Watch as I tune up Sean from Airbnb Automated Direct Bookings for his hospitality business
12 Aug 2021 · 6 min
Mark Simpson reviews Sean's 110+ Airbnb listings across four states and shows him how to capture guest emails for direct bookings. They set up a Mailchimp survey through SmartBNB messages and plan to use StayFi Wi-Fi splash pages to collect contact data, cutting reliance on the platform.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Boostly podcast. And we are doing another episode of Boostly Tune Up. Now, if you were listening or watching this series where we worked with the fantastic Janek and Tim of Casa for you in Javier, you'll know that I said that I was looking for potential people who wanted to be involved in the next round of Boostly Tune Up. And I'm so happy to say, but we've had 30 people get in contact and I'll be reaching out to everybody individually. But what I wanted to do is I just wanted to show what we are doing for a company in America. Now, you may know the founder, Mr. Sean Rocky G of Airbnb Automated. For those of you who don't know, Sean's business is called Pad Suites. And Sean is doing all of the things, the YouTubes, TikToks, painting, whatever, you name it. He's doing all of the things, setting up new units left, right and center. So I've been chatting to Sean, probably on and off for the last year, and I've been saying, listen, we need to talk about these direct bookings. Talk about these direct bookings. And he said, I know, I know, I'm not the one to do this. Let me put you in contact with the people that do. And he's put me in contact with Hayley, who runs the show, and Kristen. And Kristen is my direct point of contact here. We jumped on a call. I didn't record the call, but I'll just give you a bit of a brief update. So They've got over 110 listings all over four states. And what they are wanting to do is they're wanting to cut down on the over reliance on one platform, which is obviously Airbnb. They are wanting to get direct bookings, but they are yet to put certain systems and structures in place. A website, a pms, all of that they are working on. But I said, well, let's go for the short term win here, because they must have lots of guests come through their doors on a weekly basis. So I asked, are you collecting email addresses? And they said no. So what we've done and what we're doing right now is we, we have created a mailchimp account. And what we're going to do in the month of August is we're going to try and increase this number from one to over a hundred. One of the simplest ways of doing so, there's two ways. There's the short, easy way and then there's the medium to harder way. So the short and Easy way is that within mailchimp you can actually create a survey, as you can see here. And what we're going to do is we are going to create a survey that collects the guest data after the point of booking. So we're going to send this. We're still drafting it up because I want to make sure that we get all the right information. It's going to ask for email address. There's a little tick box here which mailchimp give you, saying, ask to subscribe. And we're saying, would you like to receive emails before your stay with useful information of things to do in the area? They'll get first name, surname, country or city or town that they're based in, which obviously helps us for marketing. And is there. What is the reason for your visit and is there anything special we can assist you with for your stay? So what we're going to do is we're going to finish that off in the next couple of days and we're going to add that to Smart bnb. So Pad Suites, Kristen and the team, they use Smart BNB as their direct point of communication because they are linked up on VRBO and Airbnb. And at the point of booking, the message that goes out is going to include a little link to this mailchimp survey. They will create it and then on the back of that, as long as they tick to subscribe, we will start to build that list. So that's the short and easy way. What we're also doing as well is I've recommended to them and I've put them into contact with Stay Fi. I said, listen, let's just test it because if you add this to 110listings, this is going to be a pretty big investment. So let's look at, look doing four to six maybe in one unit block that you have and we will see if we can do. Kristen had to get a sign off from from Hayley and Sean, which they have done. But a stroke of luck is they took three or four units that actually had a Stay Fi set up there. So they're going to get them going. I put them in touch with Arthur at Stay Fi and we will get that going. Now don't forget, Stay Fine is a fantastic tool and you can go and check them out by going to booster.co.uk make sure you said that Boostly sent you. And what it does is it installs a little box in your property and if anybody wants to use the WI Fi, they have to sign up for your emails. It's Beautiful. It's just like when you go into Starbucks or you go to any premiere you're in or hotel around the world. And if you want to use a wi fi you've got to go for a splash page. This is it. And the beauty of it and why it is so good is that not only are you going to get the bookers email, but you're also going to get all of the guest email and data as well. So that is the information that is going to be filtering in and it links up to, to mailchimp which is, which is great. So we're going to have a short and a medium term win and hopefully we can get Stay Fight all set up in the month of August so I can report back in September and show you this screen and instead of it being one, it's going to be 100, 200 or maybe a thousand. And then once we've done that then we are going to put some templates in place and we are going to start to use them to reach out to their guests that know, like and love them to get referrals and stay top of mind. So super quick Boostly Tune up. This is Pad Suites if you want to check them out. I'll make sure all the links are left and I'm really excited to see what we can we can do here. And again, if you want to be part of Boostly Tune up, all you need to do is email markoosa.co.uk in the subject headline put Boostly Tune Up. I'll come back to you with the prices, how it works and if you're happy we will get going. And you know, for the first few people I will do a discounted rate as long as we can record this and put out as part of the podcast series to help other hosts out there. So if that sounds good, let me know if this is the first time that you've tuned in. If you come in here through the beauty of YouTube or podcast, you discover me that way. Please make sure you subscribe, hit the like button, turn on notifications, and make sure that you never miss a future episode. I do these podcasts every single day in 2021 to help you not only survive from what's happened over the past 16 months, but thrive on the other end by giving you simple marketing techniques that anybody can employ and put into practice to make sure that you're never having to rely on Airbnb booking.com or VRBO again, my name is Maximson. Please stay proactive, don't be reactive, let's go get some diary bookings. See you tomorrow.
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