Sunday Upgrade Recap

This sunday, we did a minor upgrade to the massage manedger system.  Here’s a summary of what is new.

1. You can now add as may therapists as you want to your site.

2. After hour appointments can be booked via the administration area. There is a new area at the bottom of the appointment display page where all the appointments outside of normal business hours are be displayed.

3. The “Payment Type” drop-down is now programmable by you.  Here you can add additional payment methods (or change the spelling of existing payment types (Check vs. Cheque).

Getting your business out there!

When you opened your business doors, I’m sure you were excited and told all your friends, family and neighbours.  When you opened your online business doors – did you do the same thing?

Did you go out and twitter your new business? Did you put it on facebook? Did you create a local business center in Google?

All these places are FREE to use and have a wonderful audience already using them!! Take some time to think about places you go to find information online. Are YOU listed at these places as well??

New Build

The next build is coming along wonderfully! I’m very excited as it includes upgrades to the invoice.  We have increased flexibility in that the you can name the taxes as you want.

We have also created a new bundles option that allows you to sell your services in bundles and manage who has purchased bundles and what has been used.

We are also cleaning up the services managmenet including clinic and user services.

We go into our staff meeting today so be sure to let us know if you have any feature requests either by leaving a comment or on twitter!

Are You Visible and ACTIVE online?

Once you have your massage, chiropractor or multi-practice website up and running – what are you doing to help drive in new traffic?

Take a few hours and look for online community sites in your city. Is there a community forum, parent site, sports community website in your town?

If so, these are possible communities that you can be involved in and let them know of your services. Many online communities have a spot on their site for local business to advertise. Others give away free draws.

These online communities are a great way to reach a new audience and usually at no cost to you!

Online Radio

mindZplay is the developer and marketer of Massage manEdger, the “Everything-In-One” (website, online appointment scheduling, accounting, client charting, and much more) practice management solution for Massage Therapists.
Promote your practice, simplify appointment scheduling, and streamline your accounting with Massage ManEdger

Jim Shedden, BA, BAC is the Director of Business Development for mindZplay Solutions Inc.  Jim has twenty-five years of senior marketing and management experience and has  held positions with Multinational manufacturers including Philips Consumer Electronics.  He has been responsible for well over 100 million dollars in sales of new products and services, and his marketing experience includes developing channels to market for AT&T, NEC, Sharp, Motorola and Verizon Information Services.

http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=3594432

Listen to more massage therapy interviews at: http://massagetherapyradio.com/

Chiropractor Pages & Headers

We’ve seen an increase in chiropractor and mixed therapists that are using massage manedger. We wanted to let you know that we are working on default library pages for Chiropractros as well as new graphics.

We have realeased some new chiropractor graphics already but more are coming soon!

Default library pages will allow you to setup your site with well written content that you can modify using your page editor to customize for your business.

New Features are coming!

The respoce to our newest upgrade has been wonderful. We want to thank everyon for their feedback and feature suggestions!!

Once feature we’re currently working on is adding class scheduling and booking to massage manedger! Want more details or want to be a beta tester? Let us know!!!

Make your own business cards

Starting up your business can be financially daunting the first few years.  With a few great resourses, you can help lower your start up costs.
One great resource, design your own business cards and then send them to be professionally printed on a heavier weight paper. The end result? Great looking business cards at a fraction of the cost!

Use this great online resource to get you started!

Need a bit of help? Give us a shout, we’d love to give you a hand.

Referral Marketing – A Case Study

Jane’s Story

This is the short story of a massage therapist named Jane Doe who dared to market her business, and her Massage manEdger website.

Jane was a recent graduate of a very good Massage Therapy School; she had just opened her massage practice, and had acquired a web presence using the Massage manEdger system. She had a few regular clients but needed more to be successful.

To attract new clients she needed a marketing strategy that would generate results and would fit her limited budget. She decided to give referral marketing a try.

First, she determined that she would specialize in the General Wellbeing / Relaxation, Sports, Pregnancy and  Infant massage market areas. She decided to target the relaxation market first, as she felt it had a broader audience.

The next step was to make a list of her existing personal and business contacts in the relaxation market; which including her current clients, her hairdresser, manicurist, florist, a local coffee shop and a local video store. Generally, it was a list of people she knew she would be comfortable approaching in person and by email.

Jane then made personal visits to each business owner to let them know more about her business and to tell them about her new Massage manEdger website. Jane asked each of them for their contact information and specifically for their email address. This information was then added to her Massage manEdger contact database.

She followed up each meeting with an email message. The message thanked the business owner for their time, it restated her service offerings and included a link to her website. The emailing task was simple using the Massage manEdger communication tools. She made use of the �Email Group� feature and separated her contacts into logical groups (business, client, and friend), so that she could send separate, targeted messages to each group.

This simple step gained Jane a number of new clients. She was pleased to discover that her local florist, hairdresser and coffee shop offered to display her business cards in their shops in exchange for a mention their services on her website. Jane was starting to see how referral marketing worked.

Jane also tracked her referral business. When new clients booked appointments using her Massage manEdger website, Jane always asked them how they came to hear about her.  When they had been referred, she made sure that she sent a personal email to thank the referrer.

She continued to use her Massage manEdger email function to send periodic follow up emails to her contacts to announce special offers, new services and to remind them of her website’s on-line appointment booking feature.

Wanting and needing more business Jane set out to repeat the process for her two other target markets. Her contact lists included:

• For the Pregnancy Market – maternity fashion stores, prenatal specialists, medical doctors, pediatric clinics, postnatal fitness centers, etc.
• For the Sports Market – local sports clubs / teams (soccer, baseball, football, basketball, ice hockey, etc.), retail sports stores, fitness centres, etc.

Fast forward six months…

Jane’s marketing efforts are paying off.  Although a number of her contacts were not interested in referral marketing, Jane found that many were interested.  Jane received dozens of new clients as a result. These new clients were happy with her services and began spreading the word about Jane to their friends and family.

Jane discovered that marketing her massage practice can now be done with very little effort. Her, now established, referral network is easily managed with her Massage manEdger contact database / communication tools. She recognizes the value of her Massage manEdger system and acknowledges that without it, potential clients would have trouble finding out about her practice, qualifications, and specialties.  Her clients love it too, especially the convienence of her online appointment book!

The power of the Internet, coupled with Massage manEdger’s business tools is now indispensable to Jane’s massage therapy business.

Remember, a lot of your marketing efforts can be done with very little investment, when you combine the right tools with creativity, determination and desire.

Show your clients appreciation and they’ll return the favor

My massage therapist brought in a new program into her business to thank her repeat clients for coming back and as well as bringing in new clients. I was impressed and was surprised that I have not heard of this before.

Maybe this is becoming more common practice but to be honest, it’s the first time I’ve seen it in the massage therapy industry.

It’s no new idea to give a value customer card and to give clients points for each visit with the (pick a number) visit free. Shoe stores have been doing this for years, along with hair salons, but my massage therapist has taken this idea to the next level.

For each appointment I make (and keep), I get a point. If I book a longer appointment, I get an extra point.  Now this is the part I liked! If I give a gift certificate for someone else – I triple my points! If that person then books their own appointment – yup – I get rewards for that too! (first time visit only – we don’t wanna create too much work for my wonderful massage therapist)

She printed up a bunch of business cards that have boxes in them were she writes in my points when I come in and in my client file she records if one of my friends booked their first appointment.

I like this idea as I get discounts off my next massage – which makes me want to book more often and it thanks me for referring clients to her as well.

How come more massage therapists don’t have this type of program in place!