Holiday Gift Cards In Your Massage Business
‘Tis The Season.
Welcome back to another Monday with the Mavens. We created the Massage Mavens blog to connect with and educate self-employed massage therapists working to grow as business owners.
It can be lonely working for yourself – and we’re here to remind you that while you’re in business for yourself, you don’t have to be in business by yourself.
While we cater our content to independent MTs, all massage therapists are welcome here; whether you run your own independent massage therapy studio, you contract in a clinic, work in spa, or you are still in school.
Gift Cards In Your Massage Studio
‘Tis the season!
Gifts, Gifts, Gifts all around!
I’ve always felt honored when someone reaches out at the holidays to buy a gift card for their loved ones. (“They trust me enough to send their person to me?! Yay!”)
But I admit that I spent a solid year of my business life NOT offering gift cards…
I couldn’t settle on how to sell them in a format that kept the gifter (and giftee) happy, but also didn’t drive me bonkers on the admin side.
I love Acuity for almost all of my CRM needs. I help people set up their own Acuity suites regularly. But I’ll be honest: Acuity has yet to nail their Gift Cards function.
Last I checked:
It doesn’t let clients pick the amount they want to load on to a card: so you have to build multiple cards for multiple amounts or appointment styles.
If you sell a card that can be redeemed for a 1 hr massage, but then the recipient wants to book something longer: the code doesn’t work, etc etc.
The digital receipt is ugly (unless you upload your own image…but that was also a hassle, and had to be done for EVERY separate certificate type)
And heaven forbid you change your prices. Yeesh, did shit hit the fan.
You see where I’m going…Gift cards through Acuity weren’t worth the hassle.
But it is 2023, and gift cards are back, baby!
My payment processer has always been Square.
They do take a steeper fee than some other options, but they are user friendly, reliable, and work with all major CCs. They also have a gift card function!
It was easy to set up
You can pick your own designs, so the recipient gets a cute little digital card delivered to their inbox
You can pre-set amounts, but shoppers can also pick the amount they want to spend
There are no more ridiculous redemption codes to keep track of: clients just bring their gift card in with them to their appointment, and away we go.
You can link the GC checkout directly to your website
I could go on and on about how excited I am for these bad boys, but I think you get the idea.
Hopefully this helps streamline your own holiday prep, I know it did mine!
Thanks for stopping by!
As always, we’d love to hear how our content has helped you improve either your studio, your mindset, or your revenue as a self-employed massage therapist.
Rachel Martin, LMT, is an independent massage therapist living in Denver Colorado. Having built her solo massage studio to capacity, she now spends her free time helping other massage therapists do the same. Check out Six Figure Studios, Queen Street Marketplace, and The Techy MT to learn more.
