Vacation Rental Email Automation 7 Steps to your own email communication automation

Who is this for? Those that do not directly manage their listings, e.g. Evolve VR, or other 3rd party where host is active during the stay but not part of the booking/payment flow. Or if you simply want to supplement your current email communication system.

Be sure to check out AirGMS before attempting this solution, especially if you manage your own bookings for Airbnb. I believe they have a free plan that can do much of this. Not sure how much it can do yet with VRBO/HomeAway.

Step 1 – Create Google Calendar

The first step is to create a dedicated Google Calendar for your STR or Vacation Rental. Pick a name for your calendar that matches your individual vacation rental property.

Create a shareable link for the calendar which you will use later in your email flow.

Step 2 – Setup a Mailchimp Account

Setting up a Mailchimp account is easy and it’s free for up to 2000 email contacts. This should be more than enough for your Vacation Rental and if not, then you are probably not looking for a free automation hack anyway. J

1. Click here to sign up and enter your details and verify you email address: https://login.Mailchimp.com/signup/

2. Once you are in you will need to complete your registration by confirming you are human and filling in some required data which pertains to SPAM laws. Note: The address you enter will end up at the bottom of your emails, so choose an address that you are comfortable with your guests seeing. I just use my VR’s address personally.

3. You will be asked a variety of other questions regarding your business. Answer the best you can and as it fits your current business model. I would suggest watching the video onboarding at the end of the sign up process to get the lay of the land.

Step 3 – Setup Automate.io Account

Automate.io is the platform that does all the magic. It is an automation platform (bots) that takes all the different systems and ties them together. Setup is simple and you sign up here:

https://automate.io/app/signup

1. You should be able to leverage their free account which allows for 5 bots and up to 250 automation actions per month.

a. This should be fine for 2-3 vacation rentals if you needed it 2. Once you sign up and sign in, skip adding any integrations at this point. Watch the video

tutorial to get a better understanding of the platform for now however.

Step 4 – Setup Mailchimp Custom Fields

Before you set up your Mailchimp campaign you will want to create a few custom fields in your Mailchimp list to facilitate the check in and out date triggers

1. Login into Mailchimp and go to the Audience menu and then Settings > Audience fields and |MERGE|* tags

2. You will then add 3 custom fields for Full Name, CheckIn Date and CheckOut Date. Make sure to choose Text and Date data types respectively as well as easy to understand MERGE field names.

Step 5 – Create Mailchimp Campaign

Your Mailchimp campaign is the customer facing portion of your communications automation. This tutorial is really only going to show you the framework but the level of quality and engagement of your communications is going to be up to you. The sky’s the limit on what you can present to your guests!

1. Click New Campaign > Email option

2. Choose Automated > Date Based > Specific Date options, then name your campaign and choose your List/Audience and hit Begin.

3. The campaign will start with a 3 event template and will default to your CheckIn Date custome field you created. (note: You have to choose one date per campaign, this means you will need one campaign for CheckIn based emails and another for CheckOut based emails).

4. Once you have decided what emails you want to send, adjust your triggers and hit the Design Email button to start setting up your actual emails. Enter info about the email, subject lines, etc. and then select a template. (I usually choose the Educate option but it really doesn’t matter)

5. Once you are in the email designer, you can get as creative as you like. For general tips on how to use the designer click here or Google search. Do this for each of your CheckIn Triggers and then create your CheckOut Triggers campaign in the same fashion.

Below is a snapshot of my production email campaigns for my Tahoe Vacation Rental.

Step 6 – Setup Bot Automation

If your Mailchimp campaign is the communication vehicle then your Bot Automation is the gas that runs it. The Bot Automation is by far the most complicated piece unfortunately as you have to have everything just right for the data to flow to the different systems. But with a little trial and error it should be fairly bullet proof once you are up and running. Mine has been running great for over 2 years now!

I will not be able to put every nuance to the Automate.io framework in this document so be sure to contact their technical support if you have questions or issues along the way. You should be able to use the images below however to fully replicate my current setup.

1. Login to Automate.io and hit the Create a Bot button.

2. Title your bot and connect the various systems in the formats shown below.

Connecting to Systems

What completed Bot should look like

Bot Setup Screen 1

Bot Setup Screen 2 (scroll right)

Bot Setup Screen 3 (bottom of columns from Screen 2)

Step 7 – Add Calendar and Test Flow

Now is the moment of truth! You should be able to simply add a name, dates and email to your Google calendar and watch the communications magic unfold!

1. Go to your calendar and put Name (Title), CheckIn/Out dates and email address (description box)

2. Wait a few minutes and look for your Mailchimp list to update (verify dates, name and email are correct).

3. Verify that your email to housekeeping went thru as well.

That’s it! I hope that this tutorial brings value to your vacation rental business like it has for me! If you have any issues with setting this up, feel free to reach out to me directly at jon@clik2flip.com and I will do my best to help out.

Best Wishes,

Jon Crosby