Take YOU to FULL OCCUPANCY in 2016

In my two previous videos, I showed you the 2 things I do minutes after I receive an inquiry, and precisely:

1. the standard message I send containing my secret link to a mind blowing “Bespoke Reply” and
2. a “follow up anti-spam message” aimed at pulling up the previous one from the spam folder and put it front and center in my prospect’s inbox, in case it was previously missed.

I also briefly explained the subtle psychology underneath the sequence and the messages themselves, to show you why they’ve been responsible for filling up our calendars up to 3 times more than all our competitors.

And I’m happy to confirm how the positive trend keeps going, as we’ve now closed more bookings since last week and we’re topping 50% of our yearly revenue, while we’re still just at the beginning of the year.

Today I’m going to close the loop and show you the 3rd and last message I use in my killer conversion sequence, so you can go ahead and decide whether you want to try this out as well.

Before I do that, let me quickly add an extra tip I haven’t mentioned and that’s related to answering the question in my previous video: “how do I know if my prospect received and opened my mail”?

The anti-spam message that’s step 2 in the 3 step sequence serves this purpose, although it also serves a different, subtle and more important psychological purpose of getting your prospect to take action and commit to engage with you, so you can fire up Message # 3 and make one more winning move that will get your prospect one step closer to seal the deal.

There are a few ways to find out if they got and open your email, regardless of whether you want to send an anti-spam message: you can install a tool called Sidekick by hubspot that I used a while back or have a look at Getnotify that Celine@VillaMercier and Neal@CyprusCountryHolidays kindly shared with us in the comments below my previous video – and this is the power of community and mutual help that I love so much.

So thank you Celine and Neal for adding more value to what I’m sharing with you all.

Some such tools have a few limitations, thresholds or require a fee, but overall they can do the job they’re meant to do.

Post Scriptum

Once you sent your first reply and you found out that your prospect saw it, you can close the loop with a “Post Scriptum” message, whose aim is to convince your prospect for good that:

1. your offer is truly irresistible,
2. the value added proposition you give them is so strong, sweet and thought through,
3. that they would miss out big time if they didn’t take you up on that.

Of course you can’t force them to choose you over others and it’s also good that way because you ultimately want to attract just the right kind of guests and you don’t want to rent out to anyone. And in my personal experience, this simple sequence act also as a sort of screening and fine tuning, so I don’t really need to do much else, as by the time they get message#3 the engagement has already been established and a friendly rapport comes as a result.

Message #3

So once step 1 and 2 have taken place, I send out the following, last message:

Subject line: Post Scriptum Casa Teulada Sardinia

Hi again (first name),

 

I forgot to mention that my wife and I would be happy to stock the fridge and pantry up with a few of your favorite essentials, such as water, milk, tea, coffee, cookies, yoghurt, bread, cheese, etc., for your first day.

We know you may arrive late in the evening, or after a long journey and we thought it would be nice to have something ready for your first day, while you familiarize with the area and get all set up.

Should you want to take up on our offer, all you need to do is send us a list of your favorite items and we’ll have our staff get them before your arrival. 

By the way, that’s of course complimentary!

We look forward to hearing from you and wish you a wonderful stay in Sardinia.

 

Kind regards,

 

Why Would You Do That?

The purpose of this message is to surprise your prospect and wow them one more time (to reinforce the overall mind blowing first impression you gave with the “Bespoke Reply“), by saving a little, personal and much appreciated treat that’ll make you stand out from the crowd one more time.

Our Treat…

Obviously, it’s entirely up to you to decide the kind of treat you want to reserve. In our case, we budgeted a small amount for our treat in the rental fee, so it’s a win-win.

After all, we’ve been asked so many times whether the supermarkets would be open on weekends, upon late arrivals, where could they find the essentials for their first breakfast or things like that, so we thought about anticipating the need and satisfy that upfront in our preliminary offering phase and this little tweak helped our conversions too!

Your Treat…

So think about what’s the most common questions you get from your guests that you could satisfy in this phase and bear in mind that it must be something valuable and that possibly others don’t do.

A bottle of wine for example, while nice to offer is pretty much standard nowadays and some guests even take it for granted, so you’d need to go a little further to stand out from the crowd.

Proactivity Saves You In Case…

In our case we know that offering a complimentary list of their favorite things they’d love to find upon arrival, has a tremendous impact on their decision making process, influencing that in our favor and also making the check-in moment as smooth and easy as possible, so they are more inclined to subside to whatever may happen that’s unexpected during their stay and goes beyond our control…

For example, over Christmas, we had a couple who rented one of our properties and suddenly the heating stopped working on day 2 and it took me a couple of days to have it fixed.

In their post stay feedback they said how they loved finding a stocked pantry upon arrival, how much they appreciated the effort taken in solving the issue, and how we’ve gone the extra mile like no one else they’ve ever rented from before. That helped mitigating the side effects of an unexpected possible disservice and prevented them from leaving a not so positive review that may have impacted our future business.

Future Benefits Vs Instant Gratification

In a case like this one, you see how the right mindset makes all the difference in winning or losing both a customer, a returning guest and a raving fan. So learn to think in terms of future benefits over maximized instant earnings. While counterintuitive, it’s what will help you fill up your calendars year after year.

And by the way, believe it or not these guests wrote me yesterday saying they want to book again in October!

There You Have It

So there you have it! My 3 step sequence, that’s generated six figures in bookings over the last few years and brought in thousands of $ worth of bookings in the last couple of weeks alone!

Go ahead now and download this third template, so you have the complete sequence at hand to try this out and see if it helps, like it does with us and the owners like Nancy, Amy, Paola and many more, who’ve being using it with great satisfaction.