97% can’t be wrong.

Our support staff had an interesting phone call the other day. A client of over 3 years was expanding her clinic again to include yet another massage therapist. She called to get some assistance in setting up the new therapist in her massage manedger system.

The client had an interesting comment.

97% of their clients book online.

In fact, so many clients book online that new therapists are only trained on how to check their requested appointment times ONLINE and are no longer trained on how to answer the phone! The few calls that do come in, can easily be handled by one person and no longer need to take the time of other therapists learning how to answer the phone, look up times and dates and manually book appointments. Their answering machine provides their friendly web address and once clients book once online, they find it easier and friendlier than leaving messages and playing phone tag.

Branding your company

RMT Recruiter logo

A new client to MindZplay is RMT Recruiter. While their site is still being coded at the moment, we’ve had the pleasure of creating a logo for them.

They have already taken a proactive step in their marketing by adding the logo to their company vehicle. Now when they drive around town,  it’s marketing their site for them
Great work RMT Recruiter!

A massage therapist aims for gold

Read how the US Olympic team brings a massage therapist on the team to help with their golden dreams.

“I was one of the busiest and most utilized therapists at the trials that week. These world class swimmers realize the importance and value of massage, and truly understand how it improves their performance” said Brian.

read the full story here: http://www.cortiva.com/my-story/

New Version is live!

At mindZplay, we’ve been working hard on adding many new features for the newest version of massage manedger.

This particular release includes enhancements to the front-end website template system and upgrades to existing website design.

The result of our work will deliver to you additional system functionailties including the following:

• New website design tools providing you with additional flexibility when customizing your front-end website.
  • New design templates.
  • New website header graphics to choose from.
  • Tools to allow you to customize your site colors – we still offer default color pallets however we are now giving you the tools to choose your own color schemes.
• New email templates to complement your website. Now all your email sent from the system will be formatted in a professional frame including your logo and practice details.
• An additional set of libary pages with an alternate page layout / design.
• Smoother Appointment sceduling in the administration area.
  • Intelligent client look-up. When booking pending appointments the system will now pre-populate the appointment card with the client information. This will save you searching through your client lists.
  • Newly organized appointment section – As a result of your feedback and suggestions we have re-organized the appointment area for more friendlier appointment scheduling
• Other Miscellanous feature tweaks and fixes.

Interested to see what’s all new?  visit http://www.massagemanedger.com and sign up for your free trial!

testing massage manedger next build

The team has been busy bug fixing and testing our new build. This build will be our biggest to date as we’re improving many features and adding a handful as well.

The more I test the more excited I get for the big launch!! These changes are going to blow your hats off and impress your clients.

The best part of the new build? You can sign up (if your not already a client) and we’ll update your massage website with the new version once it’s ready and make sure any new pages you added are updated to complement the new changes – all at no cost. Just one more way we are dedicated to you!

From a Client’s Perspective

It’s always nice to hear from our user community. One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that we are able to develop relationships with our clients no matter where they are physically located.

Our clients often contact us to share their experiences with us – they provide us with useful feedback about how they and their clients are using their sites; they are always eager to give us ideas on additional features and functions they would like to see included in Massage manEdger AND sometime they simply drop us a note to let us know what they think about the service.

Whatever the reason we are always happy to hear from them.

Here is a communication we just received from one of our clients in sunny Bermuda that we thought we’d share with you…

Hello All,

I just want to congratulate you and your team for launching such an awesome product.

I have been researching appointment booking software and websites for our Massage Therapy Clinic here in Bermuda. Let me tell you, there are hundreds, if not thousands of them out there, but none of them seemed to have everything in one package, that suited a small business like ours. That was until I discovered mindZplay. This appointment booking software/website has everything we need – our clients can view our beautiful website, book appointments, pay online, and receive newsletters and updates. The site is SO EASY TO USE! Most of the other products from your competitors had one or two of the features that your product has.

We were looking for a turn-key solution to help manage our clinic, and wanted to make it easy for our clients to do business with us – I found that most of the other sites were not user-friendly like mindZplay.

From the Admin panel we can easily set up services, create profiles, create customer history records, monitor client trends, run basic financial reports and much more, and the content can easily be customized.

So far our clients have enjoyed the fact that they can complete the service request easily online, from booking to checkout – AWESOME!

Again, thank you for your personal customer support – which is rare these days. You are always there if we need assistance, and provide excellent service.

I wish you the best, and look forward to the continued success of this amazing product.

Grace and Peace,
Dwight
www.mindbodywellnessonline.com

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!

Where Are Your Clients??

This weekend I had an interesting talk with some of my friends regarding calling a business versus emailing them.

In my group of friends, most of us are 20(ish) to 30(ish) and most of us sit in front of a computer at work the majority of our day. Not all of us have a phone in our cubicle/office space however there is a phone located in a central spot in the office.

While all of us know we should us our lunch breaks to make personal calls, our lunch breaks are usually for going out for walks, group lunches or to pick up some last minute groceries for supper tonight.

When we think of booking a massage, most of us go on the internet to book online or email the therapist directly.

Why?

One: many will claim we are the generation of online communication over phone. Many of my friends will agree that it’s easier when you are having a busy day to simply go online and book an appointment rather than go over to the office phone and be put on hold or get an answering machine message all while your co-workers know what your doing.

Two: Others in the group said it’s simply doing it quickly before you forget. You know how it is. You have 10 things you want to do but then someone comes to talk to you, a big file comes on your desk and next thing you know, you simply forgot. With online booking, you can book your one appointment every 3 or 4 weeks and it’s done!

Think of how many of YOUR clients sit in front of their computers.
How many do you think have a phone on their desk?
How many of your clients use the internet DAILY versus the yellow pages?

Are you online ?