The salon in this customer story is located in Atlanta metro area of Georgia. It is a growing multi-location business. It specializes in cultivated locs and offers professional natural hair services. Their mission is to heal, rejuvenate and strengthen natural hair through services and natural products while encouraging individualism, boosting their client’s self confidence.

First encounter

This salon was one of the early customers of Colligso TextIn when we launched our app on Clover #pointofsale in mid-2019. They seem to have a healthy follower base on social media. However, when they relocated one of their business locations to a shopping mall last year, they wanted reach out to all of their customers using text (SMS) messaging with information about the new location and hours. Considering that SMS has a read rate of 98%, their choice for using TextIn was not surprising. Also, since not all social media followers are customers, they had to use a solution that recognizes actual customers from the point of sale. TextIn helped them fulfill their goal of informing customers in the most reliable manner.

COVID-19

Fast forward, in mid-March 2020 when cities, counties and states throughout the USA started declaring stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19, considering how seriously this would impact #smallbusinesses, we sent out an email to our customers informing them that we are here to help in case they wanted to reach their customers. Our offer for help was not only to our current customers, but also to the past customers.

The salon owner had uninstalled TextIn after using it for many months last year. So, when she re-installed, we were delighted! This time again, like before, she chose TextIn for the reliability and read rate of text messaging. Her staff does a great good job in capturing customer data at the point of sale, so integration with point of sale was another important criteria. She also installed TextIn at all of her business locations. We were humbled to have her trust.

Once on-boarded, she was quick to schedule text campaigns for each location informing customers about the impact on the business hours. After she had scheduled the campaigns, she came to know that the governor of Georgia had issued shleter-in-place order. She quickly changed the messaging. It was easy for her.

Going forward

Reaching customers with announcements and informational messaging using SMS has served the salon’s near-term goals. Earlier this year, we introduced some new features in TextIn which should help the business on an ongoing basis.

• Ability to carry out 1-1 conversation over text (SMS) messaging. This feature should help in providing customer service and sales without revealing the staff’s personal mobile#.
• Automated, auto-targeted “We miss you” campaign to bring back customers not-seen in the past 30 days (configurable).
• Automated Call and Text forwarding to business number and corresonding email notification.
• TextIn is available on Zapier for integration. It can now be easily intergrated with apps providing website forms, appointment scheduling, eCommerce, point of sale, etc. No coding is required.

TextIn has helped this salon and many other types of businesses connect with their customers so that they can confidently and safely reach them with announcements and marketing messages. In these tough times for the physical commerce, such a digital customer relationship is invaluable. SMS marketing provides direct reach and effectiveness in connecting with customers.

Try TextIn

Colligso TextIn is available to businesses directly from our website. Integrations are available from Clover, Poynt, Square and Vend. Integrations with other apps are available via Integromat, Workato and Zapier. No coding required.