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NEWSLETTER SECTIONS
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NEWS
AND UPDATES
1. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here's wishing all of our Pavia Desiderata newsletter members a wonderful and fulfilling 2008! May your new year be filled with inner and outer abundance, joy, health, and laughter.
2. YAY! ANNIE HUYNH JOINS OUR STAFF AS NAIL TECHNICIAN: For those of you who have been reading my blog, you know how stressed out I have been about finding a new nail technician. Well, my search is over: after going through 8 candidates, I finally found someone I thought that our Pavia clientele would embrace as being "up to their standards." Her name is Annie Huynh, and she comes to us with 8 years of nail experience. More about Annie in a later issue!
3. PAVIA OFFERS INSTANT GIFT CERTIFICATES ON-LINE: Christmas may be over, but Valentine's Day will be here before you know it. Our on-line gift certificate function allows you to customize a gift certificate according to the occasion, print it out and present it to your recipient, email it to them, or (and I recently added this capability) instruct US to mail it to them for a $2 charge. Follow this link to order an Instant Pavia Gift Certificate!
PAVIA-POTHECARY TIP OF THE MONTH: HOW TO MAKE CLOVE POMANDERS
How embarrassing! I actually meant to write about this topic last month for the holidays, because making clove pomanders is just about the perfect craft activity to do with your kids. They're easy to make, fragrant to hang (as ornaments, too!), and wonderful to give as gifts. Except that I forgot, and wrote about Cayenne instead. Well, I didn't want to wait until next December to write about pomanders, so here we go.
Did you ever wonder how they dealt with odors in the pre-sanitation Victorian era, before the advent of Glade and air fresheners? They made pomanders, of course! They wore them or carried them in a vase to protect against infection in times of pestilence, or hung them up in a closet to "modify" unpleasant odors.
Now you can re-create these spicy and yummy-smelling balls of natural fragrance with your kids. All you need to make a pomander is:
- An orange
- A nail or some other sharp objects you can poke holes with
- 1/2 cup of whole cloves
- 4 tablespoons of orris root powder*
Step One: Poke holes in the orange with the nail or sharp object. You might do this over the sink, so as not to squirt orange juice everywhere. Also, make the hole about twice as big as the clove, because your orange is going to shrink over time.
Step Two: Insert a whole clove in each hole with the clove's head sticking out.
Step Three: If you want to tie a ribbon around the pomander to hang it up, make sure to leave a clove-free strip around the middle of the orange to facilitate this purpose.
Step Four*: Put the orris root powder in a small bowl. Orris root is really the crushed bulb of the iris plant, and some people MAY be allergic to it. If you are, then you can substitute this powder with powdered Cinnamon, Nutmeg, and Ground Ginger (use 1.5 tbsps of each).
Step Five: Roll the clove-studded orange around in the powder until it is completely covered. Let the orange sit in the orris root powder for a week or two.
Step Six: During this "curing" period, turn the orange a few times a day so that it gets evenly spiced. Let the orange dry out completely before you remove it from the bowl to hang up or use as a decoration. It should last a very long time and won't rot or smell bad!
Voila! You now have a wonderful way to enhance the scent of your closet or lingerie drawer. My favorite thing is to make a bunch of pomanders and use them as a fragrant centerpiece, or hang them on the Christmas tree.
STAFF SPOTLIGHT - MEET ALISHA EDDLEMAN, CERTIFIED MASSAGE THERAPIST
I knew I would hire Alisha early on during her externship. As part of their training, massage students are required to work 54 hours in a spa or chiropractor's office, doing anything we want them to (well, within legal boundaries, of course!). Normally, externs aren't very good at massage because they haven't gotten their routine down, nor have they had a lot of experience working in a spa.
Alisha, however, had the right energy and the right touch, right away. So when she graduated this past November 4, I snatched her up for my already excellent massage staff. She works Wednesdays and Sundays, and while she may have just started her massage career, you wouldn't know it from her service! Want to know more about Alisha? Here are some more fun facts about her below:
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Her hometown: Placerville, CA
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Where she is doing her training: National Holistic Institute - San Jose
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Her favorite movie: "Little Miss Sunshine"
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Her favorite restaurant: The Sequoia
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The book she is reading right now: "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb
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Her passion in life: "Health, wellness, and true happiness."
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Her favorite pastimes: Painting, movies, Sharks games
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Most admired person: "My boyfriend Casey"
JANUARY NEWSLETTER SPECIAL: OUR SECRET "SMILEY FACE STICKER" SALE!
Okay everyone - get ready for our secret "smiley face" sticker sale! This one is for newsletter members ONLY, because you're all very important to me, and I want you to have the best deals first. Here's how it works: any product that has a smiley face sticker on it is marked down by 30%! But most people won't know that, only newsletter members will. So when you go to buy something, and see that it has a smiley face sticker on it, please tell the spa coordinator, "I want the smiley face price!" and we'll take 30% off! It's our way of saying, "Happy New Year!!"
TELL MARE WHAT YOU THINK
Only two of you responded to my last question asking for feedback about our newsletter, so I guess it did not generate a lot of interest. That's okay - the comments I did get indicated that people like the format of the newsletter and that it's not too long, especially since you can skip around. But with only two data points, I would not say I am confident that that is the general opinion.
Well, onto a different question: What do you think of our new "Off-Peak" pricing? Technicially, it isn't that new, since we implemented it in July 2007.
The reason I ask is, at first I thought this was a great idea. We have a lot of unused capacity during certain times of day, and we might as well sell that unused capacity, even if it is at a lower price. Many of our customers seemed to agree. But then I got this scathing email, and I allowed myself to get very upset about it (yes, I am probably too sensitive). It read (and the only edit I made was to clean up the profanity):
"You guys are a f---ing joke. "off peak"...So you keep your prices the same call then "off peak" then raise the price on everything 30% during the only times NORMAL f---ing people go, and call yourself a business.... You can consider yourself a rip off and just lost a half dozen customers."
So I guess what I am wondering is twofold: 1. Does anyone else have this perception (that we kept our prices the same for Off-Peak and then raised them for other times)? 2. Do our prices seem more or less reasonable than our competition, and why? As always, I care what you think, so please keep the opinions coming. CREATING A PAVIA REFERRAL ARMY
Can you believe there are over 2,250 active subscribers to Pavia Desiderata? I love it. But, as ever, I want more newsletter subscribers, and I want to reward my current newsletter members for sending me new ones.
Here's how: I've added a question on the signup page that asks WHO referred a new member to our newsletter. Just forward this newsletter to someone you think would benefit from it and write a few lines to them about why you think they would enjoy it. If they become a subscriber and put your name in that box when signing up, I will send you a $10 spa credit PER NEW SUBSCRIBER. Alternatively, if you want to send me email addresses of friends and/or family members who would enjoy this newsletter, I can send them a sample version of it, and if they end up subscribing and putting your name in the box, this can also enable me to send you a $10 spa credit PER NEW SUBSCRIBER. The key is that I somehow have to know that it was YOU who referred them. Thank you in advance!
REFERRAL PROGRAM - UPDATED!
In addition to the $10 spa credit for new newsletter subscribers that you send to me, I've also decided to update our Referral Program. Starting December 1, 2007, we will thank existing clients for referring new clients to the spa by sending them a $25 spa credit (up from $20) via email. However, in order for referrers to receive proper credit for their referrals, the following things have to be true (according to the dictates of our computer system):
- The referred party must put the referrer's name down on the intake form. Otherwise we won't know how the referred party heard about us.
- The referred party's services and products must be paid for with cash, check, or credit. If the referred party pays with a gift certificate or Spa Finder/SpaWish card, they don't register in our system as being referred.
- The referrer has to have experienced a service or purchased a product previously at our spa. (Otherwise, how can it be said to be a "referral?")
- Lastly, the referrer must be a newsletter member (or we would not have their email address in the first place).
To those of you who have referred clients to us in the past, I say a big, heartfelt THANK YOU. Your support and patronage mean everything to us. We appreciate your trust and your business.
SPA FINDER & SPAWISH POLICY
We are happy to take Spa Finder and SpaWish cards as payment for services and products at Pavia Day Spa, but we cannot combine them with product discounts and specials any longer. The nature of the Spa Finder/SpaWish program is such that we must accept a significant discount on the services/products to begin with, and then to combine that with any of our corporate, series, rebooking, birthday, or newsletter discounts would greatly injure our business.
Therefore, SpaFinder and SpaWish cards will only be accepted as payment for full-priced ("Peak") services and products at Pavia. Thank you for your understanding.
Here's wishing you a jubilant January 2008!
Sincerely,
Mare |
