Wrapping Up Wellness for the Holidays

For many spas, salons, and medspas, the gift card is the golden ticket for driving holiday-related sales, strengthening existing guest loyalty, and attracting new clients. But there’s a definite strategy needed for designing and marketing a successful campaign, and pitfalls await owners who don’t do their research upfront and plan accordingly.

With many clients enjoying end-of-summer family vacations in August, that mid-year lull represents the perfect time to look ahead at the next 16 months and begin mapping out your holiday-related gift card campaigns.  

To help you do that, MODERN Spa & Wellness recently talked with experts at Imaginal Marketing Group about successful strategies for boosting gift card sales, and they, in turn, shared a handful of case studies. Then, we spoke with April McDaniel, CPA/CRSP at Kopsa Otte CPAs and Advisors about some of the common pitfalls owners experience when they don’t manage the money coming in from the gift card sales properly.

Planning a Successful Gift-Card Campaign

Both Ryan Trahan, Director New Business Development, and Kayla Morgan, Director of Network Marketing, at Imaginal Marketing believe a successful strategy starts with a bit of research and a lot of planning:

Examining Your Infrastructure

“For a successful gift card campaign, a large, engaged email/text database and a software management program that reaches them are non-negotiable,” says Trahan.

While some clients will purchase a gift card based on in-store signage, a really successful campaign reaches consumers where they shop the most—on their phones—through vibrant social media, email, and text marketing.

Campaign Cadence

How many campaigns do you want to do this year?

“Look ahead at your calendar and decide how many gift card campaigns you want to do related to holidays—most salons and spas do between one and three a year,” says Morgan. “We recommend full gift card campaigns for Christmas and Mother’s Day and smaller, package-oriented promotions for minor holidays like Valentine’s Day.”

Understanding Your Baseline

Do you know the value of your average gift card sale? If you’ve run a campaign before, do you know your total sales result and how it compared to any previous campaigns.

For your campaign, Trahan recommends making the base offer slightly higher. For example, if your spa’s average gift card purchase is $75, then make the gift card campaign for a $100 gift card.

“You also can cater to diverse budgets by designing a tiered offer, such as a $100 gift card, a $250 one, and a $500 one,” she says.

GWP is the MVP

There’s a reason GWP (Gift with Purchase) is a classic retail upsell strategy—getting something for free encourages purchasers to buy more.

“Designing a purchase incentive, combined with increasing your asking price based on your average gift card sale, and your gift card campaign can soar,” says Morgan.

 You can design the incentive to be anything you want. It could be a discounted price for a limited time: Buy a $200 gift card for $170. It could be an extra gift card: Buy $300 in gift cards, get $100 gift card free. It could be a product or a service: Buy a $100 gift care, get a $20 product gift.

“A successful incentive needs to be straightforward and easy to understand,” says Morgan. “Try writing it out on paper. If it’s hard to write it concisely, it’s going to be hard for a marketing image to communicate it or your stylist or esthetician to explain it.”

The incentive also needs to be easy for the client to redeem. Too many rules and disclaimers put up obstacles and delay the buying decision.

“Also, low-value incentives don’t work,” Morgan says. “Savvy shoppers expect a 20% or more value add. If what you’re giving them feels skimpy or is valued at less, it probably won’t work well enough for a solid ROI.”

Trahan and Morgan reiterate that creating an incentive and running a gift card promotion is a strategic tool for a specific objective—it shouldn’t be used as a constant salon or spa discount.

Understanding Who's Buying and Who's Redeeming

Trahan and Morgan reiterate that creating an incentive and running a gift card promotion is a strategic tool for a specific objective—you should create an incentive and use it year-round.

You might assume that most of your gift cards would be bought by your clientele and given as gifts to their friends and family members. While that certainly happens, with an attractive incentive, many of your clients will buy the gift cards to use for themselves at a future date.

The Imaginal Marketing experts says gift card campaigns are primarily a loyalty tool for existing clients, not a new client acquisition strategy. They think of this as loyalty insurance. In addition, a loyal client with a gift card tends to come in more frequently, have a higher average ticket, be more willing to buy retail, and are more willing to try a new service. Think of the incentive as small investment in turning a loyal client into one of your business's VIP clients.

If you're worried about your clients purchasing too many incentivized gift cards, Trahan says you can leverage your management software to enforce limits. “For example, having a restriction that a guest can’t use the gift card the same day they purchase prevents a guest from automatically buying a discounted gift card to pay for her same-day service,” she points out.

Or, you can add a “one per household” rule. “We’ve had salons and spas report that they’d had clients stretch that one per guest rule by buying a gift card for every family member then use them for herself--one per household helps limit that," Trahan says.

They also stress that for new campaigns, a GWP like a $20 product or a free mini service is a safer alternative than a discount. “Or you can do a hybrid approach, by using the GWP for the main campaign, and then run a single day discount—for example on Black Friday—to capture your deal seekers,” says Trahan.

Campaign Planning and Execution

A holiday-related campaign should launch 8-10 weeks ahead of the holiday, Morgan recommends. “For example, a good time to launch a Christmas-related campaign is October 1^st through the 15^th, so you can reach clients before they spend their holiday budget.

Make sure your marketing message and design are authentic to your brand. Imaginal Marketing works with a team of designers and copy writers to provide their clients with a library of options to choose from.

“You can also use a mix of tones—from tranquil to cheeky—to appeal to different audiences,” Morgan says. “Renaissance Day Spa did this for their Mother’s Day campaign by combining a pastel tulip visual with the humorous message, She Brought You Into This World. And, she can take you out of it.”

The creative is important to break through the media clutter and capture a client’s attention. Spa Bleu did this for Mother’s Day by using children’s colorful artwork for their marketing pieces.

For a successful campaign, the duo recommends a multi-channel marketing approach, including email and text blasts, social media posts, and in-salon or in-spa collateral, such as mirror clings, shelf talkers, and posters.

“In addition, the entire team must be educated on the promotions; details, rules, and objectives to ensure seamless execution,” Trahan says.

Finally, be prepared to handle your cash flow management. Trahan says owners should be prepared for high redemption rates—from 65-70% in the two weeks following the holiday. “Make sure your team has the capacity to hand the post-promotion rush,” says Morgan.

Five Case Studies

When it comes to marketing campaigns, the proof is in the pudding as they say. Trahan and Morgan share five of the favorite campaigns from last year, including how they performed:

Mango Salon with three locations in Richmond, Virginia

Campaign: Holiday 2025

Duration: November 24th through December 1st

Offer: $25 off gift card purchases of $200 or more

Result: $126,414 in sales representing 7.7 year-over-year growth

Why it Worked: Consistent annual holiday campaigns helped Mango Salon build momentum year after year, resulting in sustained revenue growth and strong guest participation.

JAX Luxury Salon in Gig Harbor, Washington

Campaign: Mother’s Day 2026

Duration: 4 Weeks

Offer: $150 Gift Card for $125; $350 Gift Card for $250

Result: $19,000, representing a 3,067% Year-Over-Year Growth

Why It Worked: Because the salon was newly acquired in April 2025 and had never previously promoted gift cards, the 2025 campaign served as a baseline awareness effort. After a full year of audience growth, optimization, and consistent marketing, the same seasonal promotion generated $19,000 in just four weeks, demonstrating the compounding value of repeatable seasonal campaigns.

Drift Spa in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Campaign: Mother’s Day 2026

Duration: 4 weeks

Offer: Buy a $170 gift card and receive a $30 bonus gift card; Buy a $425 gift card and receive a $75 bonus gift card

Result: $28,000 in sales, representing 600% year-over-year growth

Why it worked: A compelling bonus gift card offer, paired with strategic seasonal marketing, dramatically increased guest participation and produced one of the spa’s strongest Mother’s Day gift card promotions.

Apollo Day Spa, Waterville, Maine

Campaign: Holiday 2025

Duration: October 20 through December 30

Offer: Buy a $125 gift card and receive a $25 bonus gift card; featured limited-time holiday spa packages

Result: $150,147 in total gift card sales. During the peak shopping period (December 21-26), bonus gift card offers generated $7,625 in sales, with an additional $4,077 in gift card purchases that did not qualify for the bonus.

Why it Worked: Combining limited-time holiday offers with a bonus gift card incentive during peak shopping days maximized holiday demand and significantly increased seasonal gift card revenue.

Spa Bleu with locations in West Dundee, South Barrington and St. Charles, Illinois

Campaign: Mother’s Day 2025

Duration: May 1-May 20

Offer: $200 gift card for $175

Result: 747 gift cards sold; $125,04 in sales

Why it Worked: A simple, compelling offer combined with a focused Mother’s

Day marketing campaign drove exceptional sales in less than three weeks.

Gift Card Pitfalls

Now that we've filled you with strategies for designing a successful gift card campaign, we need to take a step back to talk about accountability. Or rather, let April McDaniel, CPA/CRSP describe some of the pitfalls owners have experienced and how you can maintain a healthy profit margin and not get in trouble with the IRS.

Tired of reading? You can watch this interview with April McDaniel on an episode of Salon Insider.

On losing profitability...

McDaniel: “I think a lot of times salon and spa owners sell gift cards because they want that influx of cash, but forget about the fact that they do need to make sure they save that money back to be able to cover taxes and to be able to cover whatever it's going to cost to provide that service or sell the retail.

“So, if you run through a quick example. Let's say you sell a $100 gift card and discount it to 80 bucks. When the recipient comes in, they're going to redeem it for $100. Depending on your commission structure, you may owe $40 to $50 of that for payroll. And then you spend maybe $10 on product cost to deliver the service, and owe taxes on the gift card purchase price, and your profit margin keeps going down and down. By the end of it, you don't have really much profit margin left on what you've sold that gift card for."

On the value of the gift card purchasers and recipients...

McDaniel: “All the time, we see salons and spas run a big promotion for gift cards around the holidays, hoping to bring in so much revenue and sell so many gift cards. But what can end up happening is that your clients who come in to have a massage or get their color done every 4-6 weeks scoop up those gift cards. If the promotion offered a discount on the service, and you sold it to someone who is going to come see you anyway, you’ve just discounted your services.

“If you can structure the promotion so the purchaser gets two gift cards—one for themselves and a discounted one they can gift to someone who would be a new guest to the salon, you’re gaining some new potential business, then you're gaining some new business. Or, you need to set some kind of limitation on these.

“Those kinds of gift card programs just require some thought and strategy to make them beneficial to the business. At the end of the day, you need to do a review of that gift card strategy to make sure you’re really getting the results you want from it.”

On unredeemed gift cards becoming a debt to the business...

McDaniel: “When we look at succession planning and we're looking at the value of a business, gift cards reduce the value. And so, you may think you have a business that is worth a million buck, but you’re carrying $200,000 worth of gift cards, there are to be an adjustment for that because the new owner will have to be able to honor those gift cards.

“One of the things that we do see creative folks do is set up a separate bank account. And that's where all the gift card money goes. And they just keep it there.

“We've seen situations where an owner takes all that cash out, not realizing they were going to owe tax on it.

“At the end of the day, it’s about being a good business person and making sure you’re communicating with your professional to help you figure out what makes the most sense, and just understanding the ins and outs.”

On expiration dates...

“Typically, I direct clients to the Secretary of State's website for their state to verify whether a gift card can expire or if it has to stay active forever. We do see oftentimes that if a gift card is given away for free, for example if it’s donated to a charitable cause, then that part of the sale might be able to have a finite date where it expires.

“Of course, when you have situations like that, that means that whatever salon software that you're using, you have to make sure you're getting things recorded in the salon software appropriately for the amount the gift card will be redeemed for and the expiration date.”