Mark Simpson shows how to capture guest email addresses from OTA bookings before those forwarding addresses expire. Send a confirmation with a Google Form link asking for their real email and phone number, then follow up after checkout to request marketing permission. For Airbnb, use the chat feature to avoid triggering their automated filters.
I'm going to show you one of the easiest ways of ensuring that you can grow your email list. The best thing is it's free. Why do booking.com Airbnb, TripAdvisor, rentals, holiday lettings and all the OTAs never actually share with you your future guests real email address? Because they want that data and they know that if you get their real email address, then they have then the ability to book with you directly. So what they do is they do this, they send you a masked email address. Masked email, which basically means when I send an email to this guest, it will get forwarded to their real address. The reason why it's important to get their real one is that two months after checkout, this expires. But building your list is one of the most important things that you can do if you ever want to increase your direct booking. And it can all begin at the point of the booking. So, as we all know, I use Free to book for our property. Doesn't matter who you use, you will all get the same information fed to you. So we're going to start off in Free to book and then I'll show you the exact same tactics to use in Airbnb. And then Airbnb you can pretty much mimic for any rental site. So for the point of data protection and security, I have gone and done a search for well over a year ago and I'm going to focus on a guest that cancelled the stay. So we've got Ashley's details here. So obviously, as you can see, this is the email address that booking.com have sent through. The subject heading won't say cancelled, it will just say booking or something like that. And again, that is already pre filled in by Free to book. You can substitute Free to book for your PMS system, but you've got the ability when an email, when a booking comes in, to send your potential guest an email just to confirm their stay. If you are fortunate enough to have all automated emails, then you can sit back and relax. But you need to set it up. So what you need to do is you need to go to your preview section, your template section, and you will need to create something that looks similar to this. So with Free to book, that is done in the email tab with Tokit or Avivo or the rest, that is done in your templated tab as well. This is the email that we send every guest, so I'll read it out to you. Hi Don. Just to confirm you've booked for one night. And this is all formulated. So when we go into our template section on free to book, which is where we create it. Free to book take the information that is fed from booking.com and we put it into here. So just to confirm you've booked for one night, your arrival date is on insert date total cost for your stay. If anything above is incorrect, please let us know by calling. Please can you let us know if you'd like to eat with us on the day of arrival as we can always guarantee a table. This is the important bit everybody can use. So if you have booked it directly with us, your check in time is anytime after one. If you have booked your stay with us via a third party, your check in time is anytime after 3pm now this is optional but important. And then we finish it off with if you would like to request an earlier check in time, please contact me directly on 870026. Please call and they say we'd like the earlier check in time and then that just sets off the motions of sure thing. So all you need to do is cancel your OTA booking, come back to me and then we will book you in directly for the earlier check in time. The public don't realize is that when they book directly with us, we reserve the best incentives for them. So by simply doing this, everybody gets this message. If you have booked with an ota, you see that you're getting penalized. You're more likely the psychological aspect of it all is to give them a call now to take this step further and to go about getting the guest's real email address. This is what you need to do. Open up a Google form. So Google forms are free. You can create a Google account with any email address. You don't have to have a gmail. Of all the templates you can either choose blank or if you really want to, just click on contact information. The document will load up and the first thing that I always do is change the contact information to guest deed every bit of information below. This is what the guest sees. So I would put maybe in here the granary guests check in information and then you'll have name, email address, address, phone number, comments. If you wanted to change anything or add anything, you've got all the little tabs on the side. But the most important thing would be for me name, email address, phone number, any check in requests. When you're finished you're going to click on send and got this in here. You're going to put collect email and click on the little paper click, shorten it and you're Going to copy that. Before you go anywhere else, just click on the little spanner button for the settings and you just want to make sure that the confirmation message has got a little bit of a personal touch from yourself. So all I would do is I'd come into here and I'll find a nice place to put it in. Before you go any further, please click this link, insert it there and fill in the form. This will ensure your check in is as smooth as possible. So you want to give them an incentive. So whether that's just to make sure that the check in is going to be smooth, it could be you give them another incentive. It is totally, totally up to you at what information that you put in there. When you're finished, you just click save on your template. That is all that you would need to do. So if you've got booklet, if you've got super control, create a template and off you go. With regards to Airbnb, with the data that Airbnb give you, they just give you their phone number and the check in date. If you want to communicate with the guests, you have to send them a message. What I would recommend is storing your code from the Google form the link pop, put it somewhere safe. When a booking comes in from Airbnb or for TripAdvisor and you have to chat via their extranet, put that in there and off it goes. If you were to ask them in here. So as soon as you mention in an Airbnb chat, can I have your email address? Free Airbnb sorry will flag that and ban it because that's what their super control. So their super system, super constituted system. Their algorithm will pick out email address. Can I have your email address? If you just give them a link, you could be sending them a link for anything. One last final thing, make sure you go to responses. Click on the little hamburger and click here. Get email notifications for new responses. Once you get these guest details then what I would be doing personally is that once they check in or check out, I would be getting their permission to send email marketing letters. Moving forward, if you've got any questions, please let me know. Send me an email mark at Booster Co UK or comment in the Boostly Academy. Let me know when you have set this up and most importantly let me know your results and I'll see you soon for the next training.
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