Being able to gather guests’ emails is a key factor in having a sustainable business because if something happens like Airbnb shuts down or your Airbnb account gets suspended, you will still be able to acquire customers!
In this episode, Jon Bell and Julian Sage talk about capturing guests’ emails from Airbnb and converting them into direct bookings.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Julian Sage: 00:00 In this episode, we’re talking about how to get more direct bookings so that you can start making more money. So stay tuned.
Julian Sage: 00:06 Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation, where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.
Julian Sage: 00:33 Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and we are talking about optimizing your listing so that you can start making more money. And one of those things is starting to acquire emails and converting those into direct bookings. So again, Airbnb is not the end all be all. It is a channel that you can use to market your listing, but that shouldn’t be the one place we want to be heading a bunch of different places. Where we are able to acquire customers and one of the goals is to have lifelong customers. And how you do that is through taking them off of the platform and putting them onto your own email list. So Jon, what do direct bookings look like in your business and how have you been getting lifelong customers?
Jon Bell: 01:14 Direct bookings are a key part of just the sustainable business, right? When you can get people to book with you directly, one, they can save a little bit, but again, they also pay you a little bit more because they don’t have to pay for that platform fee. So it’s all, it’s all good. It’s all good all the way around. How do you get that information to really just get them to rebook with you? Or how do you do that conversation? We talked about it in some of the past episodes, but one of the things to really get this person’s contact information is simply you have to ask for it. You have to ask for an email address. When you use certain tools, some PMS are smart enough to grab that and to retain that information. Smartbnb is definitely smart enough to grab that person’s email address and store it to where you could actually use it in the email marketing campaign to them later on.
Jon Bell: 02:09 When you start collecting data on people, you technically become just like all of these other it companies data that you could use to your advantage. Getting an email address is highly important. Getting a phone number is just as valuable. What if you were able to build a profile on a person that says, Hey, this is their birthday, this is their anniversary, right? You can then start to market rewards campaigns. You could then start to market a coupon. Hey, you spent your anniversary here with me last year. Come back again and I’ll give you a discount on your state, or I’ll offer you this type of experience. This stuff is really key when we can grab information just about our potential guests. Not only that, but once we start to see the mold that we’re attracting, we then could start either duplicating that over and over again or we can start tweaking it. If we don’t like it and say, Hey, maybe we, I don’t want to do this. I want to grab more of this type of guest.
Jon Bell: 03:09 Once you have the data, you could really do anything. Just you got to get it, you got to ask for it, hold it, don’t sell it or anything like that, but you do want to be able to remarket back to those people and let them know, Hey, I’m still here and kicking and we got more places for you. I added a new place that you wanted. You would want to come and stay.
Julian Sage: 03:29 I think that this is such an important topic, Jon, because really what we are trying to do is we’re trying to be able to differentiate ourselves and create ourselves as a brand and when we are marketing to these people, it’s not just so that people book with us every time that we have an email, but just letting them know brand awareness.
Julian Sage: 03:46 Let them know that we’re existent because they might be able to refer somebody to stay with you. If they know, Hey, you have a discount going on where maybe it’s a slower season and you’re offering a very nice discount, or maybe it’s their birthday and you’re offering a discount, they might tell somebody else like, Hey, there’s a discount going on and I know that you’re traveling to this area. I stayed at this really nice place. You should stay there as well, and that’s how you’re able to be able to get your name out there because if somebody else is coming onto the platform, they might not find your listing because in the last episode we were talking about how Airbnb prioritizes different listings, but if someone gives you the link to your direct booking site or to your listing directly and they book with you, then automatically you’re going to show up and not everybody else that Airbnb is prioritizing or any of these other booking platforms, your listing is going to be number one for them.
Jon Bell: 04:37 One of the other key points to add is email marketing is probably one of the cheapest forms of marketing that you can do. It doesn’t cost you a cost per click. You set up an email template and you send it out to a list of people that you already have their contact information for. You already know that they’re looking for something that you can offer. It’s not just a stab in the dark just by selecting a target campaign and then spending money to try to get these people to book. These people have already booked, so it’s the cheapest form of marketing. Make sure that it’s a key part of your business.
Julian Sage: 05:11 Rght, and there’s so many other ways that you can go about collecting guest information and building your database of clients. Hotels use this all the time. If you, if you provide your email to a hotel like a Marriott or holiday and wherever it is, expect a bunch of emails from them during holidays, during different types of seasons because that’s how they attract you and you’re now a customer to them.
Julian Sage: 05:34 You’re a lifelong customer and they’re going to be able to try to find ways to be able to bring you back, but you can also use this information to be able to target different types of people that may be like or similar using things like Facebook and creating Facebook group. There’s so many different ways that you can be able to start marketing to those types of people to your database and then the people that are associated their friends or likeminded off of that information. So having an email list is key and that’s where your money is going to be. If let’s say something does happen, let’s say Airbnb shuts down or your listing profile gets closed, at least you still have your customers.
Jon Bell: 06:10 Speaking of hotels, Julian, one of those pro tips, this is something I would probably only put in the BNB group just because it’s such a key piece or such a high, pro level thing is social wifi.
Jon Bell: 06:25 We all know what it is, but we probably don’t know exactly what it’s doing. When you go to a Starbucks and it says, Hey, free wifi, just sign in with your Facebook account. That’s social wifi. You pretty much just signed up for somebody to collect or store some information about you and what do you normally get from those channels? When you sign in through Facebook, they automatically get your birthday, they get your email address. They might get a phone number, they get a location of where you are, but all you did was click sign in. We could still offer those exact same things to the people that come and stay in our units, but where you have a reservation with one person that booked the place and you might get one email on the social wifi network. If there’s six people there, those six people have to log in.
Jon Bell: 07:13 So you took that one person and turned it into six different emails. That is a killer way to kind of go in and just build up data and collect information on people so you could just remarket to them again, they all stayed there, so they all probably have some type of memory, whether good, bad or great. Right. They all know that, Hey, I stayed here and we had this experience. They’re marketing to me. They’re sending me this thing. We had fun. Remember that game we played? They added some new games. I don’t know, but you got their information and you got it on everybody. That is a pro pro pro tip.
Julian Sage: 07:50 So question of the day, what are you using to be able to collect emails? Leave it in the comment section down below. Until next time, host nation. Keep on hosting.
Julian Sage: 08:03 Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review because that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I, then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation, talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.
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