Watch Now: The LiveRez Tools That Will Boost Your Bottom Line

LiveRez’s webinar from Nov. 19 on “The LiveRez Tools That Will Boost Your Bottom Line” is now available to watch online.

The LiveRez software is packed with a wide variety of tools to accelerate your bookings, increase your operational efficiency and ultimately boost your bottom line. And in this webinar, LiveRez Director of Sales and Marketing Tyler Hurst goes over a number of ways LiveRez helps you achieve success.

The full webinar is embedded below.

To see more LiveRez webinars and register for upcoming live webinars, make sure to check out our Webinars Page.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the most widely used software platform for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation and property management, websites with online bookings, trust accounting, CRM, housekeeping and maintenance, reporting, reviews and more. LiveRez is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

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How to Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Vacation Rental Marketing Efforts

Today’s marketing professionals know that marketing is more of a science than an art. And, everyone knows you can’t be scientific if you don’t run tests. For that reason, Google Analytics is perhaps the most powerful free tool available to marketers today.

The following blog will give vacation rental managers a general overview of how to use Google Analytics to measure (and improve) their marketing efforts. We’ve tried to make the concepts easy enough for even beginners to understand.

We’ll start by breaking down the important information Google Analytics gives you about your website and then end by giving you some guidance on how to use this information to improve your marketing efforts.

How many people are visiting my site?

You can find this information under the audience section of Google Analytics.

Watch these numbers carefully. Getting more people to your website and having them view more pages is generally a good sign and can mean more bookings. If your website traffic starts to drop, this should alert you to look closer at why the traffic could be dropping.

Unique Visitors (Now Called “Users”) – How many unique people have visited your site. Only counts each visitor once.

Visits (Now Called “Sessions”) – How many actual visits people have made to your site. Counts each visit to your site, even if it is a return visitor.

Pageviews – How many pages have been viewed. Each visit can include multiple page views. Most people will view more than one page on your website.

Where are they coming from?

You can find this information under the acquisition section of Google Analytics.

These numbers are important because they show you what channels are getting visitors to your site. This will help you determine where your marketing efforts are paying off.

Traffic Sources – This tells you how visitors found your website. Here are the main categories of traffic sources:

• Search engines (organic) – These are people who found your website via a search engine’s non-paid (or organic) search results. Google no longer tells you what term they were searching for.
• Paid Search – These are people who found your website via a search engine’s paid search results. You’ll need to be participating in a program like Google Adwords to get these types of results. Google will even be able to tell you what term they were searching.
• Website Referral – These are people who came to your website via a link on another site. Google will tell you what website they can from.
• Direct/None – This is an open-ended category which basically means that Google couldn’t track how people found your website. There are multiple reasons for this. The person could have directly typed your website address in their browser. They came via a bookmark. They came from a secure site that strips the referrer information. They clicked on a link in an email client that strips out the referrer information.
• Campaigns – This is generally a special type of traffic that you are driving yourself. You’ll need to use special URLs to track this type of traffic. Most email marketers will put a special code at the end of their URLs to track people who click on their links. To learn more about tracking your marketing efforts in Google Analytics, click here.

How are they interacting with my site?

You can find these numbers in just about every section of Google Analytics. You can look at these numbers overall in the audience section, per traffic source in the acquisition section or per page in the behavior section.

These stats tell you how your website is handling visitors. Are they engaging with your website or leaving? Improving these numbers will improve the overall conversion and performance of your website.

Bounce Rate – The bounce rate of a page is the percentage of people that enter your website via that page (i.e. landed on that page) and then left your website without visiting any other pages. Generally, a high bounce is a bad thing for vacation rental websites because a traveler needs to visit more than one page to find and/or book a vacation rental property.

Exit Rate – This is similar to the bounce rate, but slightly different. This measures the rate of people that leave your website via this page. They don’t necessarily have to land on this page, but this page is the last page they visit. Pages with high exit rates are generally performing badly and should be addressed. The only exception would be a booking thank-you page which is only hit after a guest makes a booking.

Pages Per Visit – This metric shows you the average number of pages a visitor hits when they come to your website. A higher number of pages per visit is good because it means they are interacting more with your website.

How is all this making me money?

As a vacation rental manager, you make money when someone makes a booking. While it’s much tougher to track bookings made over the phone, it’s fairly simple to track bookings made online. The key thing you need to look for is the page a visitor is directed to after they submit their booking. On most websites, this is called a thank-you page.

You can assume that every time someone hits your thank-you page you got a new booking. So tracking how many time people hit that page is important. In marketing speak, people hitting the thank-you page is known as a conversion.

So, your first goal is to find out the URL of the thank-you page. Once you find that you can set up a goal in Google Analytics. For more information on setting up goals in Google Analytics, click here.

UPDATE: Google Analytics now has eCommerce tracking. For tracking online bookings, this is an even more powerful way to examine your performance. It tell you things like what property was booked, for how many nights and what the total rental rate was. LiveRez has already pre-installed this code on all its partners websites, but you’ll need to enable eCommerce tracking from Google Analytics. Click here to learn how.

The next thing you want to do is isolate how people got to your website and the path they took to making a booking.

1. Where did they come from? Find out the traffic source for the conversion under the Conversions > Goals > Overview (then click on “Source / Medium” in left-hand pane).

2. What path did they take to make the booking? Once you’ve set up a goal in Google Analytics, you can see the path to that goal by going to Conversions > Goals > Reverse Goal Path. This will tell you what pages they visited before making the booking.

3. How are your channels are working together? Check this out by looking under Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels. This will show you an idea of what channels are assisting conversion. For example, let’s say the person first came to your website from a Google search. Then they came back to your website after seeing one of your re-marketing ads online and made their booking during that section. It helps you assign the booking credit to both channels. Remember, your marketing channels are always working together.

How do I use this information to improve my marketing?

As marketer, you really only have a few goals. There are lots of ways to get there, but really only a few desired outcomes:

1. Get more people to come to your website (or call / email you).

2. Get them to book one of your properties (or at least give you their information).

3. Make sure you get the best return on investment while completing steps 1 and 2.

First, let’s look at step 1. Your goal should be to get more people to your website. To do that, you want to improve the performance of your marketing efforts. So, you should always be asking yourself these questions:

• Am I utilizing all the channels possible to get my brand and my properties in front of potential guests?
• Can I improve the efficiency of any of my current marketing channels?
• Where should I be spending my marketing budget and where should I be focusing my marketing efforts to best increase my ROI.

Google analytics can help by showing you where traffic to your website is coming from and how much of that traffic is converting to bookings. With this information, you can easily determine where your marketing efforts are improving (or where they need improvement), and you can also easily determine your return on investment for each one of your marketing channels.

Next, let’s look at step 2. This deals with how well your website is performing. At this point, you’ve got the traffic to your website. Now you need to make sure your website is converting as much of that traffic as possible to bookings. You can use bounce rates to judge the performance of your landing pages, and exit rates to find pages on your website that may be making your visitors leave. And, you can use pages per visit as a gauge of how engaged your visitors are. As you begin to identify and fix problems on your website, you’ll start to see more of your traffic converting to bookings.

Need Help?

If you’re a vacation rental manager that needs help with your marketing efforts, give us a call at (800) 343-2891. LiveRez offers both the technology and the hands-on services you need to improve your marketing. And, we have years of experience and results to back it up.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

Did you like this post? Please consider “liking” it and sharing it on your social media channels via the buttons below. You can also follow us and get notifications of all new posts via the “Follow” button in the bottom right-hand part of the screen.

Why You Don’t Need a $4 Million Super Bowl Ad to See Marketing Success

How nice would it be to have a $4 million advertising budget? Pretty sweet, huh? But, even if you had that kind of marketing money, it would have only got you 30 seconds during this year’s Super Bowl.

But, the good news is that you don’t need a big ad budget to find marketing success. Here are 10 free and low cost ways to promote your business that can have a big impact on your bottom line.

1. Local Partnerships – As a vacation rental manager, you know that your guests are going to be doing more than just staying at one of your properties during their vacation. They will be out in the community, enjoying all your destination has to offer. And, they’ll be patronizing local businesses in the process. This presents a huge opportunity for you to partner with these local businesses. You can refer them business. They can refer you business. You may even be able to earn a commission on your referrals. And in the end, these partnership will only add to your guests’ experience and make them like you that much more.

2. Create a Google+ Business Page – Google+ is one of the fastest growing social networks on the planet. And, it’s tied in with the largest search engine in the world. There’s no excuse to not have a Google+ Business Page. It’s a two-for-one opportunity, really. You’ll position yourself on an up-and-coming social media platform and at the same time improve your chances for appearing higher in local search results. Your page will help you get more business and only costs your time in setting it up and maintaining it.

3. Volunteer Your Expertise to Reporters – Advertising in a newspaper or on a radio or television stations costs money. But, when a reporter uses you as a source in one of their stories, it’s 100% free publicity. As a professional vacation rental manager, you’re likely already an expert in two fields: hospitality and your destination. Offering to share this expertise with reporters only makes their jobs easier. In fact, reporters are actively seeking sources. If you haven’t already, you should sign up for a service called HARO (Help a Reporter Out).  Every day, reporters post new requests for sources there. And, the best part is that it’s absolutely free to sign up for and use.

4. Be Active on Social Media – Social Media channels are a great way to stay in touch with your best customers. While social media channels can (and will) drive traffic to your website and help you generate more bookings, they also help keep your customer base engaged (and add fuel to all of your other marketing efforts). As a manager, the top social media channels you should be considering are Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest.

5. Network – Networking is a great way to learn, but it’s also a great way to grow your business (especially grow your inventory). One group of people you should develop relationships with is local realtors in your area that specialize in selling second homes. They deal with a targeted group of buyers that are a perfect fit for your rental program. Especially if the realtor is not already associated with a brokerage that has a short-term property management wing, they can be a huge source of new leads for your rental program.

6. Use Email Marketing – You spend a lot of effort getting new guests, collecting rental inquiries and finding leads for your rental program. One of the best ways to cultivate these lists is to keep in touch with them through email marketing. Depending on your list size and how many emails you send a month, you can utilize the free version of Mail Chimp. Even if you don’t qualify for a free account, email marketing programs come in at a relatively low cost per month. And, email marketing is often heralded as one of the top marketing channel for return on investment (meaning, even if you pay for it, email marketing will pay you back multiple times over).

7. Promotions – Everyone likes a good deal right? Offering discounts or bonus items is a great way to catch people’s attention. And you don’t have to give away a lot to get a lot. Maybe it’s an attractive bonus item that you can get free or for a low cost from a partner. Maybe it’s a discount on a home that’s harder to book. Maybe it’s a last-minute deal on a home that runs the risk of going empty. Promotions simply get people looking, and often pay back much more than what they cost you.

8. Google Adwords – Every day, people are searching Google for vacation rentals in your area. Why not tap into this already qualified and interested field of guests. Adwords is a quick way to move to the top page of the search results, and you’ll only pay when a guest clicks on your ad and comes to your website. To save money, focus on long-tail terms, which often have a lower cost per click and a higher conversion rate when going to a highly relevant landing page.

9. Google Adsense Remarketing – You spend a lot of effort getting guests to your website. Why not capitalize on that investment by having your ads follow them around the Internet. Google Remarketing taps into Google’s Adsense advertising network, allowing you to advertise to anyone who has visited your site when they hit a site that is running Google Adsense. Tons of websites across the Internet use Google Adsense to display ads and make money, so you may be surprised at just how many websites will feature your ads. Re-marketing offers a huge return on investment because it targets only people that have been to your website, gives you tons of impressions on multiple sites and features a relatively low cost per click in comparison to Adwords. Even if you don’t get many clicks, it’s a huge tactic for staying in front of potential guests and re-enforcing your brand.

10. Foster Repeat Business and Word of Mouth – One of the best marketing tools you have is your products and services. Making sure your guests have an amazing vacation will help word about your business spread organically. Remember, even a $4 million Super Bowl ad won’t mean anything if you don’t offer guests an amazing experience.

And just for fun…

Let’s take a look at how this year’s Super Bowl sponsors spent their $4 million.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

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10 Ways LiveRez Makes a Vacation Rental Manager’s Job Easier

One of the biggest benefits of using LiveRez is how it makes your job easier. The system is set up to be user friendly and favors automation over busy work. It’s that way because our development has been fueled almost exclusively by the suggestions of our property manager partners.  So, if you’re looking to make your job a lot easier while generating more income, you should check out the list below.

1. Sending Emails – LiveRez can automatically send guests personalized emails relating to their reservations without you having to lift a finger or remember to do anything. Email go out automatically, according to the triggers you set up in your system. And, the content is customized to guests based on the information in their reservation. You can even use this system to communicate with owners and vendors.

2. Replying to Inquiries – LiveRez can automatically reply to inquiries from advertising sites with availability, quotes and links to book online. And, if the property isn’t available, it can show up to three similar available properties that are ready to be booked right away.

3. Sending Quotes – LiveRez can easily email online bookable quotes to guests for multiple properties. All your reservationists need to do is search for dates, click a check box next to the available properties the guest is interested in, enter the guest’s contact information and hit send. The system will even automatically create a lead for that guest so you never have to worry about losing their information.

4. Scheduling Work Orders and Reminders – LiveRez can automatically create and schedule work orders upon reservation. Simply check what work orders you’d like to schedule automatically upon reservation, and make sure your properties have assigned vendors. The system will then automatically create work orders upon reservation and email employees/vendors reminders with links to the forms. You can also give employees/vendors access to the work order system, where they can quickly find any work orders assigned to them.

5. Updating Your Website – Need to make a change to your website? Change the content? Add a picture? Create a new property listing? No problem. With LiveRez, you can do all that in real time through our content management system within our back office. No longer will need to wait for a third party vendor to make a change to your website, just to get a bill in the mail a few days later. With LiveRez, you’re in control of your website.

6. Accessing Information – Need to know who is arriving today? How much revenue you did last month? What your occupancy levels are looking like two months out? No problem. LiveRez is chalked full of reports that make accessing crucial information about your business just a few clicks away.

7. Owners Portal – What if your owners could simply log in through your website to make their own bookings, view their owners statements, check out their property calendars and view key reports about their homes? Well, with LiveRez your owners can do all that and more. The LiveRez owners portals are a great tool for keeping your owners happy and informed, and an even better sales tool in convincing new owners to join your rental program.

8. QuickBooks Integration – Many managers prefer to use QuickBooks for their vacation rental accounting. But, the problem is that in order to do that they have to transfer all of the data from their software program into QuickBooks. The problem is made worse when most vacation rental software programs out there provide little to no help in the process. LiveRez, on the other hand, has a real-time integration with QuickBooks to simplify the process and save managers tons of time.

9. All-In-One Platform – LiveRez is an all-in-one platform, meaning you get all of your technology in one place, instead of having to deal with multiple vendors to accomplish your needs. And because our websites and our property management system are all one piece of software, they work together seamlessly. No need to update information in multiple places. No compatibility issues. No finger pointing among vendors when something goes wrong. With LiveRez, you have one technology provider to handle all of your needs.

10. Training and Support – At LiveRez, we want our partners using our software to its full extent. That’s why we offer excellent live support and a whole host of online training and support resources. Additionally, we understand that switching to a new software can be a huge investment of your company’s time and money. So, we assign each new LiveRez partner a dedicated implementation manager to guide them through the transition process.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

Did you like this post? Please consider “liking” it and sharing it on your social media channels via the buttons below. You can also follow us and get notifications of all new posts via the “Follow” button in the bottom right-hand part of the screen.

Checkout Options: How to Earn Extra Revenue When a Guest Books

One of the many handy features of LiveRez that helps vacation rental managers increase their revenues is the checkout options feature.

LiveRez allows managers to set up additional options at checkout for things like fly fishing lessons, gift baskets, lift tickets, etc. Then, when a guest gets to the checkout page they can add on these options for an additional charge (or for free if you set a charge of $0).

This option allow managers to build in certain concierge style services at checkout while opening additional channels for revenue.  And, the best part is they don’t have to put out any effort to “sell” these products and services; they can simply “offer” them as an option.

Another cool part of this feature is the ability to set up a contact per option. Let’s say you are partnering with a local fishing guide to offer fly fishing lessons. You can set up the guide’s email address within the option, and then any time that option is purchased, the guide will get an email letting him know that someone has booked a fly fishing lesson. This helps you expedite the delivery of the services – again, helping you make more money without much extra work.

To learn more about how LiveRez can help your company earn more revenue, contact us now at (800) 343-2891 or email Sales@LiveRez.com.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

Did you like this post? Please consider “liking” it and sharing it on your social media channels via the buttons below. You can also follow us and get notifications of all new posts via the “Follow” button in the bottom right-hand part of the screen.

7 Reasons to Diversify Your Vacation Rental Marketing

Diversifying your marketing efforts can protect the financial independence of your company and help you increase your ROI.

Just like investing, it pays to diversity your marketing efforts. Many professional managers are stuck in the rut of just posting their properties on advertising sites and relying solely on those channels for bookings. But, as we’ll outline in this post, there are multiple benefits to diversifying your marketing efforts – so you’re not held hostage to one or two channels for your financial success.

But, before we take a look at why diversifying your marketing will help, let’s define what we mean by diversification. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to say that diversification is being active on multiple marketing channels – channels not being just listing sites, but any way in which you can reach potential guests. Channels encompass advertising sites, but also include things like SEO, email marketing, Adwords, Adsense Remarketing, social media, blogging, public relations, print advertising, and local partnership and affiliations, among others.

So now that we have defined diversification, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why diversification is good when it comes to marketing.

Financial Independence / Leverage

The problem with relying solely on one or two channels for marketing is that you have no leverage when the channel costs increase. This is especially relevant to short-term marketing strategy channels like advertising sites, which only produce revenue while you are paying for them.

Realize this: If you get all of your bookings from one channel and that channel become more expensive, you are virtually forced to pay more. Plus, as a middle man, your owners are also expecting continual returns on their investment, so that puts even more pressure on you to get results, locking you in to channels and forcing you to increase your costs. And, when you pay more for marketing and don’t get greater returns, it cuts into your commissions and lowers your profits.

Simply put, you need alternatives. And you have to realize that some of those alternative you can’t just turn on at a moment’s notice; rather, they have to be built over time.

Market Changes

Everything changes. 60 years ago, print advertising was the bread and butter of most marketing departments. 30 years ago, TV and radio were the top dog. Nowadays, internet marketing is king. But, even internet marketing has changed dramatically in just the past few years.

You need to be prepared for the effectiveness of every single one of your marketing channels to either increase or decrease as consumer trends change. Developing multiple marketing channels is one way to weather that change. It gives you time to adjust to the change in one channel, because you are supported by your other channels. In some cases, you may even need to be prepared to stop using a channel altogether because it doesn’t provide enough return on investment.

Reaching Different Customer Types

Your potential guests will vary in their shopping behaviors. Older guests will certainly find you through different means than your younger guests. International guests different than domestic guests. Men different than women. High income different than low income. The best way to be successful in marketing is to understand where your potential customers are and be in all those places.

Return on Investment

If you’re only using one type of channel, how can you compare your ROI? You simple can’t, because there is nothing to compare it to.  Using multiple channels gives you perspective on which of your channels is performing better, especially how that channel’s ROI is changing over time. Sometimes, ROI goes up and down seasonally, or is different for different customer types. If you don’t invest in different marketing channels, you won’t have that type of data to draw from.

The Cross-Pollination Effect

One great thing about having multiple marketing channels is seeing how they all work together. For example, how are your blogging efforts affecting your SEO rankings? How are advertising inquiries fueling your email marketing lists? How is traffic from all channels fueling your Adsense Remarketing efforts?

Marketing generally follows the rule of “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Your marketing channels don’t just sit in different rooms and not talk to each other. They interact with each other and increase each other’s effectiveness.

Testing

Having multiple marketing channels gives you more room for testing new ideas. If you only had one marketing channel, you wouldn’t want to take chances with it, because it would be your sole earner. Having multiple marketing channels gives you a platform to test the effectiveness of different messages across different mediums and across different demographics. And, after a while, you’ll start testing new channels and adding to your marketing arsenal.

Equity

One of the most important things about having multiple marketing channels is that it allows you to focus on both short-term and long-term strategies while you build equity from your marketing efforts. What we mean by equity is marketing that continues to work when you are no longer paying for it or at least not dedicating as many resources to it. Some short-term strategies can get you great results immediately, but as soon as you stop investing in them, they stop producing revenue for you. Other channels that may take longer to development (like SEO) will continue to produce revenue for you even if you slow your investment in them.

Think of building equity as building your brand. As your brand grows, you become less reliant on marketing. Marketing is really the act of getting your product or service in the mind of your potential customers. Once you’ve built a home in their mind, everything gets easier. When you start to generate brand recognition, you’ll have people come straight to you. And, when people come straight to you, you both save money AND are far less reliant on any specific channel. And, when you decrease your reliance on any one channel, you can focus more on the channels that provide the best ROI (so you can earn more profits).

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

Did you like this post? Please consider “liking” it and sharing it on your social media channels via the buttons below. You can also follow us and get notifications of all new posts via the “Follow” button in the bottom right-hand part of the screen.

7 Ways Vacation Rental Software Automation Saves You Time and Makes You More Money

Find out 6 ways that LiveRez’s automation can help you save time and make more money.

When you are looking at the getting most return out of your investment in vacation rental software, the first thing you should be looking at is how much time the software is going to save you and your staff, and how much more money it’s going to help you earn. This is the most important area to look at, because it nearly always affects your bottom line much more than the actual cost of the software.

So, in this post, let’s examine some of the top ways LiveRez’s cloud-based vacation rental software platform helps managers save time and make more money.

1. Auto Reponses to Inquiry Emails

Inquiries are great, but they take time and effort to reply to. And, the longer it takes you to respond to an inquiry, the less likely the traveler is to book with you. With LiveRez’s auto responder technology, the system automatically reads the inquiry email, and responds right away with availability, a quote and links to book online. Not only that, but it also automatically creates a lead within your system.

You save time and money because your staff doesn’t have to manually respond. And, you make more money because the inquiry is responded to quickly, around the clock. Plus, you free up your staff to focus on other revenue-generating activities.

2. Emailing Instant Quotes

When a traveler calls in inquiring about a property, they want two things: 1. to get more information about the property, and 2. to book the property. Simplifying this process makes it better for your guest and easier on your staff. That’s why LiveRez allows you to email instant quotes to travelers as you are on the phone with them.

Here’s how it works: A traveler calls you on the phone. They tell you what they are looking for. You do a search within LiveRez. As you go over the search results with the travelers, you just click a check box next to the properties they are interested in. To send them quotes for the properties and the dates, you just click on the email quote button, enter in the traveler’s contact info, select a template and hit send. The email they get will give them pricing information with a link to the property page on your website, where they can check out the property listing and are only one click away from booking the property for the exact dates they requested.

This process saves you money because it will shorten your sales calls. Many guests might actually opt to book online, where they will be entering their own information, not the reservationist. Because the experience will be better for the traveler, they’ll be more likely to book, making you more money. And, even if they don’t book, the system automatically creates a lead in the system, so you’ll have their contact information for marketing purposes.

3. Automatic Reservation-Related Emails

Once you get a booking, you start the process of communicating with the guest about their reservation. For managers that are thorough, this can involve multiple emails. In fact, many managers will manually have their staff create and deliver anywhere from 5 to 10 emails per reservation. Imagine if your software could do all of that automatically, without you lifting a finger or having to remember to do anything at all.

The LiveRez CRM allows you to create a template for any email situation, tailor it to the recipient based on data from the transaction, and then send those emails at precisely the time you want them to go out based on system events.

LiveRez partners use this technology to automate tons of different emails, on all sorts of topics, like:

• Custom reservation confirmations
• Custom balance due reminders
• Custom rental contract emails
• Custom rental contract reminders
• Custom pre-arrival emails
• Custom location area information
• Custom check-in emails
• Custom check-out rules emails
• Custom post-stay feedback emails
• And more!

When this functionality was first released, one partner estimated that just this one feature would save him nearly $50,000 a year.

4. Work Orders Auto Assigned

For many managers, there are certain types of works orders that need to be created for every reservation. Additionally, many of these managers have employees or vendor pre-assigned to complete these tasks per property. So, we said why not automate the process. With LiveRez, you can choose which work orders you would like to auto create and auto assign upon a new reservation. You can choose who they are assigned to. And, some even let you set the charge for the work and who the work is charged to.

Once a work order is auto created, it can be accessed directly from the transaction for the reservation or from the work order system itself. And the assigned employee or vendor will get an email reminding them of the task. They can even click on a link in the email to go directly to the work order form.

5. Online Booking 24/7  

Once of the easiest ways to save time and make more money is to optimize your website for online bookings. Booking that come in online require no work on the part of your staff. And, statistics show that more and more guest prefer to book online. And think about this: Imagine how many after-hour bookings you could be losing to competitors that offer online bookings.

Anymore, there’s no excuse not to take online bookings. If vetting the guest is an issue, you can always use LiveRez’s pending booking process, which allows you to temporarily hold a guest’s online booking until you approve it.

6. Online Owner Portals

Every manager knows that vacation home owners want information about their properties. And, these owners are not shy about calling you up to get it. With online owner portals, you can give your owners a self-service option for getting information about their properties and making their own bookings. LiveRez lets you create a special online portal for each one of your owners, where they can view reports on their properties, make owner bookings, and view all of their owner statements. Imagine how many calls that would cut down on? Imagine how much happier your owners would be? And, imagine how much of a selling point that would be to an owner coming from a management company that doesn’t offer this?

The best part is that online owner portals are free and unlimited with LiveRez; there’s no additional charge like there is with many other software companies.

7. QuickBooks Integration

For many vacation rental managers, accounting can be a real pain. Why? Because most vacation rental software systems do not have adequate accounting platforms. Many are hard to use. Most bookkeepers aren’t familiar with them since they are used by a small population of users. Many only handle trust accounting and not operations accounting. For these and other reasons, many managers choose to use QuickBooks for their vacation rental accounting. But, the problem they have is getting the accounting data from their software and putting it into QuickBooks.

That’s why LiveRez created its QuickBooks Connector, which can seamlessly transfer a manager’s accounting data from LiveRez to the right spots within the manager’s copy of QuickBooks. This saves managers tons of time each month and helps prevent the errors that managers might see if they were moving all their data over manually.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the many ways that LiveRez can help you save time and make more money. If you want to dive into the specifics of the system, just give us a call and we can schedule a guided product tour, where we’ll show you the ins and outs of the system via an online video conference. Again, just call us at (800) 343-2891 or email Sales@LiveRez.com. We’re happy to assist you.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

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Breaking Down the Cost of Vacation Rental Software

Before signing a contract for vacation rental software, make sure you’re not agreeing to “hidden cost.”

Upgrading your vacation rental software is an important decision. And, one of the major factors in this decision is the cost of the software.  Educating yourself on the different pricing models commonly used will help you ask better questions during the sales process and make sure you’re getting the “whole story” on costs. The last thing you want to do is buy a software and then be hit with additional “hidden costs.”

Below are some questions you should ask during the sales process, before you sign on the dotted line.

Are you being charged per property?

Some software companies will charge you for every property you have in the system. Some even charge an additional fee to have that property listed on your website. And, many will charge an up-front fee when you add a property and then a recurring monthly fee for the property.

Are you being charged for owners?

Some companies will charge you extra for adding additional owners. Some charge you extra for online owner portals, where your owners can log in and view important details about their account, make owner reservations, view their owner statements, etc.

Are you being charged for users?

Being charged for users (or licenses) dates back to the pre-cloud-based software days. But, some cloud-based software systems still charge for every system user.

Is technical support included? Unlimited?

Some companies will charge you for technical support and training, or will limit you to a certain number of support and training hours.

Is a website included?

Not all software company include a vacation rental website. In fact, many companies send you to a third-party designer to have your website built. These third parties can charge $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 or more depending on the level of work. In these situations, you’ll also need to make sure this third-party website integrates with your software. And, if the website doesn’t come with a content management system, you could end up having to pay the designer any time you need to make a change to your website.

If a website is included, is it high-quality?

Some companies will offer free websites when you sign up for their software. But, there’s a big discrepancy in the quality of these websites. Always ask to see examples of websites before you buy. Also ask about the platform the website is built upon? Is the content management system built into the software or do they use a third-party platform, like WordPress? You don’t want to end up with a website built on a content management system that isn’t fully secure.

Do you have to pay extra for an online booking engine?

You would think an online booking engine would be included with any new vacation rental software, but that’s not always the case. Some companies charge an extra fee to allow you to take online bookings on your website.

Are you paying per booking?

Some companies take a very small percentage of your booking revenue (normally less than 1 percent) as their monthly fee.  But, in some instances these companies have minimums or base fees in addition to this commission model. For example, some charge a flat monthly fee plus a commission every month. Others may charge a minimum fee if the commission does not add up.

Are you being forced to list your website on an advertising channel in order to qualify for special pricing?

Some companies have deals in place with listing websites and, as a result, offer special pricing to managers, but only if they commit to listing their properties on a certain advertising site for a pre-determined length of time. In this case, be careful about the level of commitment you’re agreeing to before you sign the dotted line.

Are you getting all the components of the software?

Some software companies have different levels of service. On the lowest (cheapest) end of the spectrum, you may not have access to all the advertised features (or may have to pay more for them). Make sure you ask about this in the sales process.

What is the penalty for cancelling early?

Some software companies make you sign a contract for a specified length of time, so you are committed to using their software (or, at least paying for it) for a pre-determined length of time. In the event that you may need to change software or cancel your software, make sure you know what you are getting into before you sign the contract.

Other Important Factors to Consider

• Is the software company continually releasing updates to the software?
• How much money can the software help you make?
• How much money can the software help you save?
• What are current users saying about the software?
• How often is the software down?
• Does the software work on all browsers?
• Does the software allow you to grow?
• How easy will it be to switch from your current software? How long will it take?
• What will you be responsible for in the implementation process?

One last thing to remember: When you are shopping for software, always look at the value. Software is a business investment, and should be looked at beyond just costs and rather be evaluated in terms of return on investment (ROI). In the world of software, you often get what you pay for.

Learn More About LiveRez
LiveRez is the fastest growing vacation rental software provider for professional vacation rental managers. The company’s cloud-based, end-to-end platform offers fully integrated solutions for reservation management, trust accounting and online marketing, with high-ranking, high-conversion dynamic websites and an extensive affiliate marketing program. The company is a proud Gold Sponsor of the Vacation Rental Manager’s Association (VRMA).

Visit LiveRez.com to learn more:

• Take a Demo
• View Features
• Read Testimonials

Did you like this post? Please consider “liking” it and sharing it on your social media channels via the buttons below. You can also follow us and get notifications of all new posts via the “Follow” button in the bottom right-hand part of the screen.