Best Salon Booking Software with Built-In Marketing Tools

If you want the best salon booking software with built-in marketing tools, you actually have quite a few options to choose from. Having built-in marketing tools is essential for any salon for several reasons, not least of which is that marketing costs can quickly get out of hand if you are trying to use a third-party platform. Marketing entirely on your own can eat up a lot of your valuable time, which could otherwise be spent managing and building your business.

As a salon owner or stylist, your time is better spent doing the creative work that you do best. With the right type of Salon booking software, you can utilize marketing tools that are already built into your platform, incorporated into the calendar function and booking process, and fall under the same price point as you are paying each month. 

However, not all marketing tools are created equal. 

That’s why I decided to compare which marketing features came with the top five salon booking software options:

1. Boulevard
2. GlossGenius
3. MindBody
4. Vagaro
5. Fresha

I compared each of their major marketing tools, such as marketing campaigns, client management/retention tools, and social media support. 

Bottom Line Up Front

There are many good booking software solutions with built-in marketing tools, but my favorite is Boulevard. Boulevard takes the cake when it comes to the Front Desk feature, client profiles, and social media links. 

Boulevard 

Pros:

• Easy interface
• Good integration with your website, social media pages, and elsewhere
• Proprietary Front Desk feature

Cons:

• Expensive
• No marketplace
• No AI tools to generate campaigns

Boulevard has comprehensive services unique to its salon booking software, including the Front Desk feature. 

Front Desk/Phone Line

Unlike other salon booking software, Boulevard’s built-in marketing tools make it easy to accept and update calendars. 

The phone number you link on your website or on social media can ring directly to the “Front Desk”, which is the opening page of the software. This looks like any other front desk management setup, with visibility into which clients have confirmed, checked in, or completed their appointments that day. When a call comes in, it can be answered directly within the platform, and modifications or bookings made. 

Client Relationship Management

Boulevard offers personalized messaging between clients and your salon, not only with automated messages, but with the dedicated message center. This is unlike other salon booking software because all communication is consolidated in one, easy-to-manage spot. 

Tangentially, Boulevard’s software keeps the most robust client profiles, with spaces for personalized details like:

1. Photos
2. Allergies
3. Preferences
4. Service history
5. Payment history
6. Gift cards
7. Memberships and packages
8. Forms 

Anywhere you see a client’s name within the software, you can click on it and the client profile will pop up in the bottom right-hand side, not as a redirect. This makes it very easy to update client information or change an appointment without losing where you were in the platform or interrupting what you were doing. 

Upsells

At the time of appointment booking, Boulevard offers upsells. These promotions encourage additional appointments, often associated with appointments a client has already booked. Upsells at the time of checkout for a client who has finished an appointment might extend to products they would find useful, like an Olaplex treatment, memberships for savings on multiple appointments, or follow-up appointments. All of these upsells can take place during their initial booking, too. 

Appointment Reminders

Boulevard offers several pre- and post-appointment reminders to ensure clients don’t forget their appointments, and they can help with marketing exposure for your business, including 2-day before appointment reminders and rating requests after appointments. The rating requests can encourage reviews from clients to build your salon’s online profile. 

Social Media Links 

Booking is made easier with social media connections. Through connected links on social media and your website (which don’t redirect to elsewhere), potential clients and current clients can book directly through multiple sources. 

Marketing Campaigns

Blast Campaigns make it easy to send a quick marketing message to a large audience. With Boulevard, you can create custom audiences like clients for a specific stylist or clients who have had a specific service in the past. You can edit them as texts or emails, promoting things like discounts or sales. 

For more personalization, there are automated campaigns. These include Fill Slow Days, Birthday Messages, and Last Minute Openings. Fill Slow Days and Last Minute Openings both allow you to fill time when a stylists’ schedule opens up unexpectedly (with automatic settings to trigger the email or text campaign). 

GlossGenius

Pros:

• Automated marketing campaigns–saves you time
• Online reputation management feature
• Let’s you build a website

Cons:

• Expensive
• No marketplace
• No Front Desk

GlossGenius has marketing tools similar to Boulevard, but they stand apart with their AI marketing assistant. 

Automated Marketing Campaigns

GlossGenius supports email and text marketing campaigns for things like targeted lists based on purchase history, previous appointments, or other audience types. When you are ready to create your campaigns, there is an AI marketing assistant tool to generate the language you want. 

For example, if you want to soften the language on a campaign for female clients, you can direct the AI to modify your campaign, and it will.

Reminders

GlossGenius offers automated reminders for pre- and post-appointment booking, specifically to encourage clients to book follow-up appointments. 

Online Reputation

One of the areas where GlossGenius stands out among the best salon booking software with built-in marketing tools is the way the software handles your online reputation. 

Obviously, reputation is important as a salon, and GlossGenius helps you manage your reviews directly through Google. This means checking and managing reviews to improve your online ranking. 

With integration across multiple social media platforms, they also make it easy to share any marketing campaigns you create in several spaces. 

Website

If you don’t have a website, GlossGenius lets you build one with a built-in online booking system. You might even decide to migrate your existing website to those being offered with GlossGenius, depending on your setup. 

MindBody

Pros:

• Subscriber list to help collect more client data
• MindBody app to generate more exposure
• Class Pass options

Cons:

• Most of the marketing support is better suited to classes or group offerings
• Limited calendar functions
• Limited client profile collections

MindBody is more of an overall health and fitness industry provider, but their software works for salons too. Part of their built-in marketing tools extend to the MindBody app and associated ClassPass options. 

Subscriber List

One of their marketing tools is a way to automatically add email and text data from visitors, whether from your website, social media, or in your salon directly. This helps you collect more data, grow your subscriber list, and reach wider audiences whenever you send messages or blast campaigns. 

Automated Messages

MindBody offers automated message sending, where you can use pre-built templates to send things like appointment reminders, follow-up messages, or other personalized texts/emails to your clients. 

The Mindbody App

The MindBody app has over 2.8 million consumers across the wellness and fitness industries. It’s a place to showcase your brand and promote offers with things like the ClassPass. 

ClassPass

The ClassPass is the main marketing tool for MindBody. This is something offered through the MindBody App, and it is a way to attract new clients by offering discounts on multiple services. 

It is important to note that while MindBody can be suitable for salons, the ClassPass is often used for online, live classes. You can certainly make it work for a salon, especially if you offer educational classes/tutorials (hair maintenance, lightening, foiling techniques), but it takes some creativity. 

Vagaro

Pros:

• AI tools to help with marketing campaigns
• Marketplace for exposure
• Website builder, if you don’t have one already

Cons:

• A la carte costs, especially for marketing options
• Marketplace clients come with a commission
• Not as many features otherwise

Vagaro has a website builder like GlossGenius, but it also offers a Marketplace where you can feature “daily deals” to drive marketing. 

Website Builder

The first marketing tool is the website builder. If you don’t have a website for your salon or want an upgrade, this tool makes it possible to build a website and even includes help from a design team if you want it. 

The one thing you’ll notice though, is the website building templates look pretty much the same. Not a bad deal, though. 

Reminders

There are options to send automated email and text reminders about appointments, and to create blast campaigns for specific audiences. 

Social Media

To market your salon on social media, Vagaro offers connections via Yelp, Instagram, and Facebook. With this, you can add a “book” button to your existing pages. You can also store photos into the Vagaro platform and share those photos easily across your social media pages. 

Booking Widget

Vagaro’s marketing tools also include the booking widget. You can create this to use as a pop-up widget or place it on your website. 

Vagaro Marketplace

The Vagaro Marketplace is Vagaro’s equivalent to the MindBody app. 

I will note, though, it comes at an extra price per month to be listed, and if you want your business to be effectively higher ranked on their marketplace, that comes at an extra, extra cost. If customers book through it, they have to download the Vagaro app (which will hound them with Vagaro marketing texts).

With the marketplace, you have a few ways to build your marketing profile, including photos and daily deals. You can customize information about your venue by uploading photos and a logo. This means when a new client sees your page on the marketplace, they can read and see all about your work. 

Similarly, you can create “daily deals” to drive your marketing efforts. This is also within the marketplace, but it means increasing potential revenue with last-minute bookings. 

Fresha

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Marketplace offerings (not as big as Vagaro or MindBody)
• Simple report generation and client profiles

Cons:

• Limited tools
• Poor interface
• No AI tools to generate campaigns

Fresha is at the bottom of this list for a reason; they don’t have a lot of special, stand-out marketing tools to offer. 

Still, they are the least expensive option on this list, and their basic marketing tools can be a time (and money) saver for small salons or solo stylists who want a booking tool with marketing features. 

Marketing Campaigns

Fresha’s main marketing campaigns have to do with automated messages. You can generate these messages before a client’s appointment as reminders, and after, to promote offers and generate reviews. 

Fresha has support for referrals, too, a way to increase potential revenue. 

Fresha Marketplace

The Fresha Marketplace is comparable to Vagaro, but with an international reach. This is one of Fresha’s main built-in marketing tools. It works a bit differently, though; instead of charging you to build a profile, your salon’s profile is part of your monthly costs–however, anytime you get a new client from the Marketplace, Fresha takes a sizable (around 20%) commission.

Summing Up

While there are several good salon booking software options with built-in marketing tools, the tools they offer can vary. All of them have similar automated reminders and social media connections, but otherwise, the “best” choice will be the additional features your salon needs most. 

• Boulevard: Best for salons that want the Front Desk feature and comprehensive client profiles.
• GlossGenius: Best for salons that want a website, AI marketing tools, and online reputation management. 
• MindBody: Best for larger salons with additional health offerings who want to use the ClassPass
• Vagaro: Best for small salons looking to save money but also market on a marketplace, or build a new website
• Fresha: Best for solo stylists or small salons that want simple marketplace exposure and basic marketing tools