Proof Property-Specific STR Websites Convert Better Than Generic Management Pages with Joe Rohne

Summary and Highlights

👤 Meet the Guest: Joe Rohne

Joe is a STR investor, co-host of 12 properties, and founder of the Savvy Emerald Coast real estate team. From owning a preschool to running a landscaping company, Joe’s path into short-term rentals came through relentless learning — including 50+ audiobooks every summer while mowing lawns. Today, he helps investors find and manage high-ROI rentals with a systems-first, guest-first approach.

🧭 What You’ll Learn

• Why building individual property sites leads to better conversions than generic management pages
• Joe’s QR code strategy for real-world guest capture
• How segmentation and automation fuel his high-converting email flows
• The power of Facebook lookalike ads and hyper-local buy/sell groups
• Why redesigning every co-hosted property is non-negotiable

📌 Highlights

• “Be the last booked in peak, first booked in slow.” Joe shares how he’s mastered the booking curve by watching pacing, length of stay data, and smart discounts.
• Bonus depreciation boom: Why upcoming legislation is bringing buyers back — and what you need to know to leverage it.
• Buy/sell groups as guest magnets: Joe’s creative use of local Facebook groups to build awareness.
• Conversion-focused design: Scrollable pages, minimal buttons, and targeted URLs for each property.

📚 Book Mentions

• Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone
• The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
• Person of Interest by Dr. Kevin Elko

🧠 Mindset & Rapid Fire

• Best mindset tip: “Believe in yourself. Don’t dabble — go all in.”
• What’s working in email? Quirky subject lines + consistent value = 25%+ click rates
• Favorite growth mantra: “Throw the mud. See what sticks. Then double down.”

🔗 Connect with Joe

• Facebook: Joe Rohne
• Website: savvyrealty.com/joe (booking calls + buyer help)

🎧 Ready to stop chasing listings and start building a brand that lasts? Listen to the full episode and start owning your guest experience at CraftedStays.co.

Transcription

Joe: We have barcodes in our, in our properties going directly to our direct booking website. Our signs that have our property management company at the street, you know, ’cause we’re in a traditional vacation rental market, has a QR code, the direct booking website for that specific property, not for our management company.

Joe: So when people are walking by, they can scan that QR code. And then I’d probably say the most important thing out of all of them is get, is getting repeat guests, getting the person that’s booked, getting their email, getting their phone number, and putting them into our email campaign to. Stay close to them.

Joe: Before we bring on my guest, I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it.

Joe: All to work, but if your site isn’t really built to convert, you’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire. And even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.

Joe: You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build craft Estates. It’s purpose built for short-term rentals and designed from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into bookings and you can keep on testing and improving.

Joe: As you learn, you can make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to craft stays.co and start your free trial. Now let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing.

Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to the book Solid Show, the podcast where we bring on top operators to discuss marketing, revenue management, and the guest experience to drive towards being booked solid. On today’s show, I have Joe Rohne. Joe is actually a real estate broker himself. He’s an investor. He’s gonna walk us through how he’s kind of grown his portfolio to what it is.

Gil: Today he’s gonna talk about his marketing tactics. He has a lot of fundamentals that I encourage almost all of our listeners to put into practice today, which is really around targeting your past guest. And he also has some pretty advanced tactics like doing Facebook retargeting campaigns, look at likes and such.

Gil: So I’m really thrilled to have him on the show to talk about. What he’s done, how he’s thinking about things. He’s also done things a bit differently than others as well too. So it’s a good perspective on just seeing how folks are doing email marketing, , and even deploying their own direct booking sites for themselves too.

Gil: So without further ado, let’s bring him in.

Gil: Hey, Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe: Hey, how’s it going?

Gil: It’s going very well. How have you been?

Joe: Can’t complain. We’re getting ready. Uh, you know, for, we’re in peak, peak season and, business is good. I can’t complain.

Gil: How’s peak for you? What does that look like for you as, as your management company?

Joe: We are, you know, summer, traditional summer markets, you know, uh, so we, we started peak in March and. Uh, it gets a little bit slow in April, may, and then by mid-May, through mid-August, we are gangbusters busy.

Gil: Yeah. How’s your team look like now to support you?

Joe: Uh, so really it’s my wife and I, um, I have a virtual assistant, and of course I have some great boots on the ground. You know, uh, I, I have, you know, four different cleaning companies, three or four different handymen that I partner with, you know, all the other basics, the HVAC, all that, all that kind of stuff.

Joe: Ready to call if I need ’em, but. Uh, definitely don’t have all my eggs in one basket with one cleaning team. Uh, I definitely like to have it go around to multiple.

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like right now, like there’s like two parts of peak for, for us it’s like one is like peak peak in terms of revenue management. So the last. Few months, it’s really around like, okay, how do we fill our calendar for the summer season? And then there’s a second wave of peak that is really like, okay, now we’re in operations mode, making sure that the team is operating our stays are good.

Gil: Um, that’s, that’s how I always see, like both summer and winter, there’s like a preseason. And then also like the actual, the actual, uh, live.

Joe: I agree. And then, and the honest truth is with booking lead times, dropping from the a hundred plus days to, in many markets, you know, under 45 days, you know, we’re in peak season still booking calendars. So, um, you know, some people lower their prices a while ago to really get booked in the summer. We’ve kind of kept our prices high and we’re getting last minute, $10,000 a week bookings.

Joe: Uh, I mean, I have, I just had a, a five bedroom home, get a $10,000 booking. Three weeks before their stay, uh, just yesterday. So it’s crazy with the booking lead times being so low from what they’re traditionally have been over the last few years.

Gil: Yeah, so I’m guessing you use some sort of dynamic pricing tool to kinda help you analyze and figure out what that lead time looks like. Talk to

Joe: We do, we do. We’re using price labs and uh, you know, really diving into the data and, and taking a look at it, you know, almost on a daily basis this time of year.

Gil: Yeah, I, I’ve seen the same trend as well on my side. And actually, lemme pause for a second. Let me, let me first introduce you and know we will definitely come back to the revenue management side, but give folks a, a bit of context on, on who you are, Joe.

Joe: Uh, yeah. Uh, Joe Ronney, uh, I am a, uh, short-term rental owner, uh, co-host. I co-host, uh, 12 Total Properties and own one. Um, I did own three properties. I sold a couple of them last fall and we’re reinvesting into another property this year. Um, and I am also a savvy STR agent for the savvy team. Focused in the Florida panhandle.

Joe: So I have a, a savvy team in the Florida panhandle, like underneath the savvy team. So I have two agents that work underneath me, uh, one for the 30 a Destin area, one for the Forgotten coast. And then I handle everything in Panama City Beach.

Gil: Nice. Nice. Um, and how long have you been investing now?

Joe: So I actually didn’t buy my first investment until 2022. Um, you know, I, I, I was the opposite of many. I had kids very younger, uh, so my wife and I were. You know, running around to baseball fields and softball fields and cheer competitions for a decade and a half. And then as our kids got to an age that we could jump into new business, we went all in.

Gil: What were you, what were you doing before investing in and being a broker?

Joe: So we’ve dabbled in a lot. So my wife and I have owned a preschool for 18 years. Um, so we have, uh, 80 tea, 80 kids, 16 teachers. We bought that all the way back in 2007. Um, at that time I was working corporate retail, uh, Lowe’s and Sears district manager. I had stores, uh, all over the Midwest from, uh, Minneapolis to Wisconsin to Kansas City and St.

Joe: Louis. I permanently still reside in St. Louis. Um, and then in 2013 we had a, uh, kind of a family accident and it kind of stopped us in time and I changed my strategy and I quit my multi six figure job in corporate retail and started a lawn and landscape business. And I did that honestly from 2013 all the way until, uh, 2022.

Joe: And during that time I read books. And, uh, it’s funny, we, you, you talked about this, how you were a book guy you liked to read. I probably read 50 books every summer while I was on the mower. So while all, all my other friends that are lawn guys are listening to music and whatever, I was reading books and I was learning everything I could and how to get my family to the next level.

Joe: And that’s what got me into the short term rental journey.

Gil: Wow, it’s, I always love this question because I find that, and I mention this a lot on the show. I find that our industry is quite unique, where the entry point could be anywhere. It is anywhere. Like you can talk to your peers and your mastermind groups and. Almost no one comes from the same industry a lot of times, and it’s just amazing to see kind of all the things that we’ve learned along the way and how it’s made us successful now.

Gil: Like you probably being a business owner prior, um, you probably learned a lot about it, like how to operationalize your business, hire to hire the right folks. Um, and you’re bringing that into our, in like our industry now. So it’s just amazing to see kind of like how people’s skills that kind of mold to short term rentals.

Gil: I dunno if you’ve seen the same on your side.

Joe: it, it really is great. ’cause I mean, the people that are in the masterminds that I’m in, they come from all different backgrounds and everybody has different experiences, but man, there’s just so much opportunity in this niche. Um, that, you know, if you dive in and dive in head first, you can definitely find a way to be really successful.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: So Joe, right, right now there’s actually a lot of buzz happening in social media about what Trump is doing. Can you talk a little bit about that? I’m sure you’re, you’re an expert and you’ve been hearing a ton about what’s happening in the market, especially in the United States.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, overall, you know, I will start like just starting after the election January. I mean, I closed more deals from January through April than I closed all of last year. I mean, there’s just a lot more optimism in the real estate investing world and the number one reason for that.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Is bonus depreciation, you know? And, and if you don’t know what bonus depreciation is, look it up today. We’re obviously gonna talk a little bit about it, but that is the biggest buzz in the industry right now.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: Yeah, so I, I do want you to touch a little bit upon that, just to kind of catch everybody up. But what is, what is happening, what is bonus depreciation and what’s the triggering event that’s happening right now?

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Yeah. So bonus depreciation has been something that has helped short-term rental investors. For many, many years. Um, but it was set to end. Uh, it, it was basically what you can do in bonus depreciation is you can buy a short-term rental and as long as you are self-managing and you can prove, you know, prove material participation and track your hours, like there’s a lot of little things that have to happen.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: You can actually take a huge tax deduction against your W2. Um, I mean, there are people in our industry that are saving. 30, 40, 50, a hundred plus thousand dollars on what they owe to Uncle Sam at the end of the year just by using, uh, the cost segregation studies and getting bonus depreciation. And last year bonus depreciation was dropped to 60%.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: This year it was supposed to be to 40%. And they are, it’s in the middle of Congress right now. It’s supposed to be passed by the 4th of July, and we are going back to 100% bonus depreciation backdated to 2024, which makes me happy because I bought a property that I’m using a cost eg on. And to help us with taxes, but it’s really creating a huge buzz in the short term rental world because you know it, obviously, we’re not back in 2020 anymore.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: No one’s finding, well, I, I’m not gonna say no one, there are 30% cash on cash deals out there, but they are really hard to find. But when you capture 50, $60,000 less in taxes, that now your cash on cash might be 40% or 50% because in that year that you bought it. You’re saving that much money in taxes.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: Yeah. And is, is that retroactive also to the previous years as well too?

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: so, so it’s supposed to be retroactive to last year only. So 2024 right now is 60%. It’s supposed to retroactive, uh, to 2024 to a hundred percent and then we’ll be a hundred percent again this year. And I haven’t read the entire bill on how long the a hundred percent is gonna last, but, uh, it is definitely going to really put a lot more buyers into the market.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Um, in my buyer pool alone, I’m working with almost 200 investors that are looking to buy in the short term rental in, in the panhandle market, and they’re a lot are just buying their time waiting.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: W. So what do you think is gonna happen to the market? Like what do you think is gonna happen on both sides? On the buy and sell side of things, like

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: So, I mean, unless interest rates come down ridiculous, which I don’t think that’s gonna happen. It’s still a buyer’s market, right? The majority of the deals that we’re getting, we’re getting, you know, buyers 30 50. I have one that’s closing soon, that we got almost a hundred thousand dollars off of the list price.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Um, you know, so we’re able to negotiate some deals. We’re able to get some concessions or credits, whatever you wanna do. Um, so, you know, when, when you look at list price, you know, people realize it’s not 2021 anymore, you know, we’re able to negotiate it down. Now that being said, when we add a lot more buyers to the pool, you know, I mean, we’re not seeing prices come down a ton.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: I think it’s gonna pretty much level everything out, you know, so the price will probably be what, what it is. Maybe there’ll be some negotiating room depending on the deal. But it’s definitely gonna bring a lot more people to not only buy, but even list their property. Um, so I’ve already got five or six people ready to go to list their property as soon as Bo bonus depreciation starts because they know they’re gonna have a better opportunity to sell their house than they did last year.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Which, you know, 2024 was the least amount of real estate that’s been sold in the nation in 25 years or more, you know, even less than back in 2008, 2009. Um, you know, the market is definitely rebounded and we’re not gonna see the, you know, 10 offers at a hundred k over asking like we did back in 21 and early 22.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: But we are gonna see a lot more buyers and a lot more houses get sold.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: Yeah, so I’m guessing like right now we’re, we’re, we’re taking a discount off off of homes right now because it’s such a bar’s market and. There’s just not a lot of folks actually in the market trying to buy, so there’s not people competing as much. But what you’re saying is over time, you’re gonna start to see, I don’t know if flooding is the right, the right term there, but you’re gonna start to see a lot more folks interested in buying there.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: So you’re gonna start to see the prices rather than being discounted that it’s gonna actually sell, probably close to what the market value is.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Yep. And, and the reason being is because, you know, they don’t necessarily need the full 20% ROI if they can get a 10% ROI and get a 50 K cost s tag, you know, now you know their numbers look really good, right? They just need to get that deal and they’ve gotta get it closed before year end, and they gotta get it in service.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: And get their material part participation and do all the things that you need to do. It is a great program. Um, I’m party of Ryan B’s, uh, firm that he’s handling all of mine. Uh, there are some other really great CPAs out there that handle this. The one advice I would tell you is don’t do it without A-A-C-P-A on your side that knows exactly what they are doing.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Um, because it, it, it can be very costly, um, if you, if you don’t do it right.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: Yeah. Yeah. And you’re talking about doing kind of the whole cross cost segregation material participation. Really making sure that when tax season comes around, that you have a solid tax return that is backed and if it ever comes back in the audit, that you actually can stand behind it.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Exactly. Exactly.

riverside_gil_chan – crafteds_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0098 (1)-1: Awesome. Thanks for sharing that.

riverside_joe_rohne_raw-video-cfr_booked_solid podcas_0099 (1)-1: Yeah.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. kind of like going back to what you were saying earlier about the, the revenue management side of things. So right now you’re noticing a compression of the booking windows, and I’ve noticed the same as, as well too. And you use Price Labs. What are the things that you look at to determine that and like, what are the trends to help, you know, like, oh, this is not a fluke, I should actually start adjusting things.

Joe: Um, you know, I, I think the number one thing is knowing your competition. And in our properties we level up every property. So, you know, I, you know, bill of faith in the industry always talks about super properties. I don’t want to co-host a property that’s not a super property, so we actually require our owners to let us go in and redesign, reimagine them.

Joe: Put in anywhere from 20 to, the most recent one we did was $120,000. Uh, remodel inside and out. So we’re, we’re making properties really great. So I’m looking at competition, but in many of the areas, there’s not competition that affects me because there’s so many average properties and these average properties are just dropping their prices left and right, left and right.

Joe: And, you know, we try to stay at 10, 15, 20, or as much as 30 or 40% above some of those properties, knowing we’re gonna get a lot more last minute bookings. And I did this last year, and I had a two bedroom, two bath home in Panama City Beach. Not on the beach, no pool, no nothing. And on March 26th, we had zero bookings for the entire month of June.

Joe: And most people would be looking at their calendar like, oh my gosh, like, we’re going into the busiest season of the year, the busiest month of the year, and, and you don’t have any bookings. I didn’t discount, I, I did lower my, you know, a couple things. I lowered my. Policy from being strict to firm and you know, I made some like length of stay discounts.

Joe: We ended up booking all but two days for that month at a 17% increase over the year before, because we didn’t panic. We didn’t just start lowering prices because that’s what everybody else was doing. Yes.

Gil: I, I, I don’t know how many people actually pay attention to the neighborhood dashboards within Price Labs, but for me as a revenue manager, like that manages our own portfolio. That to me, is like the most powerful tool. And for me, I look at, there’s a few things I look at is one is. The booking window, but I also look at the seven day pacing as well too, as like, and, and for me that’s a good indicator of like, where are people actually spending their time and energy to look for stay?

Gil: Because what I don’t want to do is do the counter where people are starting to lower rates, but it’s at the same time guests are actually not searching for those dates. So you’re arbitrarily kind of like lowering your rates unnecessarily. And if someone does catch you, you’re not gonna actually gonna get that get, get that solid booking.

Joe: Yeah, I agree. I mean, the neighborhood, the neighborhood dashboard and, and the other part of that that I love look looking at is the length of stay. You know, what, what are the, what is the length of stay? And too many people go into busy seasons thinking, I’m gonna get that Saturday to Saturday, or I’m gonna get, I’m gonna keep it at a five night minimum.

Joe: And you know, by April 1st, even my beachfront properties we’re switching to the 3, 2, 1 strategy. Um, you know, we’re increasing prices and going down to a, a lower length of stay than what the market average is. So the mar, if the market average is four, four nights, we’re doing a three night minimum, um, by April 1st to go into peak season.

Joe: And it, it really helps us pick up a lot more bookings.

Gil: Yeah. So are you, are you pretty much full for the rest of the summer now? Uh, so right now I was, as we’re recording this, we’re coming at the end of May. This show might kind of air later on, but like, how are you doing for your summer so far?

Joe: Uh, we’re probably about 75% occupied in June and maybe 65 for July. So, you know, we still have some open dates. I like to be, you know, I know I have great properties. Um, I know it sounds conceited, but I, I know we do. So I like to be the last one booked during peak season and the first one booked during slow season.

Joe: Right. So, that’s my strategy. It’s worked for three straight years and it, at some point it could bite me and, and when it does, I’ll change my strategy. But for the last three years, that’s, that’s been my strategy during the peak season. I wanna be the last one booked.

Gil: That’s interesting. I, I haven’t heard of like this framework to think about it as like last one booked. The first one before slow season there. Kind of how, how did you approach that and or how did you discover that that’s like a tactic that worked out for you? Like what’s that feedback loop for you?

Joe: Say it’s from co. Some of the top revenue managers. You know, I listen to a lot of people like Emil Zal and Jake Cohen and you know, other revenues managers in the industry and some of them on their own properties have that strategy to try to maximize that revenue. There is a happy medium in there, right?

Joe: I mean, you don’t wanna, you know, stay too too high and, and all of a sudden you don’t get your peak season booked. So there is a happy medium and you do have to watch it really closely. I do currently do my own revenue management, but you know, the slow season, like we’re already putting 20 to 50% discounts on, and, you know, September, October, November, because we know in our markets we’re going from a 80% occupancy to a 30% occupancy.

Joe: So if I’m gonna capture that 30% occupancy in the market. And get my property where I want it to be. I need to start getting it now. I, I can’t wait.

Gil: Yeah, I think that’s a good point where a lot of folks, they may lag on it and they’re still giving that discount, but they’re giving that discount much later on, and at that point they’re opening, you’re starting from basically 30 available dates and you’re starting to discount where if you discount early, then you can play with the discounts a bit more to fill in those gaps.

Gil: Um, yeah, I hear you on that one.

Joe: Yep. I mean, in the slow season, if you’re waiting till the last minute, then it’s a race to the bottom. Right. You know, during the slow season. ’cause if the, if the market’s only 25% occupied, how are you gonna get occupied in 25%? And, you know, I had a, I have a, a Gulf front five, five Gulf front home that, you know, we lower, we’re 1800 a month during the summer, but we’re like sub 300 for some nights during February.

Joe: But when everybody said they had zero bookings in February, we did over $10,000 in gross revenue. You know, I mean, that it, it can happen, but we started lowering those rates six, eight months ahead of time. So when people were looking, uh, it didn’t mean we got a ton of bookings far out, but every one of those, February bookings was more than a hundred days before they came.

Gil: Yeah, I’m guessing there’s only the, some of these tactics only works because you’ve invested pretty heavily into your properties. Like I’m guessing if you’re an average property, some of the tactics that we’re talking about here, it’s a lot harder. Like you could still do the early discounts. Um, but some of the things you mentioned earlier of like being last one booked or even the first one booked, um, those don’t really work out if you have a different portfolio type.

Joe: Correct, correct. I mean, I do, we do have a couple, uh, you know, properties that are, that we didn’t redesign some of the early ones that we, uh, took over co-hosting that are average to slightly. Above average pro average properties, and we definitely have a little different strategy for those.

Gil: Yeah. Joe talk, talk to me a little bit about your, your direct booking strategy right now. What are some of the things that you put into practice and what have you kind of learned along the way?

Joe: So the first thing that we do is, is, and, and one of the things that attracts cohost clients for us is we don’t have just a blanket website for my property management company. And you go find my website and pick the property you want. Every one of our properties gets its own website, gets its own domain.

Joe: Um, and so I can run Facebook targeted Facebook ads directly just to that property. And that property is on a sales page or a landing page. Um, you know, so there’s not a lot of buttons, there’s not a lot of dropdown boxes. There’s book now or ask the host a question that’s really, that’s really about the only two buttons you can find on our, on our sales pages.

Joe: And what we found is the, uh, we’re, we’re seeing a lot higher conversion rate. Rather than somebody going to a traditional property management, uh, website that has 14 properties and they gotta click on each one and do a dropdown box and look at pictures. You know, ours is on a scroll. You know, in today’s world, everybody wants to scroll.

Joe: So when they go to our our page, they can scroll through and look at every single photo, read about it without having to hit any buttons. And it just helps the conversion. And then from there, um, you know, we have, you know, barcodes in our, in our properties, you know, QR codes in our properties going directly to our direct booking website, our signs that have our property management company at the street, you know, ’cause we’re in a traditional vacation rental market, has a QR code, the direct booking website for that specific property, not for our management company.

Joe: Um, so when people are walking by, they can scan that QR code. And then I’d probably say the most important thing out of all of them is get, is getting repeat guests, you know, getting the person that’s booked, getting their email, getting their phone number, and putting them into our email campaign to stay close to them.

Gil: Talk. Talk to me a little bit about. Um, the email campaigns, how often are you messaging them? Do you message them a few times in the very beginning and then start to back off? Or kind of, what’s your cadence there?

Joe: Yeah, roughly a few times in the beginning. You know, we, we have a two days after departure, a 10 day and a 20 day, and then after that it goes about every 20 days. Um, so about once every three weeks, we don’t want to bombard ’em, and the majority of our emails are not sales emails. We’re not telling them come back and rebook.

Joe: You know, we are telling them about some of our favorite restaurants that are in the market that maybe they didn’t, uh, get, get a chance to try this time. Um, or new activities or new, new things that are coming to the market. Like in my market, Panama City Beach, we have a new Dolly Partons dinner theater that’s opening up next month or in two weeks.

Joe: And, uh, kid Rock just bought the old Spinnakers is turning it into a Tootsie Western Bar on the beach. Like, so we’re telling them about these developments and things that are happening without selling them. Yeah. Is there a link for our website and things like that in the, in the, you know, signature, but it’s not a sales email.

Joe: It’s trying to build that credibility and then, and then when it’s time to sell, you know, when we’re getting within six months of them coming back. That’s when we start sending the, Hey here, here’s a discount code. Hey, check out our other properties if you’re going to other markets. Stuff like that.

Gil: Yeah. And that that’s, that’s what I’ve seen with a lot of effective email campaigns is that you wanna provide. Lots of, lots of value to kind of build that trust over time. And in the very beginning, you might not even want to put out discount codes, you don’t wanna talk about your stays all that much.

Gil: It’s really around providing value there. And kind of going back to our last conversation about booking windows, knowing when there are likely to book, again, if there were an annual stay when they’re gonna book again, and it could shift lower now, so you might want to push that back a little bit. But if you find that your booking window.

Gil: Is two or three months, you don’t want to start giving that discount code or asking them to come back until just before that period there. So you’re kind of aligning that booking window kind of with your nine month, 12 month sequencer. I don’t know if you agree with that.

Joe: No, I do, I do. And, and, and we’re constantly having to make some adjustments in our email campaign. It’s something honestly I probably have to do a little bit better job at. Um, in some, you know, in the beginning we kind of, we set it all up, set up our templates, and it’s all very automated, which is amazing and I love it.

Joe: Um, but, but you know, going in and making some of those changes, some of those adjustments is something that we probably need to be a little bit better at.

Gil: Yeah, that, that’s the funny thing, is like, it’s actually a lot, not a lot, but it, it does take a few days worth of efforts to make sure that. All your templates are right. You’re talking about the right things, researching it, figuring out the copy, and it’s probably a lot easier now with ai. I remember when I first did this, it was all handwritten, like not handwritten, but it was all written by me.

Gil: But now with ai, it is a lot easier to kind of write that content out, but it still takes you a bit of investment upfront, but you almost get to a point where you put it all in there, you have it on a sequence. Guests automatically get this. After they check out and is on autopilot, and you almost have to remind yourself to come back and check on the stats and like iterate on that because it does take a couple iterations to figure out like, oh, actually what’s gonna work?

Gil: Are, are people actually clicking through? Are they opening the links? Uh, are they unsubscribing because we maybe sold ourselves too early. Um,

Joe: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Uh, you know, checking those stats and, and keeping an eye on it is. It’s definitely important because, you know, a lot of people throw it to spam and then they never open it. And if you’re sending out, you know, we’re sending out about 2,400 emails a month right now. And, you know, I, I think the last click through rate was somewhere around 27%, which, you know, is not bad.

Joe: 25% is, is pretty good when it’s all said and done. Anything above 10 is typically pretty good on, on email marketing campaign. Um, so, you know, I was pretty happy with the most recent campaign that we sent out, but yeah, you definitely have to track it. ’cause if you’re, if you just set it and forget it, you know it, it’s going to nothing.

Gil: Yeah, maybe. Maybe talk a little bit about like how you 25, 20 5%. For anyone that’s listening here is actually a pretty good clickthrough rate, and for our listeners here, clickthrough rate is basically when you’re sending out an email, most email service providers will allow you to track whether or not someone opened the email.

Gil: Did they click on any links within that email? And even if they mark the email as spam, and these are usually the three metrics that you wanna look at, because one, if they’re looking at the email, that means that your subject line, it has a hook. It’s, it’s interesting enough for them to actually pay attention to, because we get all get, I probably get a hundred emails every single day and I have to prioritize which one I, I wanna look at.

Gil: So that open one is, is very important. ’cause if no one opens it, you’re not gonna get a click at all. Um, and then the next one is. Once they open it, are they actually clicking through? Are they trying to read more? If you’re providing a link to a blog or a link to, uh, a restaurant, are they actually clicking through?

Gil: Because that shows that there’s engagement there. And kind of on the flip side, if you start to sell them early or you provide them something that they’re not expecting or not wanting, that’s when they’ll start to mark you as spam and you can track that as well too. Um, so yeah, so those are the three metrics that that, that we look at at at k Craft two days, and even my own property management business.

Gil: 25% is actually a really high click through rate. It’s actually like someone

Joe: was on that email, right? That had a really good hook. Uh, there’s other ones that we get a 5%, you know, or an 8%, right? So. It, you know, and, and that’s what you gotta do. You gotta, you gotta look at what those are, you know, what’s working and what’s not. Because some people, some, some are gonna get a better click through than, than others.

Joe: I know on our savvy team, on the savvy STR team, I think, you know, we have over eight or 9,000 investors in our daily email, and we send out an email every day at 5:00 PM with the top properties that we pick out. And our click through rate’s like 46%, like ridiculously high, um, you know, for, for a daily email.

Joe: So.

Gil: Yeah. What did you feel like you tuned to get to from the five and some emails to 25 and this one? Like what was different or what did you notice?

Joe: The title, trying to be quirky, you know, so really just trying to, trying to play with the title and, and be a little quirky or, you know, say something silly or some, some sort of call to action. Sometimes, you know, uh, you know, did you, you know. Uh, did you hear, did you hear what happened in Panama City Beach this weekend?

Joe: Or did you see on the news, you know, uh, this big event and then they open it and yeah, there’s, alluding to that, you know, maybe just something’s going on. Um, but it’s more about getting them to open and look through the content, so, so some of those quirky titles can, can get them to click.

Gil: Yeah. And, and anyone on like social media, like we always talk about the hook and the, basically the, the subject line is a hook, but for anyone that. Has gone through like the tactics, tactics of going viral. You don’t just deliver the hook, but you have, you don’t just give them the hook, but you have to deliver on the hook themselves.

Gil: So whatever email copy that you have in there, you better make sure that you’re like not leaving them stranded, that you have something for them to, to, to lead towards as well too. So.

Joe: Yeah. Yep.

Gil: Awesome. What, what I, I’m, I’m curious, any other tactics that you’ve, you’ve deployed that either worked really well or did not work really well?

Joe: Um, you know, we do targeted Facebook ads. You know, we, we take all of our guests, we put ’em into a CSV file, we upload ’em into Facebook, and we are doing lookalike, uh, Facebook ads specifically, you know, for our, for our guests, because not everyone’s gonna get the email. Some of ’em are gonna opt out. So we’re, we’re also driving that traffic.

Joe: And, and we’re driving it not just to our direct booking website, we’re also driving it to our, our Airbnb links and to our BRBO links sometimes. And then we also use buy, sell trade groups. Um, and we go into buy, sell trade groups and we post about our properties. Uh, my virtual assistant goes through at least three times a week and post in at least.

Joe: Three to five is not sometimes as much as 10 buy, sell trade groups. And we decided those buy, sell, trade groups using Google trends on where our guests are coming from. So we’re saying, okay, we know in my market we’re getting guests from Nashville and from, you know, Tallahassee and, you know, wherever it is, Chattanooga and, and St.

Joe: Louis, whatever it is. And, and we’re, and we’re trying to also attract people from that, um, uh, in those buy, sell trade groups and joining those.

Gil: W what is, what is a belt buy sell trader for anyone that’s not, not

Joe: So in Facebook, you can go to, you know, in every single town across the United States, there’s buy, sell, trade groups to be able to, you know, sell your stuff on like Facebook marketplace. But it’s like Facebook marketplace for your specific town, right? So like we have one here in Lincoln County that has got 72,000 members in this one Facebook, uh, group, and it’s a buy, sell trade.

Joe: Now you do need to read the rules, like when you’re going into buy, sell, trade groups. You need to read the rules on what their rules are. Some of them are gonna tell you no posting things like rentals, and some are gonna say, you know, do this or do that. So you do need to understand what you’re getting into.

Joe: But there are a lot of ’em that are kind of free for all. And, and you’re also gonna get people that, you know, give you negative feedback on your, on your property, you know, and they may say, oh, I can rent your house for $1. And, you know, in, in the listing or in the buy, sell trade, it says, you know, rates vary.

Joe: Click on the link for your pricing. You know, stuff like that. Um, so you’ll get some negative publicity on some of it too, but overall it’s been, uh, it, it’s been okay. I, some people have done it and been really effective at it. We’re still kind of trial and error.

Gil: Yeah, I found the. Facebook groups that work really well are like those niche groups. Um, I’ve had a guest almost, almost, it’s actually been a year now almost. Um, and they’re on Facebook groups that are specifically about phishing or Anglo phishing as well too. Um, and that group is so niche down where people are talking about what tools are they using, kind of where their best spots are, and because.

Gil: This host is so woven into the community, they’re leveraging that. And so if anyone’s asking like, where’s a good spot to to stay, he’s always the first one that gets either him post him posting it or other people recommending him.

Joe: Yep. Yep. I agree. I agree. That’ll, that’ll allude to later when we talk about my favorite book and, uh, that I’ve read certainly or, uh, recently, that, uh, is my new favorite book.

Gil: All right. I’m gonna ask you that in just a, just a, just a bit. I think kind of la the last question I had for, for you, and kind of like just diving a little bit deeper into what you said earlier about targeted Facebook campaigns. So we kind of glo not glossed over it, but we kind of went through it quickly there.

Gil: Um, but for anyone that’s not aware. What Joe was talking about was creating or creating ads that are targeting not people that visited your website or visiting your stay, but people that look like them. Um, so I’m, I’m probably, I’m sure that this is kind of how you do it, but you’re. You’re collecting emails, I think you’re using PHI to collect all your emails there, and then you’re feeding back, back into Facebook.

Gil: And then Facebook will then analyze all the people that you have uploaded. So they’re trying to match all the emails to actual Facebook profiles. What are people interested in? Where do they live? What groups are they a part of? And they’re trying to figure out, oh, what’s that persona of customer that is?

Gil: Like that person I should be targeting that at to. So they’re not targeting to that list. They’re talking to people that look like them. And that’s kind of why it’s called the lookalike. And that way you’re actually driving traffic, new traffic that hasn’t ever explored you or haven’t seen you before, and you’re driving brand new fresh traffic that is more likely to book with you.

Gil: Is that right?

Joe: Yeah. And, and it’s not expensive. I mean, you could do it for a campaign for $5 a day, you know, so for 150 bucks, you know, are you gonna a hundred percent get a one booking with that, you know, 30 day campaign? Maybe, maybe not. You know, it’s, it’s hard to to track it. I, we don’t send it only to our direct booking website.

Joe: And we don’t send it only to our direct booking website because when people are clicking on ads and seeing these things, they know that Airbnb is the trusted partner. So we will have our Airbnb link, we will have our, our VRBO link, but we’ll also have our direct booking website that’s clearly states, Hey, you know, save eight to 10% right here.

Joe: But some people are just gonna be more comfortable with the Airbnb. So, you know, we, we may get some of our Airbnb and VRBO bookings from this. There’s no way to really track that. So that’s the hard part about Facebook ads is it’s hard to really track your conversion, um, because they could be booking on any of those platforms.

Gil: Yeah, you can, you can probably much more easily track it on your drive booking site, uh, especially if you have Google Analytics and Facebook, like your Facebook pixel on to your, your homepage there, and you. You set it up properly, it’s, you can actually track it on your homepage, but you’re definitely right.

Gil: Since you don’t own Airbnb’s website there, when they’re sending traffic, Airbnb’s not telling you that, oh, this is the traffic that you sent in there and this is the booking there.

Joe: And the idea is to get more bookings, right? Yeah. Yes. We all want more direct bookings and that’s what it’s all about. But I’d rather them book on an Airbnb than not book. So I wanna make sure that they have all the options. ’cause there’s so many people out there who will say, don’t click on somebody’s link.

Joe: They’re scammers, they’re gonna take all your money. And you know, and there are legitimate people that do do that. So I understand why some people are cautious on that. But that’s why we wanna make sure that we’re targeting not just one, uh, on our direct booking website. So if it goes directly to that, it’s, it’s, it has our Airbnb and VRBO links on our direct booking page and on the, like the buy sell trade groups.

Joe: You know, we put all three links.

Gil: Yeah, for anyone that wants to try out the tactic for themselves, we wrote an article probably six to eight months back now on our website, craft Cities Co. Um, you can look in the blog section and you can actually look the. Through all the different screenshots on how to step by step, pull your list from stay fi or whatever, where however you’re collecting the emails, how to segment them, how to upload that back into Facebook, and how to actually run your ad there.

Gil: One thing that I found Joe, was actually to, when you’re pulling your list from stay fi or wherever you’re getting it from, is to pull it by, by market or by property there. Don’t bring it all together because what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna, Facebook’s gonna have a hard time understanding Oh. These are all the AMLs I got, what’s similar to them, but like if you do it to a specific property or market, you’re able to help Facebook understand, oh, these are people that are going to this specific property.

Gil: Um, and send more traffic, like targeted traffic ad.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So we have, you know, in our stay fire or in in my marketing STR, we have it tagged. So, you know, certain properties are tagged to a certain, you know, segment. Like I know these are gonna be like people that are booking, they’re all four bedroom, four bath homes, two blocks from the beach with a pool where the five bedroom beach front.

Joe: Has its own, you know, uh, target, because that’s gonna be a different clientele that’s booking that property than, than the other property, right? It’s just gonna, it’s gonna be a different demographic. So we do have different tags to keep ’em separated.

Gil: Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s like not, not if you’re in a market that has multiple variety of different stays there, you actually wanna segment those into two separate groups there. So you’re not trying to target two generic of ad or two different groups with the same copy to the same targeting. You wanna separate the two of them.

Joe: Yep. Yep. The more you can narrow it down, the, the more successful you’re gonna be. You know, a lot of people I, I hear they say, oh, I run Facebook ads. I don’t get anything, and. And they’ll go to Facebook and they’ll, you know, choose a demographic and they’ll choose whatever it is and they’ll send it out.

Joe: And you might get people to click on your link, but you’re not targeting the people that you want. EI mean, and you can narrow it down really far if you don’t have a CSV file with over a hundred people. In order to do retargeting and do a lookalike, you have to have at least a hundred emails and you know, so if you don’t have that, you can do Facebook ads the other way and it might get you a lot of clicks, but it doesn’t really mean, mean, you’re gonna get a lot of conversion.

Gil: Yeah, so, so what you’re, what you’re talking about there is you’re able to actually have Facebook decide for you what the target market is. If you’re not feeding it a lookalike or an audience that you want them to target, they have nothing to go by. So what they’re. They’re gonna do is they’re basically gonna shotgun it.

Gil: They’re gonna send this ad to a whole bunch of people and figure out who’s actually clicking on those. And then they’ll use that to create their own lookalike audience kind of in the background there. But what ends up, what ends up happening is that it’s gonna take a very long time for that ad to really mature in a place where Facebook actually understands who is actually interested in that.

Gil: And if you don’t have the conversions events, then it’s hard to know like, oh, are they just clicking through because they’re interested? In the ad or are they actually resulting in a actual booking there where if you’re talking about people that stayed with you, those are people that actually went through the very end.

Joe: Yeah, no, I agree. Um, it, it, it really is. It, uh, you know, you, you have to target it. You gotta get down to that niche and, uh, you know, if you let Facebook decide, like you said it, who knows where that, that, uh, ad’s gonna go to.

Gil: Yeah. Awesome. Joe, we usually end the show with three questions here. Uh, the first question first is, give me a favorite book. What’s You, you men, you alluded to it just now, you teased us a little bit. What, what’s been one that you, you’ve been, uh, you’ve been reading?

Joe: You know, so I, I went to a co-hosting retreat, uh, with Bill Faith and 20 of the top co-hosts in the entire nation last week in, in, uh, Smith Lake, Alabama. And, you know, to grow our property management business, co-host business, whichever route route we want. We, we talked a lot about becoming the person of interest in a market.

Joe: So, you know, like you said earlier, the guy that’s on every Facebook group commenting and giving restaurant recommendations and all these different things, that’s how he’s growing some sort of business because he’s becoming that person of interest. So the book is called The Person of Interest, and it’s only a, it’s a very, very short book.

Joe: I do audible books. It was like an hour and eight minutes, and it really just kind of dove into how do you become the go-to guy. In whatever industry you’re in and whatever market you’re in to really narrow down in your niche and, and, you know, sell yourself, right? That’s, that’s really what it comes down to.

Joe: Um, a lot of people, you know, uh, like to promote their company or their property management company or whatever it is, but at the end of the day, your personal brand is what’s gonna sell and becoming that personal interest in your personal brand. And it doesn’t matter if I’m with Savvy or this realty or that company, whatever it is, people are buying from me.

Joe: Not from the company I’m working for. And that book really dives into how to become that person of interest.

Gil: I love that. I love that. I gotta pick that one up. Uh, I have a bunch of audible credits that I need to use up, so that might be a good one to snag in there. And it’s an hour, so it’s gonna be

Joe: Yeah. It’s like I did it on a, I went on a, you know, a, a three and a half, four mile jog, you know, walk and, you know, pretty much finished almost the whole book on a, on a quick workout.

Gil: Nice. I like, I like that because a lot of, I feel like a lot of books sometimes are a little bit long-winded for the, the message as it’s trying to deliver.

Joe: Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong, you know, I love Grant Cardone books, and I will tell you in, if you’re reading audible books, one of the great things about Grant Cardone books is he’s the one who actually narrates it. So these are some of my favorite books to, to listen to. Because you get value add in his audible books and he’s so charismatic and you know, and, and they’re great.

Joe: Um, and there are some other authors that, that auto, that, uh, narrate their own. But, uh, uh, so those are some of my other favorites. But this, this new one definitely really hit home on right now for the direction that I’m going and, and where I wanna be.

Gil: Yeah. I, I love that. The, the, the last name that you made about Grant Cardone. I actually, I listened to, there’s one book that I, I listen to probably annually now. It’s called Be Obsessed or Be Average, where I think it’s the other way around. Um, but I like that one because it’s less about the content there, but because he’s narrating, he actually like, it pumps you up.

Gil: It’s almost like as if you’re listening to a podcast there. Um, so I find that as like a, like an energy charger for me.

Joe: Yep. And that is, that is in my top three of favorite books. And I also read it probably annually. I just, actually, my daughter who’s in college, uh, she just downloaded the Audible app and we literally had this conversation yesterday. I said, Hey. Since you’ve got the Audible app and you’re gonna use some of my credits, I’m gonna require you to read a couple of books, and that’s at the top of her list.

Gil: Yeah. That’s awesome. All right, Joe, second question. Uh, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

Joe: Believe in yourself. Seriously, we are capable of anything that we wanna do. I know everybody says, oh, you put your mind to it. You can do it, but you can’t just put your mind to it and do it. You truly have to believe in yourself. And believe in your capabilities and, and what you want to do, and, and you truly can’t accomplish anything.

Joe: But you know, if you doubt yourself or you go into any kind of business wondering, Ooh, is this gonna be for me? Like, you have to go all in. Like there is no going 50% in, or I’m gonna dabble in this. Like, if you want to, if you want to be to the top, believe in yourself and go after it.

Gil: I love that. I love that. Last question. We went pretty deep into a lot of dry bookings, uh, tactics there. What’s one tactical takeaway that you want our listeners to put in practice today, either to get started in dry bookings or amplify them?

Joe: Um, you know, it’s hard to say. You know, I, I, I like to, uh, use the term, you know, sometimes you gotta throw a bunch of things, throw a bunch of mud at the wall and see what sticks. Because for you, something might stick more than somebody else, right? You may end up finding yourself really talented at Facebook ads to get your direct booking websites, or you might be really, really good at at email marketing or SMS or whatever it may be.

Joe: But figure out what your niche is. Keep throwing thing, throwing the mud at the wall and whatever sticks, latch onto it, and then just go after it.

Gil: Yeah, so maybe summary is like, just go do something today. Just try something out.

Joe: Try something new that you’ve never done and try it for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever it is. And if it works, great. If it’s not working and you’re not getting the traction, uh, and give it time. You know, obviously you know these, I tell everyone, you know, direct bookings is a long game, right? There’s a lot of people that say, you know, and even people that I sell real estate to, you know, they say, should I get my direct booking website right away?

Joe: I’m like. I mean, yes, you wanna get your direct booking website, but this is your first property. Like right now, you just need to get bookings and get your Airbnb. You got a little time, like you’re not gonna get direct bookings next week, right? You’re probably gonna get book direct bookings in six months or a year.

Joe: So, you know, it’s not something you need to have to have, you know, you have to have right here on day number one. Um, but you do need to have a goal to be able to have that as an option, because if you rely on the OTAs of the world forever, you’re still relying on somebody else to be successful.

Gil: Yeah. I love that. Awesome. Joe, you’ve given us a lot to think about. Where can folks find out more about you? How can they fall along in your journey?

Joe: Uh, yeah. So, uh, you know, I specialize in helping investors find short-term rentals in the entire, uh, Florida panhandle. I’m part of the Savvy STR agent team, but I also have my own savvy Emerald Coast team. So we have an agent that specializes in 30 a. Uh, down through Destin, we have another agent that specializes in the Forgotten coast, and I specialize in the Panama City Beach area.

Joe: And we are finding 10, or I’m sorry, 15 to as much as 25% ROI deals right now in this market. Um, and you can find me at, uh, uh, savvy Realty back slash Joe. You can schedule an appointment with me to chat. Or I am extremely active on Facebook. Shoot me a friend request. Uh, Joe Ronney. It’s very simple. Uh, nothing fancy, but, uh, I, I probably spend too much time in Facebook world.

Gil: Awesome. Well, Joe, it was a great pleasure to have you on the show. It was really good to kind of talk to you about kind of your journey, where you are, how you gotten there, a lot of tactics on what you’ve tried out and what’s actually worked out for you. I’m really impressed with kind of like just some of the simple things that you’ve done and also some of the more advanced things like Facebook retargeting ads to really help you amplify your direct booking.

Gil: So I appreciate you sharing that with us.

Joe: Awesome. I appreciate you having me on, man. It was great.

Gil: Thanks, Joe. Bye. All right.