If you are a massage therapist and you are not offering gift certificates you are missing out on a huge potential income. Many massage therapists make up to 1/4 of their annual income by selling gift certificates for Christmas. Other holidays like Valentine's Day can also be very very profitable. One of the greatest things for the therapist that is selling Gift Certificates is that almost half of them never get redeemed. So if you have a 6 month or one year expiration date on them and make them non refundable you can almost count on making some extra money. With this in mind you may want to offer them for a lower price than what you normally charge for massage. It is always possible that most or all of them will be redeemed, but it has been my experience in the past that around half of them never get used. You will also want to be sure that whatever gift certificates you choose to use have a carbon copy for your records. This prevents fraudulent use of them.
I have had people purchase a 30 minute massage gift certificate and try to make it look like it was written out for a 1 hour and 30 minute massage. It really does happen and it happens more often then you would like to think it does. A carbon copy with a number on it for filing purposes will allow you to pull the carbon and compare it to the original if you have any doubt about it. I also do not recommend purchasing generic gift certificates from most stores because anyone else in your area can buy them and make false ones up. Many of the generics do not come with carbon copies either. It may sound greedy to be telling you that almost half of the gift certificates never get used, but it is usually proves to be a true statement. It is not your fault if someone does not redeem their certificate. When you offer them for a little less than your normal rate for massage it provides your regular clients a way to save some money around the holidays. I always offer packages of 3 or 4 one hour massages for a reduced rate.
Dwayne Crandall, LMT researched and wrote this article on the subject: Massage Therapist's are missing out if they don't offer Massage Gift Certificates ( http://www.massagevillage.com/ ). Please place an active link to this Massage Village website when you decide to publish this article. If you need to get customized gift certificates with carbon copies for your massage business you may want to take a look at what we have available at Massage Village | |
