What gift cards and loyalty are worth to a 3-chair salon

Gift cards and loyalty points are included on every BeautyZilla plan, including Free. They are the two features most often sold as add-ons elsewhere, and they are the two that pay for themselves fastest, so we did not see the point of gating them. Here is how each works and what it is worth, with the sums shown and the assumptions stated so you can swap in your own numbers.

How gift cards work

A client buys a card from your public gift-card page for any amount between £5 and £1,000, adds a message, and the recipient gets it by email within minutes. The card carries a ten-character code; anyone holding the code can check its balance without logging in, which is also exactly what your front desk does before redeeming it. Redemption is a staff action at checkout, and a card that does not have enough left says so — the desk is told "not enough on this card", never left guessing. Expiry is your choice: set a number of months in your settings, or leave cards to run until they are spent.

What gift cards are worth

Assume a three-chair salon sells 30 cards at £50 in the run-up to Christmas. That is £1,500 paid to you in December for work you will do in January and February — the two months most salons find hardest. Assume, as we do, that a fair share of those cards are bought for someone who has never sat in one of your chairs: every one of those is a new client who arrives already paid for.

Two honest caveats. A sold card is money you owe in services, so do not spend it as if it were profit. And a card that is never redeemed is not free money either — a client who paid £50 and forgot it is a client who will remember when the card turns up in a drawer, which is why we recommend a long expiry or none.

How loyalty points work

Points are earned automatically when a booking is completed or a sale goes through the till, and redeemed by staff at checkout, in points. A client who has never earned a point simply shows a balance of zero — there is no account to set up. Owners and managers can adjust a balance by hand for the times a client deserves it, and every change is recorded against the client's account.

What loyalty is worth

Loyalty points are a retention cost, not a growth engine, and the sums should be done that way. Assume you set 1 point per £1 spent and let 100 points buy £5 off — a 5 % return to the client. Assume a regular has a £45 cut and blow-dry every six weeks, which is roughly eight visits a year, or £360. Over the year they earn 360 points and redeem 300 of them: £15 back on £360 spent.

So the programme costs £2,700 a year across 180 regulars, and it pays for itself if it keeps eight of them who would otherwise have drifted — 8 × £360 is £2,880. That is one regular in every twenty-two. If you believe points make even one client in twenty think of you first when they are due, the arithmetic works; if you do not, do not run one.

Switch them on

Sales › Gift cards — set the expiry, or none›Clients › Loyalty›Catalogue — check prices, since points follow them

Both take minutes. Put the gift-card link next to your booking link, in the same five places, and tell every regular at their next visit what their points are worth. A loyalty programme nobody knows about costs the same as one everybody uses, and does nothing.