5 Power Metrics to Grow Your Salon, Spa, or Wellness Brand

No matter the goals for your brand, understanding your numbers is vital to your success. Mindbody Insights can help you take the guesswork out of developing meaningful data so you can feel even more confident in your KPIs.

With Insights, the days of running lots of reports and building numerous spreadsheets are behind you. 

On top of that, Insights helps you engage employees across all your locations to meet your brand’s goals and invest in what really matters. When your whole team is empowered, their performance (and your bottom line) can be taken to a whole new level.

Download our guide to learn how Insights can be beneficial for your brand. In this guide, you’ll also get the low down on our five favorite “power metrics” for salons, spas, and wellness brands. Including:

• Average ticket. Boost your revenue by offering pre-visit consultations, add-on services, and custom product recommendations.
• Percent of service guests purchasing retail. Looking for a key indicator of how well your staff is educating guests on what products are right for them? This metric is your new best friend.
• Client retention. Equip your brand with automated email marketing and seamless booking experiences.
• Productivity. Give your staff the tools they need to sell retail, suggest enhancements and add-ons, and emphasise pre-booking.
• Client count. Learn how you can rally your entire organisation behind increasing this number.
• Plus, a bonus metric you can only learn about by downloading this guide!

Ready to keep your clients engaged and boost your revenue with Insights? This guide will do the trick.

Success starts with identifying your key metrics

Here are our five favorites—what we call the “power metrics” for appointment-based businesses. Insights gives you instant visibility into these key data points (and many others).

1. Average ticket

Are clients consistently choosing the treatment with the lowest price? Are they getting add-ons or enhancements? What about buying products?

Your providers should help clients find the right service for their needs and desires. A common front desk mistake is staff steering new clients to the most affordable option before learning what they really want, leaving money on the table.

Offering pre-visit consultations, even over text, can help service providers create an exceptional experience for new and returning clients, and provide an opportunity to upsell.

Questions to consider across your locations:

• Which of your locations has the highest average ticket? What’s the key to their success?
• Does this location offer pre-visit consultations for every new client?
• Do providers offer add-ons and custom product recommendations with each service?

Talk to your top performers to see what might be making the difference—and can be implemented across your organization.

2. Percent of service guest purchasing retail

How many clients are purchasing products in addition to their services or treatments?

If you want a key indicator of how well your staff is educating your guests on what products they should use, this is your metric.

To improve, some brands create a goal of setting products out for each client. A salon might encourage stylists to display three products that will enhance their clients’ experience or make it easier for them to maintain their style. Giving your service providers a simple ask can make it easier to move the needle.

Questions to consider across your locations:

• Which location has the highest percentage of service guests purchasing retail? What’s making a positive difference?
• Is there a unique sales process in place?
• Is there a product education push on social media and through email marketing?
• Are providers rewarded when they hit retail sales goals?

See what’s driving those higher-than-average retail numbers so you can share strategies with the rest of your team.

3. Client retention

How many clients are returning to your brand?

Salons, spas, and wellness businesses can encourage return visits with automated email marketing and easy booking experiences— either through an AI receptionist like Messenger[ai] or online.

Questions to consider across your locations:

• What tactics are used across your locations to prebook clients before they walk out the door?
• Is staff following up after each appointment with automated emails or text? Personal outreach?
• Which previous retention efforts were most successful?

Brainstorm with your team and find ways to stay connected with every client at every location. The goal: keep your brand top of mind and customers coming back.

4. Productivity

What are the total hours worked divided by the total hours available?

Teams across all locations need to be productive and engaged. Your best staff is actively selling retail, encouraging enhancements and add-ons, and emphasizing pre-booking to ensure full schedules in the future.

Questions to consider across your locations:

• Who are your most productive employees?
• How do these employees encourage upsells and rebooking?

Schedule time with these highly productive team members to find out what makes them successful—and what can be replicated across your entire staff.

5. Client count

How many active clients do you really have, and is that number growing?

Your client count needs to continually grow, and everyone’s responsible for this one. Not just driven through efforts from your top-level marketing, your service providers and support staff have an undeniable impact on retention— they form the backbone of your client experience.

Questions to consider across your locations:

• How can you rally your entire organization behind increasing this number?
• Are there goals you can set to drive new client acquisition and retention?

Consider how you might motivate your employees to hit your growth goals.

Bonus: Client visits per year

This bonus metric may be one of the most underrated KPIs. If you reduce the time between visits—even slightly—you increase your revenue from each client without increasing your acquisition costs. The real bonus? When they visit more often, they can have a better experience, build a better relationship, and increase their brand loyalty.

Growth comes when your team invests in your business goals

Once you’ve nailed down your numbers, make it easy for everyone to rally around these metrics. With Insights, you don’t stop at data, or the meaning behind the data. You set trackable goals. And not just general goals—you can set daily, weekly, quarterly, or annual goals at the organization, location, and individual level.

The opportunity? Engagement like never before. While managers can see employee performance and coach them to success at each location, employees are motivated and engaged by personal goals they can see and track themselves. That transparency leads to a sense of ownership and a clear path to success.

These five best practices help connect the numbers to the people who drive them forward

1. Share your key KPIs with your team. Once you’ve chosen your most important metrics, provide a one-stop-shop for monitoring and tracking them with dashboards that highlight what’s most important to your business.
2. Set goals with each team member. We all know that engaged staff are happier at work. Happier employees are not just more likely to stick around, they’re more productive. When employees log into the Insights app, the first thing they see is their goal progress.
3. Motivate and reward with contests aligned to business goals. Need to increase gift card sales? Pushing for more product sales? Boost business exactly where you need it most by setting up targeted contests with real prizes—get creative!
4. Recognize success. When you recognize your top performers, you help foster a culture of achievement and satisfaction. It’s easy to reach out and offer praise in the moment with messaging built right into the Insights app.
5. Dive deep into outliers. We tend to focus on averages, but your outliers—good or bad—have something to teach you. When you catch one, don’t dismiss it, but ask questions. If something’s going right, you could learn something new to teach others. If something’s missing the mark, you need to know why to turn it around.

With these key metrics and best practices in your toolkit, you can say goodbye to spreadsheets and hello to dashboards. You can experience unprecedented engagement thanks to flexible, detailed goal setting. And most importantly, you can put your numbers to work instead of working to understand your numbers. Insights makes it easier than ever.