases — is at the heart of a successful program.

MassageBook is your one-stop-shop for all of the above!

We further learned that the expert uses timely email marketing sequences to drive gift certificate sales aggressively.

In MassageBook, this is accomplished with our seamlessly integrated email marketing software, which allows you to quickly create emails from pre-made templates and target clients with deals designed to make them act.

Now all you have to do is pre-schedule the emails in your series to send on the desired days…

Lean back relaxingly in your office chair…

Watch the gift certificates sales come in from your MassageBook website…

Pat yourself on the back…

And wonder why you haven’t been doing this all along!

Want to take your gift certificate sales tactics one step further? MassageBook Promotions make it easy to sell discounted gift certificates, cap how many are available for purchase, and restrict how long the deal is active in order to create a limited time offer that’s bound to catch the attention of your clients.

MassageBook helps you run an effective gift certificate program. With our seamlessly integrated email marketing software, you can create emails from pre-made templates and target clients with deals designed to make them act.

MassageBook Promotions makes it easy to sell discounted gift certificates and create limited-time offers as well!

Ready to get started with MassageBook? Start Your Free Trial Now!

I’m looking forward to hearing your success stories!

Mark