Routing Web Email Leads Into the Reservation Sales Suite

Routing web email Leads into the Reservation Sales Suite is extremely effective for managing your email leads as well as tracking sources of business revenue for your paid links with any of your “partner” sites.

The first step is to create a new internal email address in which your portal listings will be re-directed. This address should have an effective spam filter and should never be published. Our recommendation is something like [e-mail], as opposed to using an address you already have like [e-mail]. This will help mitigate the amount of spam and non-lead emails that are added to ELM.

You will then re-direct this new internal address to a specific Revinate created email address that will then add these inquiries into ELM as a lead. This address is: <Your Revinate Account Number>@navismarketing.com (Your Revinate account number is most likely a 5-6 digit alphanumeric or numeric number.) Please let us know before you redirect from your new address so we can ensure everything is configured properly.

For all partner or portal sites from which you receive direct emails; such as your Chamber of Commerce website or VRBO.com, you will replace the current destination address with the new internal address you created ([e-mail]).

FlipKey Interface

If you have any listing with FlipKey or their affiliates, we can point their leads into ELM through a direct interface. Please email your PM FlipKey account number to your Revinate Customer Success Manager so that Revinate can activate the interface. When this feature is enabled by your Customer Success Manager , the Revinate server will connect to these sites on your behalf approximately every five minutes, and retrieve any new leads that have been created since the last time the server connected. These leads will be inserted into the Revinate ELM system as leads, with the following information pre-populated into the appropriate fields:

• Guest name (entire name will appear in the ‘last name’ field)
• Contact phone number (will appear in ‘Home Phone’ field)
• Contact email
• Arrival date
• Departure date
• Guest count (will appear in ‘Adults’ field)
• Property Id and name
• Message

Once you have verified that the new leads are correctly being created by FlipKey and pointed into the Reservation Sales Suite, you will want to stop emails from being delivered to Revinate from either site. This will prevent the creation of duplicate leads (one in the old format, and one in the new format). This can be achieved either by:

Changing the email address that FlipKey emails are sent to (in the account configuration, outside of the Reservation Sales Suite). You would no longer want leads from either source to be sent to your Revinate Marketing address (or to any address that forwards to it). It is recommended to send these to an internal email address for your company that can be used to archive them for future reference.

Adding the domain ‘@flipkey.com’ or ‘@homeaway.com’ that these emails come from to the  Blocked Email Addresses list within the Reservation Sales Suite. The steps below indicate how to do this.

In the Reservation Sales Suite, go to Account Settings > Phone/Email > Blocked Email Addresses

1. Click on the green plus button:
2. Enter “@flipkey.com” or “@homeaway.com” (without quotes) in the Email Address field and click the Save button
3. If you are receiving FlipKey emails at an internal email address and then forwarding them to your Revinate Marketing address, the forwarding should be disabled.

Creating a Corresponding Campaign

Next, you will need to create a Campaign for each of these portal listings in order to effectively track your campaign data.

To create a new campaign in the Reservation Sales Suite go to Campaigns > Campaigns, and click Add New.

Enter all the specific configuration information. You will want to choose the Email category and assign a cost, along with frequency of cost. Depending on the Campaign, you will use the Keyword for customizing your website URL for that particular Campaign.

Select the Email Only Campaign designation only if you do not receive any phone inquiries from this source. The designation Email Only Campaign is aesthetic only and has no bearing on the routing or placement of leads into ELM.

Establishing Campaign Routing Rules

Leads from an interface with FlipKey can be assigned to a specific campaign based on the Property ID. After creating the campaigns to assign leads to, use the following menu option to establish the routing logic:

Campaigns > Campaign Setup > Interface Campaign Routing Rules

 When creating a New Rule or editing an existing rule, the following screen appears:

 

Fill out the following fields:

1. When Leads Come From : Select for this rule to apply to FlipKey.
2. For Property Id: Enter in the property ID that will be provided by the interface. Please note only one Id can be entered into this field for each rule.
3. Then Set Campaign To: From the drop-down, select the appropriate campaign to assign these leads to.

A complement to routing your web inquiries into The Reservation Sales Suite is to activate Email Auto Responders using Templates created in The Reservation Sales Suite. Auto Responders are a great way to let your guests know that you have received their email and will respond as soon as possible. You can also add links to your website, phone numbers for 24 / 7 new reservation support (if Revinate RezForce is used), or links to Revinate Push2Chat, Push2Talk or your Website Contact Us Form. Email Templates ensure the emails that your agents send to the guests are delivered with a consistent message.

HomeAway Email Routing

If you have any listings with HomeAway the process to route web email leads into The Reservation Sales Suite is slightly different.

1. Log into HomeAway and navigate to My account>Account settings.
2. Under “Email 2,” add acct#@navismarketing.com
3. If you are using unique email addresses for all or some of your properties:
   • Select a property
   • Click “Edit Property”
   • Click “Contacts”
   • In the “Use this unique email” field, add a comma, space, then the acct#@navismarketing.com
   • If you are using Channel Manager, this should update the field on all of your listings. If you are not, repeat this process for each property that is using a unique email.
4. Log into The Reservation Sales Suite.

Creating a Corresponding Campaign

 If you do not already have a campaign created for HomeAway:

1. Navigate to Campaigns>Campaigns and click “Add New.”
2. Create the campaign with the desired Description and Destination number.
3. Fill out any other desired fields.
4. Click “save”

Establishing Campaign Routing Rules

With a Campaign Created you next need to establish campaign routing rules for your HomeAway Emails.

1. Navigate to Campaigns>Campaign Setup>Email Campaign Routing.

When creating a New Rule or editing an existing rule, the following screen appears: 

2. Create a new routing rule using “When from email address ends with messages.homeaway.com” and set the campaign to the campaign you created in the previous step.

3. If you were previously using the HomeAway API with Revinate, contact support via [e-mail] to have the API disabled from your account.

To Test:

On one of your HomeAway listings, click “Ask Manager a Question” and fill out the form. When you receive the email confirming the inquiry, there should also be a lead created in The Reservation Sales Suite. Check that this lead contains the entered name, an obfuscated email address, the correct campaign, and the entered message.

Please contact your Customer Success Manager to answer any questions you may have about setting up the ELM Email correspondence.