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Sara: Hi, Amy. Thank you for joining me to talk about hospitality marketing. Amy: Thank you for having me. Sara: Great. Sara: Can you tell us a little bit about you and your role at Saratoga Arms in Saratoga Springs? Amy: Sure. So my name is Amy Smith as Sara said, Amy: I am the general manager of a family run business. Amy: My folks bought a little dilapidated building on Broadway in downtown Saratoga about 22 years ago and rehabbed it to a Amy: 30 room boutique hotel. And, Amy: even though I'm a, technically calledthe general manager. And if anybody has ever been involved in a family business, you know, you do everything from changing a light bulb Amy: to actually making big, big, large decisions that Amy: will move your business forward. Sara: Fantastic. So a lot of people say, well, are you a BNB? You're a hotel. You've just described yourself as a botique hotel. Tell us a little bit about being that. Amy: Sure. In between sort of things. I say, I like to say that we're the best of both. So, Amy: we are large, we're 31 rooms and, Amy: we do offer a complimentary full breakfast to our guests. It is, Amy: our a signature item that we have at Saratoga Arms. Amy: It's a wonderful, wonderful breakfast, Amy: but if you want to be anonymous, and there are no large tables, there's no, Amy: gatherings where you would have to, Amy: socially interact with somebody you, you don't want to. So. Amy: we all, we have a large dining room with individual tables. We have a wonderful front porch. We have beer and wine service. We have small plates. So, Amy: the great thing about a bed and breakfast is, and we also offer, is we offer a tremendous amount, we're very high touch. So we offer some wonderful, Amy: guest services and customer service from the time they make their booking all the way to checkout. So, Amy: I like to say we're a little bit of both. We, we, we are who you want us to be. Sara: Wonderful. Wonderful. So you are a brilliant marketer. Amy: Well, no, no, no, no. I don't want, it's all smoke and mirrors. Sara: Not true. Not true. You're a great marketer. And so I'd love for you to share a little bit how your marketing has changed since Covid 19. Amy: Covid 19. March 9th, 2020 it will be forever ingrained in my brain and I'm sure yours and anybody that is listening now. Amy: So I think what has happened since Amy: especially in New York Amy: and the shutdown, is that we really needed a way to talk to our guests. And we also needed a way to talk to the people that might be Amy: interested in traveling, like the dream of travel. So we talk about everybody sitting at home on their screens, on zoom calls, clicking on the internet, buying from Amazon, all these sorts of things that are happening because they're sheltering in place. So what we decided to do maybe about six, eight months ago, is that we have a large email database. And we, Amy: have always sent that requisite monthly email that sort of is like a Amy: bazaar, get out, come this day and get this off or, Amy: here's what's happening in Saratoga. It Amy: really wasn't personalized, so there could have been somebody who stayed during racing season and we are promoting to them a winter weekend in Saratoga. It just didn't make sense to me. It never did make sense to me. And there was never a, Amy: a, what I would call a program or an app in our sort of, Amy: small, independent hotelier BNB space that could really do those sort of things for us where we could say, okay, you're racing season. You only get racing season emails because anybody that's in Saratoga knows that a racing season guests will never come for any other during any other time than racing because they are very, very personalized and segmented that way. So for about six, eight months, almost Amy: under a year ago, I was looking for a CRM and you know, a CRM, there's a customer relationship management system. So it basically takes those emails, those former guests and says, okay, who are, they? Put them in buckets. And then when we're ready to send a specific email, we will only send it to the people that really, it resonates to them. So, Amy: and I think that's really important in this time when you are, when you're looking for specific marketing, you're looking for people that maybe have stayed during their anniversary. They might still come in a sort of a different sort of new normal, as I like to say, because they experienced your property and they had a great time. They're dreaming of traveling again, so why not market to them and say, Oh, you are here for your anniversary in June. Would you be willing? Would you want to come back? You know, in that nice little marketing sort of Amy: way that you do it. Also what we have decided to do, and this is, this runs, again, part of the CRM is it allows us, and on our website is how do we market to the people that are very interested in coming to Saratoga, click on our website, or they have some sort of, they type in something on Google that is aspirational, best restaurants in Saratoga, Amy: best hotel to stay during racing season, whatever those, Amy: key search word terms are and how do we attract those people to come to our website and dream more when they're, even if they're not ready to book. So what we have decided to do is we have taken our different sections of our website and put together, Amy: a sort of an email securing, Amy: area. And a lot of times people, and very generically, as you well know, on websites, it was the sign up for our latest updates and emails, you know, for special deals. Amy: Your email. I don't know about you, Sara, but my email is very, very private to me. I don't want to be spammed for things that I have no interest for. So we kept thinking about what were the, what are the things that people would give up an email for? Because quite frankly, our newsletter. Meh. I'm not sure who, you know, who really cares about getting a newsletter from a property in Saratoga Springs, Amy: but what would be the carrot that would, that would allow people to give up their email? So we have created, Amy: what you and I know in the business as lead generation materials. So it is a PDF. It could be a checklist. Some people do eBooks. Amy: Some people do the, you know, the top 10 reasons for x. And what we have done is we're, and we're still continuing to do it, we're sprinkled these in different areas of our website too, in hopes of people will want that particular PDF. I'll give you an example, Amy: on our homepage and then also on our footer, we have the top 10, oh, the sign up for Amy: the ultimate Saratoga Springs guide. Amy: So that might be of interest to somebody. Okay. If I want to come to Saratoga, what is in there? Maybe I'll sign up for a, Amy: for that email. There's also, Amy: we, a few years ago, we did a, Amy: a series of hiking blogs, and we noticed we got a tremendous amount of traffic from that. So we put together, we took Amy: those series of blogs Amy: consolidated them in a PDF that said the top 10 Amy: hiking, Amy: trails from Saratoga Springs that, you know, based on experience. So we had three easy, three medium and three hard all within a day's drive Amy: and now we are now working on our racing season one, which is always a little precarious when you don't know whether there's going to be a racing season this year, but we think that will eventually be an evergreen piece. And that is, you know, the top 10 reasons why you would want to come for a day of racing. Sara: Mmh. Amy: We have found that a lot of people are, Amy: No, that they should come to Saratoga for racing. But I have no idea what that means. I don't know if you've experienced that. Well, it's on the bucket list of the sports illustrated top 50 venues to see before you die. Okay. I guess I gotta go. So, Amy: but there's a lot of handholding that we do with people that are new racing season fans or racing fans. So we thought that, okay, this lead generation material would be, this PDF would be great. So we're just finalizing that and we're, we're going to put it up there. I mean, with the caveat is, you know, it might not happen this year. It might happen with no fans, but it's something that people could keep for next year and, you know, print out that PDF and keep for next year. Sara: So how long have you been in Saratoga Springs? Amy: How long have I been in Saratoga Springs? I'm born and raised. I'm a local. Sara: And how long have you been managing the, Sara: Saratoga arts? Amy: It feels like since I've been about 12, but, but my, Amy: since, Amy: 2002 is when I came on board. So my folks, Amy: started in 1998. And I, I came in and I never, and I grew up in this business. I grew up in the restaurant business and the bed and breakfast business. And when I went off to college, I said, there'll be no way I'll come back to the family business, but never say never. Sara: Well, I love that Sara: you're sharing your deep expertise and knowledge through these, these eBooks, getting their email address, figuring out what they're interested in and marketing to them in such a personalized way. That's the thing that the B2B industry has been doing for a decade, but it's really pretty novel in the hotel industry. You don't see a lot of a lot of businesses doing that, so I definitely applaud you for that. Amy: Thank you. Well, I also, I think that people, I think some people in our industry think that people are going to go to your website and book right away. And I don't think so. I think that people do a lot of research before deciding, first of all, where to go, is Saratoga the right place to go and then where to stay and where to eat and what to do. So if we have the opportunity to grab them during that dreaming phase, they might come back to us. So I think it's a great opportunity. I mean, large properties can do this. Small BnBs can do this. It's not that hard. It's a little upfront work. But the machine does the work for you after you've got everything set up. Sara: Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's very true. People pay, I don't know exactly the exact numbers, but it's six or seven or between six and 10 website. Someone will visit regarding your hotel to research before they actually make that booking. So if you can get them connecting with you directly, they're more likely to say, Hey, Amy, thanks for that email. Can I book direct with you? You know, so. That's fantastic. Amy: That's important. You, you always want that. You always want that direct booking. You want to be able to market to those people during certain crisises like this covid crisis. Amy: Could you imagine if everybody had made their bookings. Amy: all your customers were through booking.com or Expedia? Who, who would you have to talk to now during this time when people are in that phase of, maybe not booking, but thinking about it. So it's always have your own people always have your own list. Sara: I agree. You need to take control of your own marketing, your own destination marketing, your own individual property marketing. That's great. Do you have, let's wrap this up. Do you have any final advice for anyone listening, lodging, property owners, general managers? Amy: I would say the hardest part is to get started. If you want to do something like this, it's there a whole bunch of, Amy: email marketing companies that provide these services. Amy: We, I have always been, Oh gosh, I'm, I always say I'm not a writer or I don't have time. Well, you know what I did? I found somebody who could write. And I found somebody who could write in the voice that I really thought would resonate to our guests. It felt like the Saratoga Arm's way of writing, and that was a little bit of an expense, but has paid off in the long run. So where I don't have to spend four hours writing two paragraphs, this person can get things back to me in no time. Amy: But my, my final recommendation would be just to start, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be Amy: glossy. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to. But just start and see what happens. You can get going, and then as you get better, you can provide more of these items for your potential guests. Sara: Wonderful, wonderful advice, and it's great. Thank you. Thank you for joining me and for sharing your knowledge. Amy: My pleasure. Anytime, anytime. I'll talk anytime. Sara: We might have to do another repeat another one of these, so thank you. Amy: Absolutely I'd be happy to. Alright, thanks. Sara: Bye. Amy: Okay bye