Are you an aspiring esthetician, a full-fledged esthetician-solopreneur, or an skincare business owner? You’ve probably run into challenges managing your clients – after all, between making other people beautiful, creating beautiful marketing campaigns, and getting your beauty sleep, who has time for all of the admin work that’s involved in making your business run smoothly? You’re busy making your clients’ skin smoother than butter! (Shea butter of course)
Well, have I got a doozy for you. In fact, I’m about to share one of the industry’s best-kept secrets.
It’s no wonder that the ASCP (Association of Skin Care Professionals) deems PocketSuite “The app for Estheticians.”
There’s also a reason why over 10,000 folks have been using PocketSuite to manage their business.
In this article we’ll go over the best features that PocketSuite has to offer specifically for the Esthetics industry.
Get your Jade Rollers and Skin Scrubbers ready, because we’re about to take your Esthetician game to the next level!
In this article we’ll cover:
1. Getting your Esthetics Business set up on PocketSuite
2. Importing your Clients
3. Setting up your Services
4. Setting up Payments
5. Key Features (important!)
6. Best Practices
HOW TO RUN YOUR ESTHETICS BUSINESS WITH POCKETSUITE
You probably offer different services to your clients – from microblading to facials, maybe you even offer monthly discounts on recurring packages!
Either way, PocketSuite has you covered.
The first step would be to sign up and get your PocketSuite account set up.
You can easily go thru the onboarding process, which takes 30 seconds and will customize the app based on which industry you’re in. In your case, we’ll be selecting Health and Wellness -> Esthetician.
Now here’s where the magic starts to happen.
Next, we’re going to set up your services.
SET UP YOUR SERVICES WITH POCKETSUITE
Now we can get to the fun part!
Start by adding your services, ideally in groups of 3 (studies show that psychologically folks like to see items in odd numbered groups). If you have more than 10 services, turn on the “Categories” feature so you can group your services in a way that makes it easy for your clients to click and checkout online.
If you have 3 different prices, keep in mind that most folks will choose the middle price. Set up your pricing accordingly!
Finally, you can add your current clients. PocketSuite makes this easy because of the importing provided to all accounts.
SET UP PAYMENTS
Are you currently accepting credit cards from your clients? If not, you can easily set that up with PocketSuite. Here’s 10 different ways you can accept payments using the app.
For now, we’ll walk you through setting up payments via accepting credit cards from your clients.
The benefit of this is you have their card on file, they get an automatic receipt texted to them, and you don’t have to ask for payment each time because their info is stored in your system!
It also makes you look like much more of a professional Esthetician. The kind they can feel comfortable referring to all of their friends!
You can also use these tips to help you get more referrals – after all, in the Beauty industry word of mouth is everything!
KEY FEATURES
Here we will be discussing the key features of PocketSuite that Estheticians in particular rave about. I hope you’re wearing 2 pairs of socks because the first pair is about to get blown off!
Online Forms
You can create beautiful forms for internal use (taking notes about your clients’ preferences) or client-facing intake forms (in order for clients to fill out their personal health history and skincare needs/preferences).
Waivers & Contracts
Say goodbye to using 3rd party apps to send liability waivers or contracts to your clients – a few taps, a signature, and PocketSuite has got you covered.
Products & Inventory Tracking
It’s a shame you’ve been tracking all of your products and inventory manually, since PocketSuite has a built-in online product sales and inventory tracking feature!
Gift Certificates
Gone are the days when you were searching for a third party tool that can send out gift certificates. Or were you just creating them manually in Google Docs? How do you even track those? Forget all of that, you can sell gift certificates and track the purchases with ease from your PocketSuite dashboard. Log in to the app today and try it out!
Smart Campaigns
We’ve got you covered here – auto-send SMS campaigns to your clients encouraging them to book their next appointment, share skincare tips and aftercare guidance, or even offer holiday/special discounts.
Did I mention you can re-engage past clients to build your recurring client base? Yeah, PocketSuite actually helps you to build your business and increase your bottom line. Which makes it practically pay for itself, not once but many times over. And that’s not even considering all the time you’ll save not typing the same message over and over, and customizing it for each client. Hooray for more money in your pocket and more time in the day to spend with your family!
BEST PRACTICES
Signing up new clients is a breeze with PocketSuite. You can literally take all of the pain out of the process. No more relying on spas that barely send you any new clients, just to take a huge percentage of your income.
Now you can be your own spa (not literally, but essentially you’ll have the back office that a spa typically gives you).
For example, a lot of folks get their massage therapy license, and then go back to get their Esthetician license in order to be able to give facials as well as deep tissue massages. The major reason is that they don’t have enough clients for their massage therapy business – but the issue is, the same problems that hinder your massage therapy business will also limit your esthetician business.
The reality is, if you have a stream of clients coming in, you need a system to manage all of them. How are you going to keep track of client preferences, payment info, client intake forms, liability waivers, recurring appointments, cancellations, and charges?
With PocketSuite, you basically get an app that does all of that and more.
Top Estheticians are crushing it with PocketSuite, simply because it gives them more time to focus on what they do best – namely top-of-the-line facials, extractions, and general skin care regimens.
How, you ask? Let’s dive into that now and I’ll give you the low down.
CLIENT MANAGEMENT
How about when clients cancel on you? Now you need to go back into your excel spreadsheet and mark that they canceled. What about keeping track of repeat offenders?
And then of course there’s the waitlist feature. If you’re all booked up, and somebody cancels, the waitlist feature automatically tees up the next person into the time slot that was canceled.
You can literally send out a group message that will alert all of the folks on your waitlist that a spot has freed up. All of this with just a few taps on your phone. No more digging thru SMS threads to find your customers and trying to remember which one wanted the time slot!
PAYMENTS
Not to mention that payment info is stored automatically so you’re not worrying about collecting credit card info or cash from your clients every time.
Your clients can update their own credit card information, saving you the hassle of having to ask them for a new card when one expires.
CANCELLATIONS
Want to initiate late cancellation fees? No problem, you need to protect your time and this also decreases no-shows dramatically (no surprise, huh?)
MARKETING / SALES
Now let’s move on to marketing. I’m assuming you have a Facebook and Instagram page for your business. If not… go make one now!
Okay, now that you’ve made one (or already have one and are puzzled that I even needed to ask) it’s time to hook up your PocketSuite booking widget to your social media.
That’s right, folks can book appointments with you right from your Facebook / Instagram page. I know you’re getting giddy because this is the future!
How about selling products? Facial creams, tweezers, powders… whatever is in your inventory, PocketSuite’s new Inventory Management feature allows you to keep track of how many products you have, how many you’ve sold, and even alerts you when it’s time to re-order.
Not only that, but your products can be separate transactions from your services. It also allows you to apply different discounts on services without compromising your bottom line when selling your products.
Most top Estheticians make a handy profit by up-selling their products after the service, so if you’re not reaping this reward already, you need to get in on it! Studies show that 40% of top esthetician income is typically from product sales. That’s how you’re going to grow your business and ultimately your bottom line. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table.
What about following up with current clients? The handy Smart Campaigns feature handles that effortlessly. Simply tee it up and personalized SMS messages will automatically be sent out to your current clients. You can use this to upsell them, offer discounts, and ultimately get them coming back for more (the best way to increase your income without having to find and get more customers).
THE BOTTOM LINE…
If you’ve been puzzled wondering how your competition seems to run huge businesses without breaking a sweat, realize that every part of your business (except the direct services that you provide to clients) can be broken down and streamlined.
Additionally, when you then realize that most of these systems can be automated with a single app, it makes it a no-brainer to give PocketSuite a try.
There’s not a single app on the marketplace currently that makes it easier to run your entire esthetics business from soup-to-nuts.
Like this article? You’ll love our guide on how to generate leads for service businesses in 2022, and of course our Frustrations with Square article!
