When It Pays to Track Referrals

Do you have a referral program? I used to offer a "refer 3 friends, get a free massage" in my bodywork business and it was a huge success. I got most of my clients from that, and I ended up so busy that I had to discontinue it. (And the surprising thing was, I didn't have to give away very many massages because while it created a ton of new clients, very seldom did 3 people come from the same referring client.)

When I ran my referral program, I used paper to track it because technology hadn't gotten caught up with us yet. This was before smartphones, Bodywork Buddy, etc. i.e. all of the tools that make running our practice so much easier these days!

BWB has always had the ability to track referrals from within each client file so you could see who they referred and who originally referred them. But now we've added a referral tree which is a great visual to quickly see all of your clients and who they've referred at a glance.

So far, it's been a big hit with our members!

What kind of referral program do you offer clients? How many new clients have you gotten from it?

I'd love to hear about your own experience with referral programs in your massage business - comment here and let me know. 🐶 Iggy wants to know, too.

Cindy Iwlew is a licensed massage therapist who has had a private practice since 1999 and cofounder of Bodywork Buddy massage software.
www.bodyworkbuddy.com

Iggy is the branch manager and helps keep Cindy on track with balancing out computer time with playing outdoors.

How to Harness the Power of Your Hours Report

I’ve been a fan of Bodywork Buddy (BWB) for a long time. Because I knew of many of the features they offered, I hopped on board on December 31, 2012. This gave me the opportunity to start fresh in 2013, enabling me to view current up-to-date reports right from the beginning of the year.

While there are a ton of features to list, one of the things I’m most impressed about is owner Cindy and Berin Iwlew’s willingness to not only listen to what their users suggest, but to thoughtfully respond with positive action.

Cindy and I have both been massage industry for a long time, about 20 years for each of us. In fact, she’s the one who originally turned me on to online scheduling, long before Bodywork Buddy began.

There were many limitations of that option and virtually no reports you could run. Many companies at that time also had programs you could purchase and download onto your computer, but you’d have to have that computer with you to schedule or add in any comments or SOAP notes.

Finding the same limitations that I did but with Berin’s prowess in programming, the Iwlews set out to give massage therapists an online solution. Not only would it have the same features as other programs, but they added in everything Cindy had on her wish list.

I loved the idea from the get-go. The only reason I didn’t hop on board sooner was that BWB required internet, which I didn’t have at my office at the time.

Today I’ll just talk about my favorite new cool feature, the Hours Report.

One feature they’ve added recently is super cool-reporting of how many hours you’ve completed in each style and session length of massage you offer. I think I was the first one who promptly ran a report and posted it on Facebook!

You can run in for the current year, any year you’ve been using BWB or a total of all years. Your most popular sessions will begin at the top and work your way down. In my case, I had a price / name change, which is why it shows 2 different items that appear to be almost identical.

When you go into your BWB back it, it looks something like this:

I had never kept track of my massage sessions before. Because I specialize in Ashiatsu and heavily promote that, I knew that my 90 minute session would be at the top of the list. Interestingly, I had no idea that my 2 hour sessions outweighed my 60 minute massages.

Knowing how many hours you’ve performed a massage can show proof of expertise to anyone else that you have plenty of experience in your field. When people ask what kind of experience I have with barefoot massage, I can say, “In the last 4.5 years, I’ve actually spent 2074 hours getting paid to do ashiatsu on my clients!”

If you have a modality that you love doing but isn’t near the top of what you actually have been doing, it’s a fantastic way to come up with a promotion so you get that service up at the top of the “hours you’ve massaged list”.

Another thing you can discover is your number of hours you average per week. Simply take the total number listed at the top of that year’s report and divide by the number of weeks so far in the current year. *Update: this is now a feature that automatically shows the average at the bottom of the dashboard. Yah, no math required!

If you’ve been with them for a calendar year, just run the report and divide by 52.  You can see trends from year to year as to how your business is growing. Or perhaps it stays steady because you have a lot of regular clients.

Whether you view this report as just a fun “thing” or you use it to detect patterns and trends in your business, this feature is a hit in my book.

 

About the author:

Mary-Claire Fredette has been practicing the art of ashiatsu for 15 years and is a Co-Creative Force at the Center for Barefoot Massage, where they offer continuing education to LMTs who want to learn the skill of barefoot massage.

She lives in Cincinnati and co-owns Affinity Massage Studio with her husband, Paul. They have 8 children, 1 turtle, 1 outdoor cat, and 2 rescue German Shepherds.

How Do You Know Clients Have Opted in for SMS Reminders?

We've recently added a symbol within the client file under the phone number to show if your client has opted in for SMS reminders.

The little mobile phone icon will show when the number has been verified as a mobile number within our system, and then the spiral icon will show when the client has successfully opted in to receive text reminders.

Did you know?

1. Texting is the most widely-used and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans using it at least once a day. (Pew Internet)
2. Text messages have a 98% open rate, while email has only a 20% open rate. (Mobile Marketing Watch)
3. 90% of all text messages are read in under 3 minutes. (Connect Mogul)
4. 96% of smartphone users text. (Acision)

How to Get the Most Out of Bodywork Buddy On Your Phone

I often get asked if Bodywork Buddy has a downloadable app for phones and tablets. When we built BWB, we decided to go with a mobile responsive design for the entire system to be accessible on any mobile device via a browser. So while there isn't an app to download, the system works great on your phone through a browser by automatically adjusting the size of the site to your screen.

Here's a few reasons we went this route instead of a downloadable app:

• Bodywork Buddy is a pretty large and complex system, and in order to make it as a downloadable app we would have to make it more bare bones and the entire system wouldn't be accessible through an app.
• The app stores typically require companies to submit their apps (and any updates) for approval before being available for download. We make frequent updates and changes to BWB on the backend, and we're able to do this as often as needed without waiting for any approval from a 3rd party because we have our mobile responsive design instead of a downloadable app. This also means that when we have updates or changes, you automatically get those without having to install any updates on your phone or tablet.
• Having a downloadable app would also technically mean having 2 separate systems for our company to maintain: the main system and the downloadable app. As you can imagine, this would double our team's work load and take us longer to make updates and changes. Actually, it would triple our team's work because we would need one system for Apple, another for Android, as well as our desktop version.

In order to provide the best experience for our members and the best customer service, we feel that the mobile responsive design is the way to go!

In talking with some of our members, I've realized that what many therapists are wanting in an app is simply the ability to have an icon on their homescreen to click and be taken immediately to their BWB account. The good news is: an app isn't needed to do this! You can create your own clickable icon for your homescreen.

The good news is: an app isn't needed to do this!

This article details how to do this for different types of devices. Check it out and follow the steps according to what kind of phone or tablet you have!


Here's some other tips on how to get the most out of using BWB on your mobile device:

• Try turning your phone to landscape when scheduling from the calendar or from different parts of the system. This will allow you to see more information all at once on the screen.
• When you're trying to click within the calendar next to an existing event (say something in your google calendar that is synced to your BWB), zoom in on that day so you're able to click into the blank space next to the event to create your new appointment or event.
• Need to call a client? Do a quick search from the main clients page, find the client in the results, click right on their phone number next to their name to call immediately.
• You can email clients the same way from your phone, click their email address next to their name in the client search results to open your email program on your phone and compose a message.
• Stay signed in to BWB on your phone by checking the "remember me" box so that when you click on your icon on your homescreen, you're taken right to the inside of your account.

Did you find these tips helpful? Let me know in the comments if there is something in particular you're struggling with, I'd love to help if I can.

Cindy Iwlew, LMT is co-founder of Bodywork Buddy Massage Software, a complete online management solution for independent massage therapists that includes online scheduling. 

She continues to operate her own private massage practice since 1999.  www.BodyworkBuddy.com

Looking For A Few Good Blog Topics? {Guest Post by Michelle Doetsch}

Looking For A Few Good Blog Topics? 

Guest Post by Michelle Doetsch

A friend of mine, who has a small complementary healthcare business, recently posted a plea for help on her personal Facebook account. She said she had lost the list of topics she was planning to blog about and wanted help coming up with ideas so she could create a new list. 

I admit to rolling my eyes a bit. I may not like coming up with a new list of blog topics but I don’t generally have any trouble doing so. So like a bad friend, I kept scrolling, figuring that she’d get lots of suggestions. 

Several hours later, Facebook reorganized my newsfeed and that post showed up again and I noticed that she had 2 comments; both of them saying they had no ideas, but wishing her luck. So I finally put on my good friend hat and gave her some suggestions.

That made me realize that she’s not the only one who has trouble coming up with ideas for what to blog about. It’s apparently a lot more common than I realized. Maybe I’ve read too many marketing blogs, or maybe I just have a knack for coming up with topics. I really don’t know. What I do know is that, 2 days later, when the opportunity to write a post about blog topics came my way, I jumped at it. 

What Do I say? 

So… When you’re stuck and can’t figure out what to blog about, here are a few simple places to start:

Prospective Clients

• Frequently Asked Questions: Even if you have an FAQ page on your website, this is a good place to start. Use your blog post to answer these questions in a more in-depth way than you can on the FAQ page. Stick to one question per post.
  
• Misconceptions: Your blog is a good place to dispel misconceptions that your prospective clients may have about the techniques you use, the conditions you specialize in, or just massage in general. Like before, you’ll want to cover only one misconception per post. You can also do a listicle type post and list a bunch, but you’ll need to be brief in your explanations.
  
• Client Bill of Rights: Presumably your blog is on your website and your prospective clients will likely be checking out your site before booking with you. Let them know that not only do they have rights, let them know what those rights are.
  
• Choosing the Right Therapist: Give a list of traits to look for in a therapist. List ways to find a good LMT. Give your readers a list of questions to get answers to. Make sure to tell them that not every therapist (including you) is going to be a good fit and to keep looking until they find one that is. 

Current Clients

• Suggestions: Many of my clients tell me what they’d like me to write about. Sometimes I write about it, sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, I have a very good reason, such as the topic being outside my scope of practice or I very recently wrote about it.
  
• Questions: Your current clients are going to ask you different questions than prospective clients do. Use each question on your blog as a separate topic. Remember, they say that for every ten people who have a question only one will actually ask you.
  
  
• Statements: Your clients will say the darnedest things. Sometimes they’ll be truly profound statements. Sometimes they’ll give you a kick*ss analogy that you can use to explain things to future clients. Sometimes the things they say will make you want to hit your head against the wall. You can use all of these as blog topics when they’re relevant to the work you do. This can sometimes require you to walk a very fine line in regards to maintaining client confidentiality. In many cases, you don’t even need to mention that a client said anything. As an example, a simple, “Lately, I’ve heard several people say _____, but nothing could be further from the truth” will suffice.
  
• Good Client Traits - This can be a listicle or it can be a post dedicated to just one aspect of being a good client like not coming in when you’re contagious, or making sure to give 24 hours cancellation notice when possible. We (that is… I) often tend to write these type posts when one, or several, clients have just exhibited poor behavior, so be careful that your post doesn’t come off as whiney or unprofessional. 

Your Work

• Your specialties: This category can supply a lot of posts. Write about how the techniques you specialize in can benefit this, that, or the other population. (One population per post, please)
  
• Specialties, take two: Write about how the conditions you specialize in can benefit from massage and bodywork. Again, one condition per post.
  
• Resources: Write about how chiropractic, acupuncture, aromatherapy, yoga, personal training, or any other field can be a great complement to massage. List some providers that you’d recommend. Write about other resources that your clients might find useful - list your favorite stress relieving music and where to find it (does a local store sell it? do you download it from a specific website?). Give them a list of the best resources to help them relieve stress - local yoga studios, books, music, meditation or mindfulness training, etc.
  
• Your Life: Chances are, you’re a lot like your clients - you have stress, you have short comings, you’re doing the best you can, and you don’t know everything. When something happens in your life that’s relevant to your practice don’t be afraid to use it. For instance, as a certified aromatherapist, I used my father’s death as a chance to write about essential oils for grief from a firsthand perspective. This type of post can make you seem much more relatable.
  
• Reviews:  Write reviews of books, DVDs, or websites that you think your clients will find useful.
  
• Self-care: Write about all the ways your readers can take care of themselves between massage sessions.

I’ve only scratched the surface here. You can literally find fodder for blog posts just about anywhere. The most important thing to keep in mind when coming up with blog topics is who you’re writing the post for. Are you writing for other healthcare professionals? Athletes? People with chronic pain? or Joe Schmoe who just wants to feel better without having to learn a bunch of medical terms to do so? 

The most important thing to keep in mind when coming up with blog topics is who you’re writing the post for.

One more tip before I rap up this novella… keep paper handy, or create a note on your phone, so you always have somewhere to record your brilliant ideas when inspiration strikes. 

Michelle Doetsch
New Yew Healing

I am a Licensed Massage Therapist in Michigan and I’m Board Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (BCTMB). I have been a massage therapist and Reiki practitioner since 2002. My specialty is treating clients with headaches, high stress, neck and shoulder pain, sciatica, and fibromyalgia, as well as other types of chronic pain. My training in energy work is extensive; over 200 in-class hours in a variety of energy work techniques including Reiki, Spiritual Healing (long standing and respected form of energy work in England), and Kundalini Energy Healing. I am a certified member of Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP). My education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Grand Valley State University.

New Yew Healing

Tracking Groupon and Other Deal Sites

Wondering how to track sales and redemption of services you've offered on a deal site? While not all deal sites are the same, with some basic information from your deal you can record it in Bodywork Buddy to add toward your income and also track redemptions.

I recommend creating a client file with the name of the deal site. So for example, create a client of "Groupon". (You could put the city for the last name, or create a different client file for each time you run a deal - having the date as the last name.)

Once you know how many deals have been sold, create a session record for the client Groupon, with X amount of services sold (using your regular services at full price). Enter a discount in the discount field equaling the discounts given for the deal, and then record the payment from the deal site.

Then in your business expenses, create an expense with the deal site as the vendor and record the amount that they took from the deal you ran. (I would classify this expense as advertising.)

Create a service (set to private) of "prepaid sessions" or "groupon deal", etc. with the price of $0. When a client redeems one of your deals, set the service to the private prepaid session service. The balance for the session will remain zero, but you'll still have a record of when the client had their session.

This will:

1. Record the payment from the deal site
2. Include the percentage you paid to the deal site for advertising expense
3. Track the discount you offered for the deal
4. Create session records for each client redeeming the deal

Use the deal site to track how many have been redeemed altogether.

Cindy Iwlew is co-founder of Bodywork Buddy Massage Software, a complete online management solution for independent massage therapists that includes online scheduling. 

She continues to operate her own private massage practice since 1999. www.BodyworkBuddy.com

Steamy Wonder Update

Wow, it's been a few years since I added the Steamy Wonder to my services and I still haven't posted my promised update of how it's worked out in my practice...oops!




I started out with adding a complimentary 20 minute steam with each session for them to experience it for the first time. After that, it was a $30 add-on. (Without really adding on any time to the session.) About 2 out of every 3 clients seems to love it, and many have added it to their regular routine. After having worked with the steam for a while, there's a few things I have changed:

• I only steam for about 15 minutes now instead of 20. This includes the cool-down time at the end of the steam, so really more like 10 minutes of solid heat.
• I've moved into a new space and don't have a good area to hang the tent with the pulley system. I realized my previous post didn't make it clear that the pulley system is optional, totally not required. I liked the pulley system, but some clients did mention that it looked like a huge casket hanging from the ceiling... (yikes?!). Now I stand it on it's end and partially tuck it behind my armoire. It doesn't take up much space and is still easily accessible.
• I used to use a sheet as a drape, and would slide it out after putting the tent over the table - leaving the client uncovered under the tent. I have recently switched to a bath towel for a drape, and leave it on the client during the steam. They can choose to slide the towel off to the side if they want, but most leave it on during the steam. It's comfortable and leaves the client feeling less exposed. It also helps to soak up some of the sweat, and then after wiping the client off with hot towels, I switch out the drape to a clean sheet and remove the bath towel.

About 2 out of every 3 clients seems to love it

I offer it as a combined service in my Bodywork Buddy online scheduler. So, for example, under my "deep tissue massage" service group, I have these choices:

• 90 minute deep tissue massage plus steam
• 90 minute deep tissue massage
• 60 minute deep tissue massage plus steam
• 60 minute deep tissue massage
• 30 minute deep tissue massage plus steam
• 30 minute deep tissue massage

I can run a report on specific services within Bodywork Buddy to show how much of my income each year has been from what service. Handy, right?

The small investment of adding the steam service has definitely been worth it. *Pro-tip: Be on the lookout for a used Steamy Wonder in good condition to save money.

So, there's the scoop! Do you have any specific questions on how I use the steam in my practice? Let me know and I can answer them in another post.

BTW, if you're interested in checking out Bodywork Buddy for your business needs, there is a 

free trial to see if it's a good fit for you. *Special discounts for Board Certified therapists and members of ABMP!*

Cindy Iwlew is co-founder of Bodywork Buddy Massage Software, a complete online management solution for independent massage therapists that includes online scheduling. 

She continues to operate her own private massage practice since 1999.  www.BodyworkBuddy.com

How To Use Bodywork Buddy As Your Website (With or Without Online Scheduling)

Do you want to use Bodywork Buddy to keep track of your income, expenses, client files, gift certificates, etc. but don't want to offer your clients online scheduling? You can choose to not enable your microsite, so it will never be live online... but another option is to still have your microsite and use it as your business website but without the scheduling aspect.

To do this, you can set all of your services to private instead of public from Dashboard > services > main > click on each service under service code > select private from visibility dropdown box > save.

When all of your services are set to private, your microsite will look similar to this:

Want to use the microsite for your regular website and have your own domain name direct to it? You can purchase your own domain name and then contact us to help you point it to your Bodywork Buddy microsite. 

Of course you can also always offer online scheduling by having your services set to public, and still using your microsite as your main website that includes online scheduling.

Try Bodywork Buddy free for 15 days and see for yourself how it can make your life easier at tax time and year round!

How Can Optimized Scheduling Help You?

I recently wrote a blog post titled "It's Time To Kill These 4 Online Scheduling Myths" in which I talked about therapists who are afraid they will lose control over their schedule if they make the switch from paper.

A fellow MT commented that she likes to cluster her appointments together so that she doesn't have large gaps in her day and she didn't think there was any online scheduler that could offer her that option.

This is actually exactly what Bodywork Buddy's "optimized scheduling" does!

Optimized scheduling is an optional feature you can turn on or off at any time within Bodywork Buddy. When it's selected, it will cluster your appointments together so that only openings before or after an existing appointment will be shown to clients booking online.

Some benefits to this are:

• eliminates large gaps in your day
• makes you appear busier than you are / more in demand
• gives you more control over your schedule

Let's take a look at just how this works. On this day, my entire schedule is open except for a noon appointment:

When I have optimized scheduling selected in my settings, this is what my clients will see when scheduling online. Only a 1:15pm appointment available because it is immediately after my 12:00 appointment with my buffer time of 15 minutes built in:

If I don't have optimized scheduling selected, my clients will see all of my open appointment times that day, starting with 1:15 and going all the way until the end of the day with the last appointment opening:

Pretty cool, right? This is just one of the ways Bodywork Buddy can help you maintain control over your schedule and make your life easier.

Want to try it out yourself? Signup for a free 15 day trial (no credit card required).

Cindy Iwlew is co-founder of Bodywork Buddy Massage Software, a complete online management solution for independent massage therapists that includes online scheduling. 

She continues to operate her own private massage practice since 1999. www.BodyworkBuddy.com

It's Time To Kill These 4 Online Scheduling Myths

1. "I won't have control over my schedule."

A lot of therapists have this fear that they will lose control of their schedule, clients will suddenly dictate their life with too much access to their book, there will be too many appointments, too close together, and chaos will ensue!

Mary-Claire Fredette of Affinity Massage Studio in Cincinnati, Ohio says before she started using Bodywork Buddy, she was afraid that she would be at the grocery store buying ice cream when someone would schedule a massage. Her life would be ruined as the ice cream would melt info puddles as she massaged someone. It makes me laugh, but as a therapist myself, I can understand this concern!

Luckily Bodywork Buddy has some key features that would prevent this from being an issue.

• Your clients request an appointment online from the openings shown, and you can then accept or decline the appointment request. (So it's not an automatic confirmed appointment until you accept it.) You're sent an email to notify you of the request, and it will also show within your BWB account on the dashboard and the calendar.
• Stacked time slots versus interval time slots: BWB lets you choose how your openings are shown to clients. Do you want to show intervals of 10 minutes like 10:00, 10:10, 10:20 giving the client the most flexible options? (Interval options vary from 10-60 minutes.) Or only show them blocks of times like 10:00, 11:30, 1:00 giving YOU more control? It's up to you.
• In your settings, you can choose to show openings to clients online ranging from immediately to 4 days out. So if today is Monday and you have 4 days set in your settings, clients will not see any openings in your calendar until Friday.
• BWB's "optimized scheduling" feature is an optional setting to only allow clients to schedule appointments before or after an existing appointment, which helps to eliminate large gaps in your day. So if you have this setting selected, and you only have 1 client today at 5pm with the rest of the day open, any other clients looking to schedule online will only be able to select today at 3:30pm or 6:30pm (times may vary depending on your settings).  So at 10am you can buy your ice cream with no worries of it melting :)

2. "It will become a double-booking nightmare."

Do you worry that a client will schedule online at the same time that you're scheduling a client in the office?

Once a client requests an appointment online, it will show in your calendar in orange so you know it's been requested. That time slot will not show as open to other clients unless you decline that request.

When you're manually scheduling a client who is in your office or on the phone with you, it will instantly no longer be shown as an opening online.

Tristin Resinger of Akua Esthetics and Bodywork in Ann Arbor, Michigan says the owner at her previous job refused to get online scheduling out of fear of these kinds of mistakes happening, but Tristin points out that those mistakes seemed to happen a lot with a paper book. Having an electronic trail of each appointment can actually cut down on misunderstandings and human error. Within BWB, you can see a log of all emails sent to clients and 

even see if/when they've opened them.

3. "The online scheduler won't work."
Erin Howk of Therapeutic & Stress Reduction Massage in Fairmont, Minnesota says she had a fear that online scheduling wouldn't work and she'd have clients showing up that she didn't know were supposed to be there.

There's a few things within BWB that prevent this from happening. When a client requests an appointment online and you accept it, it turns into a confirmed appointment (in green) in the calendar and the client gets an email letting them know the appointment has been confirmed / accepted. 

The client will then get an email reminder shortly before their appointment (you can customize the how many hours before their appointment this is sent out in your settings.) If you have SMS services enabled and the client has opted in, they will also receive a text reminder.

If they don't have an appointment in the calendar, they will not get these confirmations and reminders.

4. "Nobody will use online scheduling and I'll still have to answer the phone and pay for a useless service."

While some clients might take some time getting used to scheduling online, the majority of clients today want the convenience of online scheduling. Not only scheduling online, but from their phones and tablets! Studies have shown that mobile use has skyrocketed in recent years. Offering online scheduling that is mobile friendly will cut down on phone tag and make scheduling an appointment with you a breeze.

I can't promise that you'll never have to answer the phone again, but it can make your life easier and save you time.

Cindy Iwlew is co-founder of Bodywork Buddy Massage Software, a complete online management solution for independent massage therapists that includes online scheduling. 

She continues to operate her own private massage practice since 1999.  www.BodyworkBuddy.com