Ask a med spa owner how many clients they have and you'll get a number. Ask how many of them stopped coming in the last year and most can't say.
Your booking system can say. Every client who used to visit and hasn't lately is in there, with a last-visit date. This post shows how to turn that list into a dollar figure in three steps, and how to be honest with yourself about the assumptions.
The formula
Lapsed clients × rebooking rate × average visit value = revenue a win-back campaign could bring back
Three numbers. You can get two of them from your own export. The third is the one to be careful with.
Step 1: Count your lapsed clients
Export your client list with each client's last visit date. Most booking systems can do this. Then count the clients whose last visit was:
- more than 3 months ago. For neurotoxin clients, that's around when results wear off [1], so they're overdue rather than just between visits. The rebooking calendar has the timing for other treatments.
- less than 2 years ago. Under Canada's anti-spam law, your implied consent to message a past client lasts two years from their last purchase [2]. Clients further back than that shouldn't be on the list without their express consent.
Leave out anyone who has asked not to be contacted.
Step 2: Work out your average visit value
Take your total revenue for the last 12 months and divide by the number of visits. Most booking or payment systems report both.
Use the average across all visits, not your most expensive treatment. A clinic whose menu tops out at $800 might average $250 once facials and touch-ups are included.
Step 3: Choose a rebooking rate, carefully
This is the share of lapsed clients who book again after you contact them. It's the number that makes the result look big or small, so treat it with suspicion.
There isn't a reliable public benchmark. Most published figures come from companies selling reactivation software, mostly to dentists. They range from under 2% to over 30%, often without saying how they were measured. We don't treat any of them as a benchmark for med spas.
Most of those sources agree on one thing, and it matches common sense: the longer a client has been away, the less likely they are to come back. A client lapsed for 4 months is far easier to win back than one gone for 18.
For planning, we use 8%. It's deliberately cautious, not a promise. Try the calculator at a few different rates and see whether the result still justifies the effort at the low end.
A worked example
Take a hypothetical clinic:
- 600 clients who haven't visited in 3 months to 2 years
- $250 average visit
- 8% rebook
600 × 8% × $250 = $12,000 from the first return visit alone.
The same clinic at different rates:
| Rebooking rate | Clients who return | Revenue from their first visit back |
|---|---|---|
| 4% | 24 | $6,000 |
| 8% | 48 | $12,000 |
| 12% | 72 | $18,000 |
Calculator
Recovered revenue
$12,000
Your cost, first month
$1,000
$500/month after
Your cost: $500 to set up, then $500 a month — month to month, cancel any time.
Move the sliders to match your own export. All amounts in Canadian dollars.
Why the first visit understates it
The formula counts one visit per returning client. A returning client often comes back again.
Say one of those 48 clients is a neurotoxin regular. If results last about 3–4 months [1], they might visit around three times a year once they're back in the habit. Returning at $250 a visit, that's $750 a year, not $250.
Not everyone who comes back stays, so don't multiply the whole table by three. But the first-visit figure is the floor, not the ceiling.
What the formula leaves out
Being honest about these makes the number more useful, not less:
- Some clients would have come back anyway. A reminder doesn't get credit for a booking that was already going to happen. To measure this properly, hold back about 10% of your list: don't message them, and compare their bookings with everyone else's after a month.
- Incentives cost money. If you offer $25 toward a visit, take it off the revenue. The win-back templates cover when an incentive is worth it.
- Someone has to send the messages and handle the replies. That's staff time, or the cost of a service that does it for you.
- Revenue isn't profit. Product costs, practitioner time and the booking slot all come out of it.
Let us do the counting
RelayOps' free lapsed-client report does steps 1 and 2 on your own booking-system export. It shows how many clients haven't been back in 3+ months, how long they've been away, what that's worth at your average visit value, and who to contact first.
You don't need to send names or phone numbers. The report works with just last-visit dates and spend. Get your free report →
Sources
- American Academy of Dermatology, Botulinum toxin therapy: Overview
- Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (S.C. 2010, c. 23), s. 10(10): existing business relationship