AutoPilot Profits: Harnessing Hands-Off Marketing for Customer Retention

Hi, welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives host the tools, the tactics, the training, most importantly the confidence so you can go out there and get yourself more direct bookings. We do a mini series on this podcast which interviews people, services, businesses from all over the world which hosts need to know about. These are things that you can do or implement within your business which is going to help you, especially today, is going to help you get more direct bookings. And we've got a special guest to join us. We've got Sam Mistrata from, he's the CEO and founder and he's from Go STR Marketing which is this amazing service. I'm not going to take anything away from what he does. Let's jump straight in and say hello to Sam. So welcome along, Sam.

Hey Liam. Great to be here man. How are you doing today?

I'm very good. Thank you for joining me. I'm excited to dive into this.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So for people who haven't heard of Go STR Marketing or yourself, what can they expect from the next, say 20 minutes on this episode? What will they leave this episode knowing, which they may not already know?

I'd say wherever you're at in your short term rental hosting or co hosting journey, you need to do three things. One, start collecting contacts now, phone numbers and emails of your past guests. Two, whether you do it yourself or find a partner that markets to those past guests, do it. And number three, take action. Right. Make sure the partner's proven. Make sure if you know how to do it, you know how to do it well and then go. Because every day you don't reach out and make contact with your past guests that love their experience at your place, they either can't find it or they're booking with somebody else.

100%. And this is something which so close to to our heart at Boosie, you know, like any way that you can connect with guests, you can bring them back is so important. So give me the elevator pitch. What is Go Str marketing?

Yeah, so Go Str is the first 100%, maybe the only at this point underneath, I think it may be still anyway, the first and only 100% done for you. Professionally custom branded 12 month email and text marketing solution for STR operators from an STR operator that messages your past guests for you on a monthly cadence, directing them back to your direct booking website to explore and rebook any property in your portfolio.

Love that. I love everything about that. So why is this important to you? Because I know it's Important to me. But why is this important to you? Why this business?

Yeah, well, it's interesting because I kind of stumbled upon this. I never just set out to say, you know, I'm going to build a digital marketing business. Right. I mean, I guess my background, I've got a, you know, 12 year background in enterprise IT and I started STR, got into STRs from long term rental management and then so I shifted to short terminal management. 12 months after I was doing hosting and co hosting. 12 months after I started my first one, I was resigning from my W2 and then took the leap to do this full time. And at that point I had 12. Right. And so I had six more in the pipeline. So it was a crazy year and a half. We did 18 listings and.

18.

And so, you know, I took everybody, you know, all the help I could with from my wife. I got a great BA team we assembled here and so we did that. And then, you know, at the end of 18 months we were out of breath and I was still married. You know, my wife, you know, still stuck around. It was a. Heck, yeah, it was exciting. But anyway, so after that I said, man, what can I do with all this data? You know, I've got everything. I know this data is so valuable from, you know, my past life. So I said, man, what, what can I do with it? I know I need to start marketing. Everybody says you need to market. Well, there's so many different types of marketing. And so I wanted to take a dive down the one with path of least resistance. So I knew I had contact names, emails and phone numbers of my past guests. And I knew the ones that were great guests because I marked the bad guests bad and I'm not going to invite them back. And so I said, okay, I've got all this data now what can I do with it? I'm just going to go out and find a marketing solution. Not a big deal. Everybody says you need a market. I'm sure there's one out there. Well, like weeks and turned into months. And you know, I look back and what did I have to show for it? Nothing. So I was like, okay. Rolled up my sleeves and I got the band back together from the it, you know, friends and family. So I said, hey, look, here's what we need to do. This is how we need to put it together. You do that end. I know the front end of the SDRs. And then after that we implemented that in my business and. And man, I was just floored by the bottom line revenue. It. It brought in and how easy it was to manage. So I was like, man, well if I just, you know, add this service or you know, provide this feature or something like that, then I'd love to show this to my friends in the STR business. And so I wasn't, I wasn't quite that confident yet. So then I got a beta group together, we tested it, they had similar results and so then I had the confidence to introduce it and offer friends and I mean they're getting, getting bookings days after we launch. I mean easily covering the cost sometimes in weeks if not months at a time.

So hey, we'll be right back with the show. But in the last couple of months I've heard that property managers and holiday let owners were seeing a decline in revenue, which is not good. Operators have started cutting spending in anticipation of what could be a downturn. And this is where I want to bring your attention to Hostfully. Hostfully is one of the leading property management software programs out there with, with all the bells and whistles you need to manage and automate, but at a crazy affordable price for the average manager switching to host flee there be a saving of nearly $1,000 a month, which is insane. Hostly stands out as one of our go to recommended partners here at Boostly because they can list on not only Airbnb, Vrbo, booking.com, google, Marriott and plus the 16 other major channels which means your property is seen more but it is also an app automation tools, the best inbox and that award winning 24. 7 customer support. So why pay more for expensive software? Join the Hostfully family. Elevate your property management game without those hefty price tags. Visit www.hostfully.comboostly to get an exclusive deal just for you. So Hostfully is H O S T F U L L Y and when you book a call tell them that Boostly sent you. All right, let's get back on with the show.

It really makes sense as to why this is important to you. And I love the Blues Brothers reference the getting the band back together as well. How important is it the fact that you've got the hospitality experience first and that you're not just because there's lots of email marketing kind of companies out there. But how important is it that you've got the hospitality experience first and foremost that you are a host? What would you say?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean what we do as hosts is, you know, we're in hospitality. So that messaging that the knowledge of the Whole process, from start to finish, I feel is critical because, I mean, that's what hospitality is, right? That's how I was born, you know, in the Deep south, here in, you know, Louisiana, and in the U.S. we were just, we, you know, we were born with hospitality. That's how we know to treat people. And so, you know, I know whenever I was in my IT background, it's. It's very easy to just kind of go down rabbit holes and just, you know, it's all ones and zeros, right? But then, you know, putting those two together, that's what really makes the whole industry go around and what makes people come back and, you know, create those experiences that they want to revisit.

That's cool. So, and I, I get what the. I get the why, and I get sort of just why it's important to you in, in general. So let's dive into the, the how it all works for, for people listening to this guy. You know what, it's a great idea. And we said just before we went live that often I'm speaking to hosts who have got some way of collecting emails. Like the PMS or StayFi is a big one in the industry at the moment. And when I, when I say, how many emails have we got? They say like, yeah, I've got 500 emails, or whatever it is. And you go, what was the last email you sent them? And they go, I haven't sent any emails yet. And they're really kind of shy about doing that. So how does it work for the hosts who are listening to this? What is the kind of steps for Go STR marketing? And do they need to have their own list? Or is it a case of can they build a list once they're with you? What is the best time to come and find out more?

Yeah, so kind of in a nutshell, go SDR marketing is three steps. One, you select what we have. We have really three different options. If you have one to 25 properties, and then the second option is 26 to 50, and then the third option is 50 plus, we find most of our clients have between five and 25 probably. But we have a few with one property that have been doing it for a long time, and we have, you know, multiple with over, you know, 30 and 40, even 50. But the way it works is you purchase, you're directed to an onboarding portal, you upload all your data. You're not, it's not even all your data really like your photos, your company information, your market information. When your peak shoulder And Slow seasons are like your five favorite restaurants in that property, excuse me, in that market, five attractions and then five, you know, events. All you have to do is put the URL, we take care of all the copy, the images and everything else. We use your photos. And then a few weeks after that we come back and say, hey look, it's time to proof your 12 month professionally designed email campaign. And so we go over that one to one, we show you how to make comments. A few weeks later after those comments are, you know, fulfilled by our team, after you grant US PMS and StayFi, if you have it access. By that point we have scraped, scrubbed and imported your contacts to market for you. And then we even do a live launch. And that's where the fun starts because you can actually see all the contacts or about a handful because we do there. It's very strategic for. We'll get into that later but you know, all of the different regulations for text and email but you know, you can see on a live launch, whenever we actually market to your people, you can see the response. It's really cool. It's, there's a lot of action in there. So after that we scrape, scrub and import. Every two weeks we get new guests in there. We give you time to make sure they're marked bad so we don't, we filter those bad guests out so they don't trash your place again. And then there it is. And then a year later, once you see how well it works, we keep it going. You can change, you know, different styles for your design and things like that. And then all throughout the process you can, you know, scale up or scale down with properties, send us different, you know, properties that you add and we can feature those as well. So it's really it. All you do is just reply to inquiries on your app. So there's no need to crack a lap up after you proof your email campaign. So it's just all an app. I made this for my VAs so they can manage it on a daily basis. And you know, even if you do have a, you know, a full time gig, you don't have any VAs, you can still, you know, use it while you're on your phone. So.

Nice. That sounds really cool. And I mean one of, what would you say to somebody who's listening to this and just going, yeah, I'm not really sure about email. In my past guests, I, you know, I don't like emails myself, marketing emails, so I don't want to do it to them. What, what would you say to those.

People, yeah, so especially in this market over the past probably year, year and a half, you have to do things that other people aren't doing. And so a lot of people aren't doing things as simple as this. I say as simple as this, but it's actually a little bit more work than it actually, you know, seems to be. But I would say you have to do things that other people aren't doing and that they're not doing at a high level. You have to build your brand and you just have to be consistent. That's the. That's the other thing that I find really cripples people. And it may be great. You send out one beautiful email, oh, my gosh, it's amazing. And then, wow, you get. You sent a second one, man, you're now on a roll. And then you add another property and then you've got to set it up and then there it goes. Like, there's all your momentum. Right. The biggest thing in this and in any marketing campaign is consistency.

100%. I completely. What you've said there, if we can sound bite that and stick it on the reel, because it's just so true, isn't it? I mean, nobody expects to go to the gym and do one or two reps and go, do you know what? I've been to the gym three times now. You know, I'm not feeling buff, you know, like, it's that consistency of doing it time and time again and just doing what others aren't either willing to do or don't find the time to do. And this is the thing. There's so many amazing tools, services and things like that out there for hosts listening to this to be able to dive into, to be able to do things that the rest of their. Is their neighbors, you know, that aren't actually doing. And everybody listening to this podcast is probably in the top few percent in the world of hosts just by the sheer fact that they're interested and listening to try and expand their business. This is what I love about stuff like this. So I definitely want to dive more into the, you know, some of the. The things that people may be concerned about. But before we do, what would you say has been the biggest success so far for Go Str STR has. And how long has it been running for? Currently, yes.

So we've been. I've been doing this myself for a little over a year and a half, so about a year. We've been doing this for other people in our beta groups and everything like that. So it's probably the, the, the most. Man, I'll never forget whenever we marketed to like our first beta group member because all these messages went out and then just to see their faces and her face just like light up, like, oh my God, they said yes. And I saw it right here, yes, I would be interested. And then it's just to see those, just to see that reaction. It's just it, you know, being from the STR operator side, it's just so rewarding to see me help build people's business, do that for them, be a part of their lives. Because I mean, look, a lot of people do this full time and that's how they feed their family and that's, that's how they chase the dream. And for me to be able to really support them and make designing their ideal lives easier is just, that's probably the best for me because there's a lot of active hustle in this passive income stream.

When you get a notification on your phone and you can see it's a direct booking, I still smile. I'm still super happy when I've got that. And if I've done that off the back of spending, you know, four, four minutes sending out an email, which is pre prepared, mind you, but you know, like if you can generate, it's like having your own cash machine, right? If you can, if, when you send this information out, if you can then get something back. The majority of the time, the more context you've got, the more likely it is you're going to get something back. It's just why isn't everybody doing this? You know, it's just so, so important. So one of the things I'd like to dive into would be that the, the tech kind of things that we mentioned, is it any challenges or any kind of things that we all need to be aware of as hosts when it comes down to email marketing that we may not have thought of?

Yes. So whenever. Well, there's a couple things to, to address your point about email marketing. February 1st, Google and Yahoo and probably a few other, but those are the largest ones really put some fairly strict regulations to prohibit all these mass marketers that were using, you know, marketing tools for, for the dark side, right. Using them for evil instead of good. And so they would have, people would understand, you know, learn how to just blast hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of emails at once. And so now you have to do a few different things with your domain and register your DNS and things like that. January, you didn't have to now you have to. So you know, you have to, you have to know your way around your website and how to maybe change some records and things like that. We do all that for you whenever we come in. But you know, if, if you're, if you're handy, you know, tech wise and understand how to do all that DNS stuff shouldn't be a problem. Another thing a few months back further probably the end of maybe it was the middle of 2023 I guess but there were also some very strict regulations set from the SMS carriers so excuse me, the self, the cell service providers. It's a HP regulation tin dcl different things like that where you now have to register your phone number that you want to send those text messages with your company as far as the EIN number. So it is a manual process, you have to apply and get approved. Otherwise if you just try to send a bunch of messages through like an open phone or constant contact or something like that that may work a little bit but like you have to get your that phone number basically registered with your company I n or else you will be marked as spam and you're not going to land on people's phones. And so you're going to take all this time and all this effort and I'm going to get reward for it.

Fair enough. So it's, there's a couple of things just to be aware of there then, isn't it? And by going for a professional service because instantly if as a host, if somebody says DNS servers and stuff like that, I mean I now know because I've got to know but I can remember thinking at the time when you first hear that you go I don't want to, I don't want to deal with that. I need somebody else to help me with that. And this is the great thing, isn't it about Go STR is that everyone has different stage within their business and sometimes in the, especially in the early stage you might have more time and less money so you might want to, you know, have a go at it yourself and learn the ropes. And then as your business grows and like you say, if majority of your hosts have got 5 to 25 units then you haven't got time to necessarily deep dive into the stuff you could in the early days. Which is why if there's a done for you service is so popular certainly I see a huge demand for what you're putting out there. So I'm excited to see this and to hear about it. You get to speak to a lot of different hosts and look at the different campaigns. Is there any kind of tips you can share with people in general about things they should and things they shouldn't be doing? When it comes down to like an email campaign for past guests, can you share any kind of, any details on that?

Yeah, exactly. I would say keep, keep it simple. Don't make it, don't make it too cutesy, right. Get the message across in a friendly tone. You know, make sure your imagery, if you're taking it from a template or something like that, make sure it's high quality, right. In anything, you know, your photos, things like that, make sure it just looks nice. I mean, I still even get these horrible email marketing messages from like this condo estate in and Gulf Shores like 10 years ago and I just look at it and laugh now I'm like, this is out there. Like, man, the bar is low. But yeah, just another thing is, you know, put, put clear, concise messages on how to book. If you are, you know, directing them to your direct booking site, the messaging is very similar to your PMS or your automated messaging that goes out, right, so make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. And then, yeah, so the other biggest thing is keep on a regular cadence. That, that's the big thing. That's really what's what, what gets most people again is just having that discipline to do that. So we could do it. And if you want it to be successful, you gotta keep with it. Otherwise it's, you know, you know, not gonna work out too well for you.

I mean, I completely agree. You gotta stick with one host I spoke to who they, it's the first email they'd ever sent out. And, and of course when you first send out that first email, if you've never sent one, you're going to get a lot of people who just unsubscribe, right? There's going to be people who just don't want to be on that list necessarily because it's the first communication. Fair enough. Those people are never going to be guests again. So it's not a problem. If they come off your list, it saves you an email contact or if you're paying for one of the CRM type things. But ultimately just by starting to get that regular message out there, you're more likely to start to build up top of mind presence. So when people are thinking, if they genuinely enjoyed staying in your home, then next time they're thinking, oh, holiday, they'll be thinking, who's, you know, what have I seen recently? What makes me think of where I've been. And of course if you're in their inbox, you're easy to find Then so many times when we send out an email, whatever the message is in that email they completely ignore and I just get the hey, have you got these dates available? You know, like, you know they don't. It's not necessarily the message is, it's the fact you're in contact with them, isn't it? It's the fact there's, there's kind of a relationship with you guest there which is cool. So where's the locations that you guys serve at the moment and what is there to come in the future from go sdr?

Yeah, absolutely. So right now we kind of serve North America. We're getting to you guys in the UK there are some integrations, you know we have with WhatsApp and everything. We're not totally done with that. We're going to get there also like down the road. We're always coming out and improving our technology. That's, that's, you know, what we really take pride in. But you know, social media integration, Google my business integration, things like that, we can, we can set up lead pages and things like that. But you know, whenever you get into the different, you know, website, you know, that conversation. I prefer the actual websites that really expose your other properties, your whole portfolio kind of like Boostly does and so, but yeah, no, it's, it's text and email is our foundation. It's done for you. It's just the easiest low hanging fruit that you can be actually from start to finish you can be marketing and having those personal conversations with your guests in a matter of weeks from actually, you know, paying for it. And then after that we're going to just have add ons.

Right.

If you, if the social media add on makes sense, okay, let's do that. If the Google my business add on makes sense, let's do that. So it's just kind of whatever you like.

I'm really excited to see the future of the business and it's so something the industry needs as we said earlier on. So yeah, this has been really good and I love on the spotlight series where we kind of shine the spotlight on and there's so much more we could dive into. But this is exactly the point that if you're listening to this as a guest think and sorry as a host listening to this and you're thinking, you know what, I need that in my business or it wouldn't hurt to at least go and find out more. How can people come and find out more?

Yeah. So if you go to go str marketing.com you can book a demo and that's going to be with me live. So we have a few different spots, a few different days of the week. Jump on. You can ask me anything. Happy to tell you about any of that. Also, you can find me just on Facebook, Samuel Mastretta Team Boostly site as well. And then also if you are a member of Team Boostly, you can, if you, if you want to move forward with this, I'll give you a little secret coupon code if you're an official Team Boostly member, and that's Boostly. And so that'll give you a little help there towards the end at checkout. And then also if anybody hears this up to seven days after it airs, they can drop in the coupon code 100 off and you can save a hundred bucks off if you move forward with that annual subscription. So just, you know, trying to get back to the community. That's been so helpful to me.

So that is mega. And we will be posting this in the Team Boostly group. And of course, we've got the free group, the hospitality group as well, where if you're listening to this and you want to find out more, come and join us in the hospitality Facebook group. So thank you so much. Sam, was there anything we missed along the way and anything that you wanted to sort of COVID that we haven't dived into?

I don't think so. Just, you know, make a decision and act on it, you know, that's the. What, what's the cost of indecision? Right. I'm having that conversation a lot. Whether it's in the business with marketing or if it's outside of business, you know, just get a vision, act on it.

Nice. Nice. I like that. I like that. And is that your motto that you kind of take into. Into things that. Yeah.

So one of my favorite mottos is actually whatever you can conceive and believe you can achieve. And that's my. I think, I think a buddy, Napoleon Hill, said that. So it's just have faith in yourself, because you can't have faith in yourself. You can have faith, you know, take the leap. You're going to learn. If you fail, learn from it and you'll get stronger. Give it a shot. We're only here once.

Love that. What a great sentiment to end on. And Napoleon Hill, I'm a super big fan. You can't see, but behind the camera, that's quotes around the room and we've got Napoleon Hill up there. So thank you so much for, for your time this today on this podcast. Thank you too, for listening to this on the Brucely podcast. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention. Really thank you for putting up with Bruce Lee. If there's somebody who needs to hear what has been said in this episode, please do share it with them. You're doing them a favor. You're helping us as well, and we hope to see you on the next podcast. Thanks very much. Bye for now.