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Filling your calendar up with…Black Friday Transcript
(00:10):
Everybody, John here. Today we’re going to talk about getting more bookings on your calendar with drum roll please. Black Friday. Black Friday, yes. Black Friday, cyber Monday Cyber Week. It really works. And you do want to start thinking about doing this now even though we’re still in August and Black Friday’s all the way in November. You want to start preparing this. Why? Because you may not have an email list set up yet, and if you don’t have an email list from your previous guests, you need to start getting their emails because that’s how you’re going to get your booking calendar full. You can use a client like MailChimp or Excel, just keep it on the spreadsheet. But anyone who’s ever traveled with you or has ever expressed interest in staying at your place, definitely keep their first name and their email address because come Black Friday, you can use that to fill up the calendar.
(01:02)
So did you know that Black Friday, 138% of additional income from consumers purchased on Black Friday and email marketing actually returns to $36 for every $1 spent and it’s the king of r o I. So it’s actually really easy to run a promotion and there’s a couple of them that you can use, can actually ramp up in October and then have that big crazy holiday weekend and then the final deals on Cyber Monday, but you only have one short-term rental, right? Well, this is how it’s going to make a difference for you. If you offer a truly great discount and you offer it on Black Friday and you tease about it, meaning you’re sending every month, Hey, I’m going to drop a deal. People will want to see what that deal is, and if you offer say, 20% off of your rate just for Black Friday, if they book now and put that time to expire, say they have one week or even three days until the offer expires, people will book their vacation because they will be getting a better deal from you than they’re going to get anywhere else.
(02:09)
Airbnb never has anything on special. Maybe the rates drop, but it’s never an actual Black Friday special. So this is a way that you can generate buzz and actually prompt them, call them to action, to actually place a booking and lock in three, four, maybe even five or six bookings from one holiday email. So if you haven’t ever ran this type of promotion, it’s actually really simple to do so, and the more emails that you have, the wider the net and the more fish you’re going to catch. Okay? So you definitely want to make sure that when you do run this promotion, it’s attractive. It shows pictures of your home and it calls to action, Hey, book with me now, right? Make it personal username, be specific. Let them know when the deal runs out. Say the deal runs out in 24 hours, cyber Monday or 48 hours, but be clear.
(02:57)
Focus on clarity, but still be fun. You want to use emojis because emojis increase the response rates and the open rates and you want to be unique and interesting. Don’t use a generic, it’s Black Friday and that’s it. You want to show what that deal is going to be, why that deal is so special, how big that discount’s going to be, because around that week there’s going to be so many deal emails flooding their inbox. So you want something truly special to actually stand out from all the Black Friday marketing communications that people are getting. And when you tease about this, it needs to be a pretty good deal because if you say, oh, it’s 5% off, I mean, it’s not going to, one, people will be disappointed, but it’s not going to actually help get any bookings. It needs to be a truly remarkable discount.
(03:40)
But if you do have the ability to offer a truly remarkable discount for Black Friday Cyber Week, cyber Monday, you can land quite a few bookings just by sending one email out. Just takes a couple of minutes to do it and your response rate will be tremendous. If you have over a hundred email on your email list, like previous guests, you will see a really great response, maybe even four or five bookings from this. Here’s a couple of tips on the copy. This is a section you’re actually writing down. One, always be truthful. Don’t offer something and then take it back. It has to be truthful and whatever you’re promising there has to be truthful too. Countdown timers, they work saying, the sale ends tonight. This is exclusive. Only these dates are left in my calendar. It really helps. You want to keep it concise.
(04:24)
So focus on a small selection of deals. So if you have different deals for different dates, you want to try to make it easy to read and understand. So offer say one discount for all feature date, it makes it easier for your guests or feature perspective guests to understand what the deal is. Use a specific call to action book now. Book now before the sale runs out. Be very specific so people know what you want them to do and use fomo. The fear of missing out. People don’t like to miss out on sales because they have that fear of loss. So use this to your advantage and use the p a s framework problem. Tomorrow is too late. Agitation, our deal ends in a few hours and you will miss out solution. Take action now to save on this booking. Okay? This will make people actually take action and not just shuffle it to their archive or their trash folder.
(05:17)
People will take action if the deal is good enough. Have you ever seen those cruise emails that say, Hey, this is a super special deal. You’re only going to get it this week. They’re actually pretty interesting and they always reel me in email Marketing works and it’s cheap and it has a huge r o i. So if you’re not leveraging it, you want to strongly consider this. And it’s only a matter of collecting emails. There’s so many ways to collect emails. There’s software you can use in residence so that people can enter your email to get access to the wifi. It’s asking for the email when they check out so you can keep in contact with them. You have permission to contact them in the future. That’s a good way. And having engagement on social media, whether using Facebook or TikTok or Instagram, making sure you seal that email so you can use it.
(06:03)
That is highly important because it takes a while to collect a noteworthy mailing list. But say over the course of a year, you collect a thousand emails and you blast out this Black Friday marketing message, you will get a response and it can actually land you six, seven, maybe even eight bookings while only just taking a couple of minutes of your time. It’s not going to take much of your time, but the impact huge. I hope you like this content. If you want to help me make more of it, please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, whatever platform you’re listening on, it would be a tremendous help in help me keep this show moving. So thanks so much for listening. Stay booked.
Vacation Rentals With John is one of the fastest growing short term rental podcasts. The show has been growing in popularity because of its no BS, to the point lessons on how to grow and operate a vacation rental. Join the facebook group. To listen to any of the past episodes, check out this page.