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Be More Direct With Your Resort Lodging Marketing
June 27th, 2011One of the more underutilized marketing methods in the lodging industry is direct mail. A lot of marketers look at it as “old school” or too expensive and don’t do much of it. Most prefer email – primarily because it’s low cost and easier to execute.
But there are some great reasons to incorporate more direct mail in your marketing mix.
1) Direct mail has a lower attention barrier. The average person receives roughly 20 pieces of mail per week. Most of us get that many emails every hour. So you have a much better chance of getting the attention of the recipient with direct mail when you don’t have to compete with so many other senders.
2) Direct mail has a long shelf life. I’ve talked to clients who have received responses from a direct mail piece over a year after it was sent. Many recipients will hang on to a mail piece, especially if it has an image that appeals to them. The mailer will end up on their refrigerator or desk where the sender’s brand will get many many glances. Email, on the other hand, has a shelf life about as long as it takes to hit the delete key.
3) Direct mail offers greater opportunity for messaging. When you consider the front and back of a direct mail piece, you have a lot of real estate in which to convey your message. You can communicate using colors, type styles, and graphics without having to rely on the recipient having html turned on, or graphics enabled.
Obviously, these advantage come at a price. And yes, it takes a little more doing to execute a good direct mail campaign. But the reward is more than worth it.
Bill Schlosser
Vice President – Marketing
Email Addresses = Lodging Revenue Gold
June 20th, 2011Is your leisure reservations team getting your prospects email address 100% of the time? If not, why not? Well, it’s hard to obtain right? It’s a personal piece of information and one that most of us don’t relinquish easily. None of us like spammers but remember these prospects are calling you. They’re interested in what you have to offer and who wouldn’t be? You have a great location with a variety of fun and exciting experiences.
Since you’ve already convinced the prospect to pick up the phone and call you, let’s take the next step in the sales and marketing process and get their email, so that we can keep them informed on all the great reasons to come stay with YOU! My suggestion is simple, but in my observation, very effective. Getting the email has to do more with when you ask, than how or why. So, here’s my suggestion. Sometime toward the beginning of the conversation plug this little word track in:
Reservation agent: “May I please confirm your phone number in case we get disconnected?”
Prospect: “Sure, 555-555-5555”
Reservation agent: “And a good email for you please?”
Prospect: “Um, it’s someone@emailaddress.com”
Here’s why this works. It’s because of a psychological concept that internet marketers know well. If I can get you to share one easy piece of information it is much easier to get the next more personal piece of information. This is why when you visit a company online to get a Car Insurance quote they start with asking for your zip code only, then on the next screen they get your contact info. Have your team try it. You’ll be surprised by the number of emails you’re getting.
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
Higher Reservation Conversion – Part 3: Just Ask
June 10th, 2011For this tactic, we look outside the leisure travel industry to the retail industry. Why? Because they’ve figured it out. Their finding: if you don’t ask for the sale you won’t get it. Take Best Buy, for example. The latest statistic I heard at a sales and marketing seminar was that they sell 1 in 5 of their visitors an extended warranty. Whether you agree with extended warranties or not, you have to agree those are pretty impressive figures. This 20% success rate should come as no surprise considering the power of suggestion. Renowned marketer Jay Abraham is famous for saying: “People are silently begging to be led.” Over and over again we see this to be true, in every industry, in every aspect of human nature. Suggestion is powerful.
So how do you expect to book a reservation if you don’t ask? By the way, I’m confident most of your reservationists are NOT asking for the sale. They just aren’t. The concept seems simple in theory, but we find it quite difficult in the real world. This is because in the end it’s really about more than just asking. It’s about structuring the whole call to make asking for the reservation comfortable and natural. In order to know how your team is structuring calls you need to record their calls and coach them to higher conversion. Coaching and training is a no brainer but it is most effective when you have recorded conversations to base your discussion on. At the very least, have this conversation with your team and challenge them to start asking for the reservation. I think you’ll be amazed by the results.
This is the 3rd and final installment on Higher Reservation Conversion. Hope you enjoyed them and I especially hope they help you to be more successful.
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
Higher Reservation Conversion – Part 2: Sell The Experience
May 23rd, 2011I know it may come as a surprise, but your reservation agents could be scaring your perspective guests away by doing what we call “Feature Flooding.” This usually occurs when an agent doesn’t understand what the guest truly wants. Basically, the agent hasn’t asked enough questions to uncover why that guest is coming to your location. So, they read…and read…and read features or amenities from the property page right under their nose.
It happens a lot, and not just with new agents. The real danger is that they are not identifying any of the deep visceral reasons that a guest might be coming to the location. Reasons like…enjoying a challenging game of golf with their brothers on one of your three championship courses, or lounging poolside all afternoon soaking up the sun and enjoying world class cuisine, or how about snorkeling and exploring the sea with their kids. We vacation to create unforgettable moments, not to enjoy amenities.
A room is a room is a room. OK, I know that’s not entirely true but the big reason your guests are coming is for the experience. Sell it, not the features.
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
For Higher Reservation Conversion, Get The Caller’s Name
May 6th, 2011If you’ve ever been eavesdropping on one of your reservation agents and cringed when they offered a 20% discount up front, or winced when they hurried a prospect off the phone; you won’t want to miss this 3 part blog series.
Let’s talk about the greeting your agents are using, more specifically let’s discuss how NOT asking for the caller’s name will reduce your conversion.
I know it seems easy, right? Easy maybe but frequently not practiced. Critical – absolutely.
Most greetings are pretty straight forward but I often get pushback from agents on asking for the caller’s name. Most agents don’t feel comfortable asking for the prospects name. But why? ‘Cause it’s kind of awkward right? We’re used to stating our names when we meet in person but for some reason traditional introductory etiquette goes out the window on the phone – pretty ridiculous considering that getting their name is critical, as it sets you up to build a relationship over the phone.
They know your name – you know theirs. Now you’re ready to move forward. Asking their name also sets you up for success throughout the call, why? Because now you’ve established permission to ask questions, you’ve set this call as a dialogue not a monologue. Dialogue and open-ended questions are critical to finding out what the caller wants, giving them exactly what they want and making the sale.
Not asking for their name reduces the likelihood of booking the reservation on this call. Trust me – we have the data to prove it. My suggestion: practice. There’s no secret to asking, just practice, and get comfortable doing it. That being said, I especially like the phrase, “May I have your name please?” It’s simple and it works.
Stay tuned for part 2, the danger of feature flooding.
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
Need Some Ideas?
May 2nd, 2011If you haven’t already discovered this site, and you’re looking for some ideas for your website, then do yourself a favor and check out StumbleUpon. This is the best of the best on the web, as voted by others on the web. Once you start Stumbling, you will be amazed at what you didn’t know was there.
Bill Schlosser
Vice President – Marketing
Booking Trend Shows Strong Growth
April 25th, 2011If bookings are any indication, things are definitely looking up. This graph shows year-over-year bookings for the U.S. Note that this doesn’t represent the entire client base of NAVIS, but rather just those who have been on long enough to include in this dataset.
Bill Schlosser
Vice President – Marketing
Outbound Drives Inbound Vacation Rental Revenue
April 22nd, 2011I always love it when I go onsite with a new client and right out of the gate they experience the benefit of outbound follow-up. In this case the client took advantage of NAVIS outbound email templates in order to secure a booking in one of their nicer homes.
Here’s the story. It had been over a week since the prospective guest originally called in. The reservation agent had called and left 2 voicemails since—good proactive outbound work, right? We decided we wanted to try another method of communication – email.
It worked beautifully! About 60 seconds after we sent the message a call came in from that same prospect, ready to book. The moral of this story…life’s busy, something fun like planning a vacation can get put on the back burner, so try multiple methods of outbound communication and keep up the follow-up.
Here’s the simple, personal email template we used with this aged lead. I hope it serves you well.
Hi [First Name],
I just wanted to check back and see how you are doing with your vacation planning. Have you made a reservation? If not, I would love to help you. Please give me a call today because we have been taking quite a few reservation calls and I want to make sure we get your property secured.
You can reach me at [PHONE]. If I’m not available please feel free to speak with anyone on my team as I have included notes in our system about your preferences.
Looking forward to seeing you in beautiful [LOCATION].
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
To Hold or Not To Hold A Leisure Reservation
April 14th, 2011I recently had a conversation about 24/48-hour reservation holds with Pat Conlon, a fellow Client Advocate here at NAVIS. It may be kind of pathetic but, yes, the NAVIS Client Advocates live, sleep and breath increasing leisure sales. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Pat and I spent a relaxing evening discussing the intriguing world of holds.
Here’s our thinking: If you’re going to allow your reservation team to offer 24 or 48-hour holds, why not just get the credit card, charge the reservation and offer a 24-hour cancelation policy instead? Make sense? Clichés about birds in bushes aside, why wouldn’t you want the money now? You’re still providing your guest with a fair deal, and fundamentally the same benefit. Only this way, it’s the guests’ responsibility to cancel, instead of your responsibility to play cat and mouse and secure the booking.
By the way, we have noticed conversion increases when a NAVIS client offers the cancelation policy instead of holding. We feel that if a prospect has committed to you by providing their credit card, they are less likely to keep shopping.
Recently, one reservation agent we observed switched from offering holds
to securing the credit card and offering a guarantee and
experienced a 10% increase in conversion.
We think it’s an idea worth considering. Let us know what you think or if this already works for you!
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
Am I Interrupting You?
April 6th, 2011As we all know, first impressions can immediately and permanently decide your prospects willingness to do business with you. That being the case, I must say, I’m amazed at how little focus is placed on “utilizing the proper greeting” within most reservation departments. At the very, very, very least a reservations agent should be introducing themselves, the company and asking for the caller’s name.
The typical greeting I hear “This is John…”, what? Did I just interrupt you from something important? Are you so busy that my call is bothering you? It’s scary really that a business owner would be willing to put someone on the front lines who is not trained, coached and motivated to provide a phenomenal experience. A couple quick steps I would recommend to ensure that the face of your company delivers a powerful experience to each and every prospect:
- Record and monitor your inbound calls. If you don’t it’s going to be difficult to provide any kind of useful feedback or coaching for your agents.
- Coach each reservation agent twice a month. The most successful sales people receive coaching so that they can grow and improve. By the way, your agents should be considered sales people. They decide if someone stays with you or not, right?
- Use behavioral incentives initially. Following basic human psychology, behaviors that get rewarded get repeated. Therefore, start by rewarding the behavior (using the proper greeting, in this case), once the behavior is established you can transition to rewarding the result: bookings. Beware; auditing the behavior should always exist as a qualifier, even as you offer other incentives.
Let me know how it works, or what you find? Here’s to the face of your company.
Brise Carpenter
Client Advocate
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