Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 130. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about how to build an email list.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
02:30 What we did so far
03:20 Build an email list
04:40 What we will be doing
Whilst you’re here
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Welcome back to the podcast. And as always over the course of this little mini-series, I've been helping Casa4U 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 is making sure that Airbnb and booking.com are fully optimized and updated. So they can appear higher in the ranking higher in the list in that higher visibility, but also for the direct booking aspect. As we've made sure that is obvious to the future potential guests that Casa4U is s a property management company is 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.
Build an email list
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 favourite sayings, one of my favourite 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 booking 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. I've been doing this for a couple of years now. And they have very quietly in the background collating emails. Now as you are aware by now they're on booking.com. They're on Airbnb, but they're also on a Dutch website called Mika zoo. Apologies if I've mispronounced that. But the beauty of that is that it is a more of a paid listing site. So kind of something that we don't see a lot of now. But when a booking comes through, you actually get the email. Now, over time, they've been collecting emails, but they haven't done anything in forms of getting permission to send email marketing messages to which obviously with the new D GDPR, and email rules you need to.
What we will be doing
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 personally. 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're just putting in the foundations now. So I just want to very quickly show you the screen. We've created the 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, 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 or 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, had the 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 will come back to tags in another episode.
So what your consumer now doing is we've created a template as a 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 Casa4U do is that when a guest checks in, they go and physically meet him. 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 their reviews online, you will see that 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.
And what we've done is we have created a signup form. So when that signup form really super simple. It's got the email, first name, last name, it's got all the GDPR. Notice, we've tied it with a little logo. And this is the link that we're sending out. So the conversation is going something along the lines of hi name, insert person information as in, how are you how are the kids etc. We have started up a VIP Email, if you would like to join it, here's a link to do so. In this we will tell you all the latest information, Javier new properties that we've come on board, x y&z simple, faster email is going to go out, we're going to start sending out so hopefully, by the time we check back in 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 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 a short format that will help speed up the checking 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 or 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 that yes on now, which is great.
So this is again, part of the process that we're doing this is going to be more of a medium to long term benefit for Casa4U. But by starting to do this, even better, one of the next things we're going to do as well as 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 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.
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