How to make more money from email in accommodation with Nancy McAleer

Bart

Hello, and welcome back to the Accommodation Show. We help accommodation owners like you get the knowledge and skills that you need to grow your business, improve your guest experience, and increase your profitability.

This week I will be talking to Nancy McAleer who’s the owner of AMI Home Rental and co-founder of Florida Rental By Owners. It’s an online niche vocation listing website.

She’s also a contributing writer to the Vocational Rental Marketing blog and a trainer at the VR Mastermind Bootcamps. She has a wealth of knowledge on all thing’s accommodation.

I’m really excited about this episode, because we’ll be talking about “How best to leverage email to earn more revenue and create a better experience for your guests.”

All right folks welcome back to the “Get Ready for 2021 Series.”

What we’re looking at is ways to help accommodation owners get more direct bookings, get ready for 2021, and get their businesses in ship-shape.

Today I’m very excited to welcome Nancy McAleer to the show. Welcome!

Nancy

Thank you, nice to be here.

Bart

Awesome!  Nancy, you’re the owner of AMI Home Rentals, you’re the co-founder of Florida Rental By Owners, which is an online niche vacation rental listing website.

Tell us a little more who you are? Where you’re from? And then we’ll talk to everyone what we’ll be talking about today.

Nancy

So, I’m living in Montreal with my family, but my rentals are actually in another country, in Florida in the United States. I have three rentals, four, to five-bedroom homes that are on the waterfront on a little island in Florida.

I’m also a co-founder of Florida Rental By Owners, which like you said is a Regional Vocational Listing site, that’s a book direct listing site for owners in the state of Florida.

So, we started that initiative about three years ago and it’s going really well. In addition, to that I am also a contributing writer to a Vocational Rental Marketing blog with Matt Landau.

I’m also a Trainer at the VR Master Bootcamp, which happens to in the United States for training initiatives for Vocational Rental Owners, who want to kick-up their game a little bit.

So, you’ll hear me around the industry at the various podcasts and stuff, so yeah, I’m around.

Bart

That’s amazing. So, I have to ask, why Florida?

Nancy

It’s freezing cold in Canada and right now I think it’s five degrees Celsius today. We needed a place that is really ideal to vocation to, we want to retire there someday. I did a lot of analysis, I think for about a year to find the right place for us, based on flying into Florida from Montreal.

We really love outdoor activities boating, paddle-boarding, and kayaking and stuff like that, so it was just the perfect place for us.

A little island with no crime and great place to bring up the kids when we go on vocation there, a place to grow old, and so that was the whole reason behind Anna Marie Island for us.

Bart

So, you started in Florida or just started with one place and kind of fell in love with it and then started to build a bit more a business around it?

Nancy

Yeah, in our first year we just thought we were going to cover our expenses, then after we did some renovations to make it what we wanted when we vacationed to our home we put in:

• Backyard beach
• Tiki Hut
• Hammack

All that fun stuff to make it really resort like, and then the first year after that it was just like, BING this is a business and it just started renting out like crazy.

Bart

How long ago was that?

Nancy

That was in 2011, so it was a great time for Canadians to buy in the United States because the Canadian dollar was stronger and an opportunity came up to buy another house. So, we went for it with our business partners, we own our homes with best friends.

Then a third house came up, the next-door neighbor said she wanted to sell and it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up, it was just meant to be, I guess it was really fun.

For me it’s a passion, I love it, I love the hospitality business and all aspect of it, because you wear a lot of hats right, and as an owner you’re into:

• Marketing
• Design
• Financials

You make a lot of decisions about how you want to run your business your way and me it was a lot of fun, I love it.

Bart

I think that was something that really struck me about the way you talk about the Customer Experience and the Guests an awful lot, so I think you’ve got the business side of it.

So, looking after it and making sure you’re making money, but I don’t hear many people talk about the Guests the way that you actually do with:

• Their experience
• Their enthusiasm
• Their excitement

And I think that’s what everyone is going to get from today’s session.

All of that enthusiasm and all that knowledge that will actually help people make a better Guest experience, and that’s kind what we’re going to be talking about today.

So, today we’re going to be talking about emails. Emails can seem like a bit of a boring topic but it’s not at all. What we were talking about Nancy is email is:

• One of the most effective ways.
• Cheapest way to communicate with customers

There are two sides to it:

1. You can increase or improve the customer experience.
2. You can generate more revenue from it.

So, those are the two part of it for [You] to get ready for 2021. Does that sound about right?

Nancy

Yeah, absolutely! Like you said before, just tying it all into the guest experience and now is the best time when you’re gearing up for the big season coming up.

It’s a great time for you to hon in on what your past guests have really wanted to engage in your area and really creating amazing content that will cater to that future guest, who becomes your Avatar so to speak.

With core guests looking for different kinds of experiences while they stay with you, so Email Marketing is a great way to:

• Push information out
• More engagement
• Super cost effective
• Bes marketing channels (return on investment)

You get the really great engagements as long as you are giving really good content, and great user experience the open rate will be fantastic.

Bart

I think, the Driving Term as well, because we call it Email Marketing but I think for everybody you need not to think of it as marketing or sales, because those two terms kind of go hand-in-hand those two terms to me.

Don’t look at it like that, look at it as a way of improving somebody’s life, in helping somebody out rather than trying to market to someone. No one wants to be sold to or marketed to, but they do want to have things that are useful to them and that’s the mindset that you need to start to adjust to when you’re thinking about this.

Don’t get put of about the fact that we’re going to be talking about marketing, it’s not about that. It’s all about actually, how we communicate effectively with our previous clients whatever, they look like or are going to look like and create a narrative and story that surrounds it.

Nancy, let’s start off with the Email Marketing side. So, what are we talking about?

Nancy

Email marketing is, you receive emails from all the companies that you enjoy or believe in and like. It’s a very easy way to connect with your tribe, so to speak, those people enjoying your product that have either, come in contact with you through:

• Social channels
• Your website.

You may not know or you may know them as a past guest or guest who has referred them to you. There are different ways to market emails, there is what I call:

• One-Shot News Letters

I mean there are so many topics you can engage with them in, you can do a poll of:

• What’s your favorite beach?
• Giveaway contents increase (followers/subscribers)
• Last minute deals (best ones)

Bart

Just before we go any further just to be a little more practical for people, because I really enjoy that in events where people go “Ah, I’m going to go and do that.”

When you say Giveaways, do you have anything in mind like “Those are really good ones” because I’ve seen some really good ones, but I would love to hear your thoughts?

Nancy

Yeah, so one of my best ones was actually when I invited in a group of bloggers that stayed in one of my rentals, I think there was about five of them.

So, they all came in and they all wrote about their stays in their own following. I was able to capture all of their followers in terms of their experiences at my home, and how I hooked them up with, local experiences and things like that.

So, when they finished those articles, we decided okay “Well let’s Give-away a vocation to somebody for the same amount of time they came so they can experience the same thing” so it was:

• Leveraging all the bloggers who stayed in my home
• Leveraging all their followers
• Leveraging all their social followers
• Followers of theirs that are newsletter marketers
• All of their followers on their blog.

And it was just this massive engagement we had for a giveaway.

Bart

So, you pushed the giveaway back through to the bloggers and said “Hey, bloggers not only do we want you to blog about it but we’re going to do a Giveaway, which relates back to what you’re blogging about.”

So, everybody wins and they don’t look like they are selling whatever, through the blog but their actually adding value to their audiences, and forcing then also forcing them also to communicate effectively with their audience, is that right?

Nancy

Yeah, exactly, so I gained subscribers, I gained new followers, I leveraged all of who their niche market was, which aligned with mine which was great. Then I was able to provide to someone who maybe wasn’t able to afford a vocation at my home, this really special experience.

Again, that I wrote, communicated about, and leveraged to explain it to a lot of people that were following me to. That was probably the biggest impact that I could make as a Giveaway and that was a giveaway for only five days only.

Bart

The key around this is Partnerships. So, you were partnering with a blogger that you could do the same with like the:

• Local restaurant owner
• Hot air balloon company
• Jet ski rentals

Whatever, it might be within your category you can team up with them, do the same engagement and Giveaway, and then communicate to each other’s audiences to help grow your particular business.

Nancy

When the bloggers come you want to make sure you give them options, so you reach out to your local vendors to see if they have anything to give to them like:

• Gift certificates
• Free meals

Or whatever, and when we put it together packaged as a Giveaway it was exactly what you’re saying, partnerships to make a really great experience for the Giveaway customer, but she probably told I think at thousand people after that she’d won this Giveaway.

So, you know you’re just leveraging so many people to start following and your Brand is getting out there, and you’re working with people that are close to you and then you get it back.

So, the people that got a mention in those blog articles by somebody else, but they’re going to be the first one to help me out when I have to call them up and say “Hey, I really need to give a certificate for a disgruntled guest who’s upset about construction noise outside, can you help me out?”

Then they’ll give me a discounted rate on the gift certificate or whatever, so it’s like you said a lot of partnerships networking, it really helps you to maximize your business.

Bart

So, bloggers or Instagram is quite interchangeable in terms of that kind of method. How do you find bloggers that you think are going to work for you?

Nancy

So, there’s a lot ways to find bloggers, you can go onto:

• Blog Aggregators
• Facebook groups

To find out if there are bloggers in there that might like to network with you, I mean you really do have to check out who you’re going to be working with and make sure their followers align with your ideal guests, so make sure they are:

• The same age
• Who they are?
• What are they interested in?

So, in that respect you want to kind of align that way. So, it’s just good old-fashioned outreach.

Bart

Would you suggest a Google blogging Aggregator?

Nancy

I can’t remember of the top of my head but one of them is:

• She Loves Blogging (female bloggers)

There are a lot of Facebook groups out there to, specifically for bloggers and there maybe bloggers in your specific country, which would be really great if you’re looking at a domestic traveler. It’s just kind of like reaching out and digging for gold.

Bart

Cool, are we happy with that?

Nancy

Yeah!

Bart

So, yeah you were talking about different things you can do within the emails.

Nancy

Yes, there are so many ideas right you can talk about with these one-shot newsletters:

• Festivals
• Events

Not so much now with the pandemic, but you can even do reviews of your favourite restaurants or what’s in your blog content like I have:

• Insider Guides

For certain activities in my area so for example, Kayaking is the next one I want to get out, and you might like to talk about that and put that into a newsletter.

Maybe it doesn’t only need to be that information, maybe you want to add into a little bit and make it more exciting where you put in a whole video.

Maybe you want a drone video that you can actually put into the Email Marketing.

More people open videos that are in emails, especially if you have in your subject line about the “Latest video of this location” it’s like 96% opening, it’s like bananas it’s so crazy with video now.

So, you put that in there and put your exciting kayaking guide where you want them to click through that Call-To-Action to land on your page.

Then you may want to include, like special VIP offers to stay or to book this package you have selling now, which might be:

• A stay and a kayak experience

Things like that, I mean the ideas are endless, it’s only your imagination of how you can make the newsletter something that’s ideal for your client, a fantastic experience that’s going to knock their socks off, and want them to click through and say “I want to go there now and book with you know.”

If they can’t do it now, they’re going to think about that experience over and over again, and want to go and book with you later.

Bart

I think because things are so changeable with the pandemic a lot of people don’t know what is happening in your particular area where your accommodation is.

So, they don’t know whether the café’s and restaurants, cinemas, vineyards or the beaches or whatever are open, so it’s a good talking point.

If you’re looking ahead you might be thinking all right 2021, what’s coming up in:

• January, February or March
• What’s happening at Easter time?
• What do we think is going to be open?

And so, start to communicate that with your guests going “Hey, guys we know it’s Christmas coming up this season but if you plan ahead this is what we expect to be open.”

That alone is a really good engagement point because people might go “I wasn’t going to go wasn’t planning on it” and then all of a sudden, you’re using this email marketing tool to sort of get through to them.

Nancy

Just to pop-on to that to Bart you can segment your list to, like if you want to segment your list now thinking with the pandemic in mind where you know this follower is from this location.

For me, I track where all my guests are coming from so that’s one thing I can easily do, and easily segment that list to only my domestic market, I want to send this message to.

Then like you said, once things start opening up, I’m going to open up to the entire subscriber contact list, and then that message might be different going forward, absolutely. Just creating that content of:

• What to expect?
• What is happening now?

Is fantastic communication, and that’s what we need now is communication about:

• What’s happening?
• What’s open?
• What’s not open?
• What are the protocols, is it safe?
• What to expect?

And communicating that honestly really build trust with your followers.

Bart

Particularly as well around how many guest numbers you’re allowed in the place, everyone assumes your guests won’t know and they won’t be as up-to-date in your particular business.

I think if we take one step back and we look at “Get Ready for 2021” some people might say “I’ve already got my Email Marketing and all of this stuff sorted” but the one part of “Get Ready for 2021” is you’ve got this opportunity for innovation with the Email content that you’re putting out there.

So, a lot of these things we’re talking about are kind of a bit standard, but now you can actually adapt it to the situation we’re in and leverage it to reconnect it with your community, and create engagement that is better than all your competitors and way better than everybody else.

That is what we were stuck on that was happening in the past but you can sort of start to push forward, but what are your thoughts on that?

Nancy

Yeah, absolutely, I mean if you can put in a video, and this is what has been successful for me. Right now, the trend is you want to offer social-distancing activities and social-distancing experiences.

And that’s something you want to be able to bundle in one of your Email Marketing for the short-term of January 2021, like just in January show them WHY your vocation rental is safe like:

1. You’re self-isolating.
2. You’re using your own kitchen unit.
3. You’re not sharing with multiple people in a hotel.

Maybe that’s the kind of messaging you want to send out in the shorter term.

At Christmas time you might want to think about, if people are not able to get to me right now and my borders are closed, then thinking about some type of gift certificate program, where I can still make revenue now, but they can enjoy later on.

Definitely that kind of thought process, you want to kind of plan it out and say “Here’s some thoughts” you don’t have to be too methodical, but definitely maybe at Christmas time I’ll do:

• Gift certificates
• January self-isolation activities

And you want to focus on that and package it together in a guest experience even in that Email newsletter is the difference between:

• You and someone else
• You getting more OPENS
• YOU getting more business

Compared to what you regularly see from retailers and places like that.

Bart

How often should we be doing this?

Nancy

I’m terrible at sending out emails in terms of regularity. I always send out emails when I have something really good to say.

So, for me, it might be once every month or once every two months, it just depends. Then also my need based on my business because, I mean I have ninety-two percent occupancy even in this year, so it’s been good but it depends on:

• Your business
• It depends on your end goal
• What you want to say?
• What you want to do and why?

Because:

• Are you trying to get vacancies filled?
• What is that message based on w/environment you have now?
• Will you be offering special rates?
• How are you going to package it up?

Things like that, so it’s going to be successful and people are going to want to purchase it. It’s got to be the right price, right product, at the right time so you have to think about those things to.

Bart

One of the things that I’d really recommend for everybody is don’t stress to much about sending too many Emails to people, people get a lot of emails anyway. The challenge of someone actually seeing your email and opening it are quite low.

Open rates can be anywhere from 10% to 50%, and so if you’re at a 50% open rate you’re pretty good. It really depends on your category, but don’t be afraid to send too many because as long as you’ve got some sort of effective message to put through you don’t have to spend a lot of time doing it, but regularity is very useful for you.

Once they open the first Email and go “Yep, that one’s quite useful” and then when you send the next one it’s going to work. If you send one or two emails that aren’t great then they’re not going to open the third or fourth one because you’ve already kind of damaged them at that particular point.

It’s not because of the volume of it, it’s the message that you’ve put across in the message more than anything. Do you agree with that?

Nancy

Yeah, and I think that’s a really good Segway once you’ve sent the email it’s not a Send & Forget, you’re just waiting for those bookings to come in, but you have to really take a look at the analytics of how successful was it:

• Did you get click through on your Call-to-Action Buttons?
• Did you get any calls for bookings?
• Did you get any emails or response to book?
• Information for quotes?

So, you do have to analyze what you’ve done in the past to say okay:

• Was it successful?
• How can I make it better, if it needs to be better?
• How can I do that again, if it was really successful?

So, for me it was the whole experience of the videos with the message, for me that’s kind of being my recipe on kind of how successful it is, and that people are craving some kind of stress relief right now, and those videos really help.

Bart

So, right looking at analytics and obviously we’re looking at and unsubscribe rates as well, if you’ve got ones that are sort of unusually high, we want to identify where we went wrong.

Quick Through Rates are interesting, because there are Emails that you can have one link and then you get a High Quick Through rate and you have twenty links, and then you’re rate gets quite affected by that.

So, you’ve talked about Bookings but what about:

• Big Red Flags?
• How do you know if it’s going well?

Nancy

So, for me, if I share the newsletters I can also see if I get more subscribers because of that. I not only share it through my contact list but I can share it through all my social channels to say “Hey, there’s my latest newsletter, click to join” so if I want to see:

1. Increases in subscribers
2. Increased sales (bookings)
3. Referrals (people referring me to others)

Based on “Oh, I saw your newsletter from a friend” and I can see when I have those questions coming in when people come to my website and people can say:

• How they found me
• Analyzing what is Clicked Through
• Rinse & Repeat (different message)
• No, repeating of same message over and over again

Bart

A top tip from me again, is when you’re doing your emails make sure you don’t put too many links in there, have one of two Calls-To-Action, no more than that.

Just the same way when you’re designing an effective website you’ve got the Book Now Button, and maybe some other ways to lead people everywhere else, but really the main driver is Book Now.

If it isn’t then we can go into a much bigger debate, if anyone wants to challenge me on that, I’m happy to have those discussions, but really the website is for one thing and that is to get bookings.

It’s not a business card right, we’re not making ourselves feel good, it’s not about Branding or anything like that, it is book.

The same thing with emails if you’re doing a blogging campaign you probably have one Call-to-Action, do this particular thing, that’s all I want you to do.

If you do too many things people just get confused and it’s overwhelming and they won’t do anything for you.

Nancy

Yeah, really good point, I mean not too much text, most people don’t want to read a story they want to see pictures, they want the buttons to Call-to-Action.

This is what we call the Landing Page where you send them for the information that they’re clicking on that they’re interested in. You want to make sure the Landing Page actually has a Call-To-Action to book as well.

For them to book as well, so even if it is something that you’re sending them on Kayaking Guide you want to be able to have that here:

• Search you’re dates
• Ge a quote
• Book

So, it’s important.

I’ve seen that with really good Email Marketing people where they’ve sent them to these Landing Pages and I’m like where is the Call-To-Action to book, it’s not here, like I just don’t get it? So, yeah, really good to remember those great points.

Bart

So, just been mindful of time, and I know we’ve got another big topic that we sort of want to get into, and I think we’re shooting for a higher-level once again, with the topic theme in mind of what we should be doing to get ready.

So, if we were to summarize the Email Marketing in terms of “Getting Ready For 2021” what would you say?

Nancy

So, for me, I like to look at problem solving and kind of create my content and ideas around that. If I think back to my guests that I’ve had in the past and they’ve asked me certain information that I didn’t have on my website, then I want to create something that’s going to be amazing for them.

Not only creating that on the website, but that’s going to stack into you’re marketing after the fact. So, you’re creating something, then you’re going to get it out through an email format, also blast it on social-media, and then you’re packaging it up in what we call Stack.

So, I think about that so I think about the problem solving. So, for example I could talk about:

• Free trolly guide
• Top restaurants

And this is an easy one for everybody, anybody can do this and these top restaurants, it’s the number one thing people ask when they go to a vocational rental.

So, make sure you can do a top restaurant guide or maybe you’ve got reviews, your own reviews of that restaurant in there with all the details that they need to know about:

• Where to go.
• Is it on a map?
• Can they easily find it?

So, that you can create in the content on the website and you’re solving the problem that you’re going to be asked every single time by new guests, and for every group contact you can use over-and-over again.

Then you can create that and an Email Newsletter about it, maybe you want to take snippets out of it, maybe you don’t want to do a big blast of it and just trickle it out through several emails.

So, you can do it that way when you go to do a review like “Oh, here’s a review you can find it here on this Landing Page” and get it out that way in terms of things you’re thinking about in 2021.

So, think about problem solving:

• What you could do?
• How to make your guests stay carefree and amazing?

So, they’re going to come back to you again-and-again, and refer you to everyone else because it’s so carefree, that they’re just getting all the information from you to have their entire vocation be phenomenal.

Bart

That’s awesome, I really like that and this is an opportunity to look at all those different problems. One thing that I love that came to my mind was the idea of the idea of the top ten restaurants or the top ten things. Not only can you use it this year but next year and reuse the same content pretty much word-for-word.

• Top ten restaurants or
• Top ten or top five things

The one thing is most people won’t read it all, they might read bits of it, but if you reuse it in six months or a year’s time people go “Oh, yeah I’ve got to go and read this.” You’re creating something that has more value within your business overall, as well as adding more value to the customer.

It saves you a lot of work in the long run so all these tasks are actually beneficial to you your schedule and your day rather than not, so that’s awesome.

Nancy

Yeah, I want to jump in there for a minute. I’m sorry Bart I’m such a geek. When you do that like you said start with that Big Top restaurants, and I love that where you roll it over and you work smarter not harder.

I’ve done a Pizza Smack Down to where I’ve compared all the pizza restaurants or the Burger Smack Down, and I’ve done even the Trail Treats where here’s all the best places for:

• Doughnuts
• Ice-cream

All of that stuff, so like you said work smarter not harder don’t just do one and forget it, take snippets out of it and make something else, and make it a lot easier.

Bart

We were doing a lot of work on Instagram as well so you can get a particular picture or two from that place and pop it on, then you can link it all back up, and that sort of thing.

I guess the biggest takeaway folks is, if you haven’t got your Email Marketing list together get it, pop it into a Mailchimp or one of the software and get that first email.

I would suggest if it is the first email just to sort of say “What’s going on in the local area?” And then start to break that down.

Don’t make it focused on your particular business, the first one especially makes it focused on what experience they’re going to have by being at your place so:

• You can go to the mountains
• You can go to the city

Whatever, it might be so they can actually make that connection.

How do you feel about our next topic? Do you want to go through it? Do we want to leave it for today and tantalize people for next time?

Nancy

I can give like a little overview maybe and we can go with it next time, because it’s deep.

Bart

Yeah, it’s pretty deep but it’s important.

So, we’re still talking about Email and you’ve got the Email Marketing side and what we’re trying to do is keep people interested or generic interest in the first place to generate bookings using email. 

Of course, a lot of that content does across all the social-media which is effective.

The other part is you have extra opportunities to use email for communication with guests. I think that might be a good lead-in.

Nancy

So, I have what I call a Guest Nurture Campaign that I do. It’s a series of automated emails that ties into my entire workflow, so it really makes the guest feels amazingly special.

It decreases the amount of work I have to do, because like I said before it’s like a Rinse & Repeat and these are emails that are Template Ties that I use over-and-over again with each guest that comes in.

Then you can definitely leverage the entire booking party so, all the adults in the group not just the one person you’re sending the Nurture Campaign to, you can send it to the entire group, so you’re building your Email Marketing as well.

I have a girlfriend Tina and she’s been doing this for a while. She has one property and her Email Marketing is fourteen thousand people.

So, if you do it well you can really make a big impact and keep your properties fully booked for the entire year, if that’s what you want.

The Nurture Campaign is kind of cool because it’s a series of planned emails that are sent out based on the stage, after they’re booking. I send out information of what I want them to:

• Know
• When I want them to know it?
• Information for booking an experience w/affiliate links, increase dollar transaction w/each booking I get
• Info on how to access fitness center (free @ local community center)
• Housekeeping tips
• What to pack/not to pack

All of these things are answered in the Email Marketing. Also, all the guides of what they want to do in terms of different aspects and by area people were really into:

• Beaches
• Riding free trolly (on Island)
• Kayaking
• Boating
• Fishing

So, all that information is kind of trickled out to them over a series of once they’ve booked. My guests book very far in advance so it’s easy for me to kind of get it out upon booking, maybe one month or two months before they arrive.

Then then once they arrive, they stay, then they depart, and then I hit them with the Book Direct Message, which I want them to book directly with me, especially if they’ve booked on an OCA for next time so they can save on that traveler fee that they paid to maybe BRBL, or AirBnB or a higher rate.

Then that Book Direct message really hons it in on “Hey, you can come back to me and save a ton of cash and you get my VIP rate to.” So, there’s a lot of strategy that I have in place and also it increases my reviews, I ask for reviews at the end.

So, it’s a really great Nurture Campaign, it’s an entire series that I utilize with every single guest.

I tell you they love it they just can’t believe the communication and it just makes they’re stay incredibly rich, and they can accomplish all the goals they want to do before they arrive, no matter who they are or what they’re interested in, which is kind of cool.

Bart

I think the Nurture Campaigns, and this is where I found the real connection, I felt with what you’ve always said in different talks that I’ve heard is, the guests are super excited when they book. They want to go and have a great time; they’ve spent the money.

I guess there is also the concept of buyer’s remorse where you’ve booked something and then you think you’ve spent too much money and after that all you’re doing is justifying your decision of booking or making a purchase.

So, by doing these Nurture Campaigns what you’re doing is reinforcing that decision that someone has actually made to book with you so therefore, their feeling better about their particular decision.

You’re riding on their endorphins and their HIGH from actually booking and this applies for Accommodation, it doesn’t matter if you’re a small place, which is just one bedroom or whether, you’re a huge hotel, there’s so much opportunity with this.

I see massive hotel chains not doing any of this. I think of airlines as well, like they could capture the excitement of someone going away on holiday so much more effectively, and make tons of money on it.

I do know some airlines that do it well, but just talking about that emotion if you don’t mind in capturing that, because I thought that was a very important point.

Nancy

Yeah, so I mean, it has been psychologically studied and I did come across it, but I can’t remember the name of it right now. Sorry I’ll have to get that for you later, but where there is this Happiness High that people are on.

I’ve read as well that it takes somebody eight hours to make a decision on one property to rent. So, they could be talking with other people or with their friends and things like that, so it’s a lot to press the Book Now Button.

And then once they’re with you they have this whole job, they’re excited and they’ve saved probably for a year at least to come and visit your location right, because most people only get vocation once a year or twice a year max.

So, you want to ride that Happiness High the whole way and keep them on that High and make them think I made a great decision.

So, the Nurture Campaign are great Touch Points all the way along like just before they are coming. My guests tell me “I love watching that video before we got there, it gave me ideas of what to do” and they get really excited about it to all their friends.

So, you’re leveraging everybody that they know which is great and then you’re still capturing them, the Happiness High still lasts till when they get home and talk to their friends, and co-workers, etc.

There is that time period, I think about a good four to six weeks after they get back that they’re still in the Happiness High.

So, you want to hit that Nurture Campaign from the time they are on High till the time they’re coming down, and even then you want to be that person that’s like “Oh, yeah you have to go and see Nancy. You’ve got to go and stay with her because she’ll set you up right, you’ll have an amazing experience” so you want people to say that about you for sure, and it works.

Bart

The top tips that I would have in terms of once again, getting ready with this stuff is:

• Don’t try to chew/eat the elephant in one go, just start of with the first email, which could be a free check-in email.
• Then do the Check Out Email for reviews and get what you need with direct messages getting through, and then just building it out
• With the other marketing stuff, we talked about you’ll find more content to put into these emails (keep emails short & sweet)

Don’t try to sell it on them again, they’ve already bought the place you don’t need to. What you’re doing is trying to get them connected but just start off by doing one or two if you don’t have a PMS that handles this sort of stuff.

I think you said you still do it manually still?

Nancy

I do manually still because I’m a cheapskate. I don’t want to pay for the automation of my system and it’s easy for me, I only have three rentals. I have a system set up where it’s easy for me to follow through on my workflow and fire them off when I need them fired off.

It’s easy to setup automation, it really is even with your basic startup with your email capturing if you have one of those popup boxes on your website to get more subscribers, you can send an automated email right away that’s a Thank You email.

So, it’s super easy to do with the software that’s out there like Mailchimp and Point-of-Contact, all of those, so yeah.

Bart

Or you’re into IPMS.

Nancy

Yes, exactly.

Bart

Look, awesome, like just phenomenal things, very inexpensive to do a lot of these activities, great in terms of you reviewing what you are doing and making some plans ahead:

• Start off small & build from there
• Review those different sides of your business (make a plan)

So, if you are going to do anything at the end of this just make a plan and say:

• What do I want to do?

Oh, I’m actually going to do some:

• Email Marketing
• Nurture Campaigns
• Make a plan for next six months of problems to solve
• Write an email for social-media

But start to formulate some sort of a plan each business is going to have, that will be in different stages, and always cater to your advertisers.

Nancy is there anything you would like to finish up on? Also is there anyway that people can reach out and contact you? What is the best way to sort of engage with you?

Nancy

I was just going to mention it’s easy to capture people’s email addresses, which we didn’t talk about very much.

You can have it on your social-media as a little tab to sign up to my newsletter or you can have it on your website. The on my Florida Rentals By Owners website, for us you can capture all that contact detail at the very beginning.

So, you can capture details who is asking for a quote or inquiry, which you can’t do on the major OTA’s, like the VRBO, and Airb&b and stuff.

So, getting those contact details is really ideal and then reaching out to them to see if they want to join, your newsletter. You do have to get them to Opt-in, but then starting of there and then building that list, and then as you said:

• Take it slow & steady
• Write up ideas to accomplish
• Try to work smarter w/stacking into different avenues

So, you’re not working so hard, like you said Bart and you’re taking a general concept and then you’re going with it from there and just spreading it out, and then even taking snippets from that in making something else.

Try to not work harder but smarter and it will come very easily. It is the best return on your investment in terms of any marketing channel you are going to use because it’s free, you get the contact details from all these great sources.  

If you want to get a hold of me, I’m at Florida By Rental Owners, it’s a regional vocational listing site so just shoot me an email through the contact page there.

Bart

Well, thank you so much once again, for joining us. I know it’s a little bit late for you over there.

Nancy

Time for wine.

Bart

We just started here so I can’t do that here. Yeah, I’m looking forward to speaking with you again, at some stage and working together and going down this journey.

Once again, thank you so much. I’m sure everyone is great full to have met you today, and we’ll talk again soon.

Thank you!

Nancy

Great, thanks for having me Bart, it was a pleasure. Have a great day.

Contact Resources

Nancy McAleer

Website: www.floridarentalbyowners.com
Email: [email protected]