In this episode of Vacation Rental Machine, Jon Bell and Julian Sage talk about automated messaging for your airbnb and short term rental business, and which one you should be using. Having an automated system in communicating with guests is essential so you don’t have to sit on your phone all day checking and replying to messages.
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Julian Sage: 00:00 In this episode, we’re talking all about automated messaging for your Airbnb short term rental business and which one you should be using. So stay tuned.
Julian Sage: 00:09 Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show is all about creating systems that help you automate your business, giving you more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribed 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. Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of vacation rental machine. In this episode, we’re talking all about automation and communication and things that you should be using to be able to make your life simpler so you’re not sitting on your phone all day replying to messages. Now, as a professional, we are all about automation when we’re trying to find things that make our lives easier so we can focus on growing a business, not being in the business, and one of these tools is going to be automation, smart messaging, things that automatically reply.
Julian Sage: 01:07 Now I personally use Your Porter, but Your Porter’s messaging was kind of limited. It did help with the check in process, but it didn’t feel like it was that all in one messaging platform. Now, one of the other aspects of messaging is also guest reviews and review automation, but as a professional who has scaled up to 30 properties, now Jon knows a thing or two about messaging because otherwise he’d be on his phone all day just messaging all these people that are checking in. So to take the workload off of him, he has outsourced a majority of his messaging to these messaging automation tools. Now, Jon, what are the tools that you have previously used and which one are you using today to make your life simpler?
Jon Bell: 01:53 I started with messaging within the platform, saved templates, just responding to guests’ questions and just trying to figure out the right template and I was building templates as people ask questions and I would just find them and send them. Well, that was also very non-personal, just sending the same message over and over again. Starting with “Hi,” just didn’t work, so I then graduated to using what was in my PMs. It had some type of unified messaging system which allowed me to customize messages per property. This was great. Groundbreaking at the stage where I was with my units. It also alleviated a lot of messages and I thought I was good there. It wasn’t until I found SmartBNB that I thought that I didn’t need it. Right. It’s an extra cost, but Oh my God, is it one of those tools that you must have?
Jon Bell: 02:50 This is one of those, I won’t even talk to you too much longer if you don’t use it just because it is that important. This is part of my backbone. This is my second man that’s standing right here behind me that does all this stuff and it gives me extra stuff, but you know what I like about SmartBNB the most? They don’t try to do too much. A lot of PMs is try to get into every little avenue of this business and they spread themselves too thin and can not focus on what’s really important. Smartbnb sticks with messaging and Oh my God, is it great? Couple of examples of why it’s so great. I got a basement apartment that I rent out inside of a town hall. It’s only accessible from the alley. I’m able to put in automated messages to my guests that show exactly where to go.
Jon Bell: 03:46 I mean I could add a photo. It sends the photo with the highlighted route of where to go. I got a picture of the back of the home so you know what the back of the home looks like. You know how hard it is to send a photo within some type of unified messaging tool. Normally that stuff is all just straight texts. You can’t do any of that. But seeing that go out and the guests can actually see and look at a photo and then see those things and walk up to it, it just makes my job a lot easier. Not only that, it has an AI, right? It goes in, it looks at the message that the guest sends and then says, Hey, this question is a good sound in like, you know, this person is looking for the wifi code. It automatically sends it out to them really quickly.
Jon Bell: 04:33 Right. And what I get back is, wow, that was quick. Well, I didn’t do a darn thing, but thanks. I can send my thanks just as quick as the message that went out, give them the uwifi codes. I like doing that. Some of the other benefits that I get from smartBNB is they included metrics. One of the very important metrics that they have is how much time they saved you by automations. I look at that, I look at my communications. It also has extra things to shows me revenue. Smartbnb also ties into HomeAway in VRBO. So I’m able to keep the same unified messaging across all of those platforms. They’re working on booking.com. Again, if I can keep the same thing that I know that works across all my marketing channels, that is a win-win for me as a win-win for all of us.
Jon Bell: 05:25 I mean 100% take my link down below, try it out. You’re going to like it. Give it a big try, add in whatever you want. You can add in any type of customization. Outside of just what it does for my guests, it mobilizes my team. I’m talking about my cleaners. My cleaners get notified of things the night before they check out, the day of checkout. They go, they clean. Everybody is just in tuned with what this tool just provides and sends out. I don’t need anything extra to kind of make this happen. This tool has definitely been groundbreaking. It’s the only reason why I was able to grow to where I am. You got it. Got it. You got to have it. You gotta have it. You gotta have it. All right. If I beat you guys up on this one, I apologize, but this is a no-brainer. You got to get it. I’m so sorry. If you’re using something else and you think it’s better than what I’m currently using, comment down below. I’d like to test it out. I really want to compare it.
Julian Sage: 06:27 And with everything that Jon said, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review 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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