How to build an email list

Before we start today's episode of the Boosted podcast, I have got some exciting news to share with you. For the month of July, I am giving away one month trial of the boostly content creator. Now, you may be asking and you may be thinking, well, what is the boostly content creator host that I have come into contact with in the five years of doing Boostly? And when I say to them, you need to be posting every single day on social media, you need to be emailing, emailing your guest and your list, they always say to me, I haven't got the time. And I can't think of a better month to promote the boostly content creator than July. Because right now everybody around the world is busy, busy, busy, busy. And they haven't got the time to think about the marketing or the social media or the emails, when in fact the best time to do marketing is when you're at your busiest because that means that you always have a pipeline coming through. So I created the boostly content creator for busy hosts. Now what do you get? Every single month you get 30 to 40 pieces of fresh social media content that you can use for your social media channels. LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera. You also get video templates which are designed to stop the scroll on social media, which is really powerful. Email templates designed by expert copywriters that are working so well. Georgina Bearman messaged up in our Facebook group to say that she used one of the email templates and got free bookings, direct bookings instantly, which more than covered the cost. You also now get website headline generator tools. You get a money back guarantee and you can cancel anytime. The price is only five pound a month. And right now when you sign up, you go into the boostlycontentcreator.com you add to your basket in the coupon code section, you type in July and you get the first month free. Now that is only available for the month of July. After that it's five pound. If you don't want to continue, you can just cancel at any time. But please make sure that you go and you use the boostly content creator. My goal is a month in the month of July is to get 1,000 new hosts to register and sign up. This is how powerful I know this tool is because the email templates in itself are providing a massive return of investment and I would love for you to come and join. This is for new members only. Just go to boostlycontent creator.com add it to your basket, put in coupon code July and I'll see you on the other side. Right now, we've got that out of the way. Let's get on with today's podcast episode. Welcome back to the podcast. And as always, over the course of this little mini series, I've been helping Casa for you in Javier to try and fill an apartment that is struggling to get bookings right now. And what we've done is we've covered some of the basics which making sure that Airbnb and booking.com are fully optimized and updated so they can appear higher in the ranking, higher in the listing, higher visibility, but also for the direct booking aspect is we've made sure that it is obvious to the future potential guests that Casa for you is a property management company. It's not a hobby. They can do a search on Google, and once they do that search on Google, then we are hoping to drive them to the website and then they'll make a direct booking. So we're trying to cover all bases. Now, One of the next things that we're going to do, and this is something we're going to be trying to achieve over the next couple of weeks, is to build up an email list. Because if anybody has been listening to me for any amount of time, you know that one of my favorite sayings, one of my favorite quotes is, never build your house on someone else's land. And when you start to rely on Airbnb and booking.com to bring in your bookings, you are not collecting data. Now, collecting data, creating a database, building an email list is really essential if you want to grow your business and if you want to increase your direct bookings. Now, Yonek and Tim have been doing this for a couple of years now, and they have very quietly, in the background being create, collating emails. Now, as you are be aware by now, they're on booking.com, they're on Airbnb, but they're also on a Dutch website called Mikazoo. Apologies if I've mispronounced that. But the beauty of Mikazoo is that it is a more of a paid listing site. So kind of something that we don't see a lot of now. Uh, but when a booking comes through, you actually get the email. Now, over time, they've been collecting these emails, but they, number one, haven't done anything in forms of getting permission to send email marketing messages, to which obviously with the new GDPR and email rules, you need to. So what we're going to do is we're going to very slowly, over the Course of the next few weeks, contact these guests and we are going to ask them if they would like to join our email list. Now the reason why it's going to take a while is that we have to do this one on one, we have to do it personalized and we have to send it just like I'm sending you a one on one email, like a message in a long lost pen pal. Now this, you know, is not something that we're going to do instantly. You know, we've got 84 people to message, but we'll just put it in the foundations now. So I just want to very quickly show you the screen. We've created the CASA for you VIP email list. As you can see, we've imported 85 contacts. Now, when you import on Mailchimp, you've got a couple of options. Number one, one, you can import them as a subscriber or number two, you can import them as a placeholder. Now a placeholder doesn't mean that you can send them email messages etc, but you can start to build a list. So that's exactly what we've done. We've imported their email, their first name, their last name, sort of the key information really. And what we're going to do now is we have added the tags and the tags are 2018-2019-2020-2021. So that tells us when they have booked to come and I'll come back to tags in another episode. So what Yanek and Tim are now doing is we've created a template as sort of a swipe message and it's one they can send on email and a WhatsApp message because again, they've been very good at collecting WhatsApp numbers over the years, which is cool. So the process now is we're going to message these 85 people and just quite simply have a little check in, see how they are. Because one of the things that I love about what your neck and Tim do is that when a guest checks in, they go and physically meet them. Now again, some property owners or some courses or some coaches will say, I don't do the meet and greet, but it's all about knowing your avatar. The majority of our guests are Dutch and the Dutch people, they are very set in their ways. They do still appreciate and they expect to be greeted even if it's a rental property. And again, it's a fantastic way for you to get to know your guests a bit better. It's a great way to sort of put a face to the name and a face to the brand. And again if you were to read any of your neck and Tim's reviews online you will see that the, the personal feel, the meet and greet aspect is something that does get mentioned which is good. You know you always got to take all this information that we give you and put it into the context of your own business, your own guest avatar, etc. So by the by we're mess reaching out and messaging them and what we've done is we have created a a sign up form. So in that signup form really super simple. It's got email, first name, last name, it's got all the GDPR ness. We've tied it up with a little logo and this is the link that we're sending out. So the, the conversation is going something along the lines of hi name, insert personal information as in a how are you, how are the kids? Etc we have started up a VIP casa for you email if you would like to to join it. Here's a link to do. So in this we will telling you all the latest information Javier new properties that we come on board X, Y and Z Simple. That's the email that's going to go out. We're going to start sending that. So hopefully by the time we check back in it this number one will be 85 or even more. Now the second thing that we're doing every booking that comes in and your PMS will have this is that there'll be an automated email that goes out to everybody. So what I've done is I've gone in and I have amended the text that gets sent out so the first thing in the subject headline action required booking confirmation. Now a very high majority of of people open these emails on the point of a booking because they want to see it's all legit. And again if you've got the action required they're more likely to do so when they open it up. As you can see this is a bit of a text that we've put in. Please can you fill in this short format that will help speed up the check in process when you arrive. When they click here it comes through to a Google form. So again really, really essential can get it at the point of booking Email, first name, last name, mobile number, guest names and passports and also as well can we email you more information they take? Yes, we have set up a Zapier API that will then link directly into here and it will subscribe them as long as they put yes again so that is the actual thing that they are looking for. The actual thing that they're looking for is the yes on there, which is, which is great. So this is a, again, part of the process that we're doing. This is going to be more of a medium to long term benefit forecaster for you, but by starting to do this, even better. One of the next things we're going to do as well is we're going to create a hostfully digital guidebook. We're going to create one for the apartment and what that will also do as well will help get the email address. So again we can then link that up into mailchimp and we can do so much more. So I will show you that in future episodes I will check back in with all of the things that we have done here and of course I will update you on the podcast as we go. So for those of you that are tuning in for the first time, my name is Mark Simmerson. I give hosts just like you, the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence to go and get more direct bookings for your hospitality business so you don't have to rely on Airbnb and booking.com and you can build your own fantastic direct booking business. This little series I am doing, I am walking through and going through with Casa for you and just helping them try and fill an apartment that they're fine and finding it tricky to do. So if you've missed any of the previous episodes, feel free to go back on the previous five or six videos that we've done. Again, we've got the podcast, the blog post, et cetera. You can go check it out on Instagram, Facebook, wherever it may be. Go do check it out. But what I would love for you to do is to let me know if you potentially would like me to do a boostly tune up. So if this is the case, I'm just sort of seeing if it's something that you would like me to do for you. Just email markoostly.co.uk uh, in the subject head input tune up. If I get enough people respond or message me then I'll turn it into a thing. I've not got a price in mind, I've not got anything in mind. I just want to see if this is something that you would like for me to do. So again, your emails will vote for this for me. Uh, if you can't email, just leave it in the comment below and I will pick it up. So I'll be back tomorrow. Thank you very much for tuning in and take care. Speak soon. Remember, as Always be proactive. Don't be reactive.