Ben Porter Smith walks through his system for short-stay hosts: a CRM like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign paired with a channel manager like Toki to sync calendars and automate emails. He sends a personalized booking confirmation, a mid-stay check-in to catch problems early, and a pre-departure email that asks for reviews and pushes guests toward booking direct next time.
What are your favorite tools that you're using so you're using for you, you're using for your clients? When it comes to marketing, have you got any sort of tactics and tips and tricks and tools that anybody can sort of download or start using that sort of give us a little insight to what you're doing?
You'll be the same. As somebody that's obsessed with the digital world, I'm always looking at new pieces of software and new technology that I can use to A, make my life easier, but B, stand out in front of other competitors and stand out to my consumers. So the one thing that I am crazy about is CRM systems. So customer relationship management systems, they have grown my business more than I could fathom, because if you use them in the right way, you can really build a relationship with your audience without necessarily having to do an awful lot. And that was one of the biggest things I picked up in my corporate career when I was working through various digital companies, was that the fundamental of every in any business is a CRM system. Whether it's HubSpot, Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign, that doesn't matter. And if you're not necessarily familiar with what it is I'm talking about, I'd say the main thing behind the customer relationship management software system that allows you to do is automate your process. So I use Toki as my channel manager, which is kind of like a CRM system. It allows me to merge my calendars for my SA apartments, and it allows me to send out automated emails to guests. So a good little thing that I like to do is I have a little sequence of automated emails and text messages where when my guests are coming to my apartment. So when somebody books my system then fires an automated email, and it says, thank you for your booking for X amount on X date. And it uses their name so that it looks like I've sent the email personally. Then we sign it off with our contact information, tell them that we're looking forward to seeing them, and all of that kind of stuff. So that brings a nice little kind of initial. Hi, welcome. We got your book in. The apartment's gonna be ready for you when you get here. And it just breaks down that little barrier of discomfort, especially if they're coming from Europe or America or, you know, even further away. And then midway through their stay, we send them a little email. I don't really do a text message because I feel like text messages can be somewhat invasive. So for this one, I just do an email and I Say hi, Hope everything's okay. Let me know if you need anything. If you have any questions. As always, I'm not too far away from the apartment, so if you need anything, let me know. Now, 99 times out of 100, they'll come back and say everything's absolutely perfect. But that one person is going to come back and say, oh, well, actually, I'm finding it hard to work the TV or I can't find the WI FI code or whatever, but they don't want to bother you. And the fact that you've now went and proactively asked them what it is that is wrong or if there is any problems, it then breaks down that barrier and allows them to come and talk to you and say, oh, actually, I could do with some help on this. And that's going to do two things. It's going to alleviate the problem there and it's going to keep your guests happy, meaning you get a great review, but it's also going to build rapport with the customer so that in the long term, they're going to want to consider back and stay with you because they know that you care. And then just before they leave, we send an email that says, hi, thanks for your stay. Once again, if you could please put the keys back in a lockbox. Here's the code again and all that other kind of stuff. But then the most important part is at the bottom of that email, we say, please leave us a review on Airbnb, booking.com, facebook, wherever it's easiest for you to access. And then we say, if you want to contact us and come back for a direct booking, we can give you X amount off, we can do you a special price, and you can get in touch with us on this email address, you can follow us on this Facebook page, or you can, you know, whatever, all the avenues of direct contact.
I Tested AI Search SEO for Rental Hosts... Here Is What Happened [Live Training]
