RezNEWS HOT TIP
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Utilize RezStream Professional to track referral sources and revenue generated from your marketing campaigns!
Did you know RezStream Professional allows users to track referral sources on all reservations and provides reporting features to help maximize your property’s marketing efforts? This month’s HOT TIP will illustrate how to select referral sources for new reservations and which reports can be used to track revenue generated by each referral source. Keeping accurate referral sources for your property can be very important in enhancing future marketing projects and evaluating key sources of business. RezStream Professional permits users to track referral sources and to later select names of customers for mailings based on referral or interest sources.
How to track referral sources in RezStream Professional
1. We recommend that you set a preference in RezStream Professional that forces employees to track referral sources when they make reservations for new customers. Set this preference by going to Tools > Configure > Functionality and choosing the radio button for "Require referral source entry before closing reservation dialog.” By setting this preference, employees must choose a referral source before they exit the by the Day Reservation Dialog screen. (See below for a screen shot example of this screen.)
2. Referral sources can be tracked in for each reservation made in the Reserve Day (Daily Reservation) screen. From this screen, click and drag your mouse to initiate a reservation. When the by the Day Reservation Dialog screen appears, choose a referral source from the drop down list of referral choices. To create a new referral source, click on the Edit Lists button to the left of the drop down list to add new or edit existing referral sources. You can also edit this list by navigating to Tools > List Edit > Source/Reason. You must add all marketing campaign descriptions to this list in order for a specific referral source to be tracked by RezStream Professional.
Note: You can also track the original referral source within the Contact Data screen. This information would help if you had repeat business but wanted to know the original source of referral. To access this information, navigate to the Contact Data screen and click on the “Details” tab near the bottom left-hand side of the screen. You can also track customer interests and activities as well as special occasions from this section of the Contact Data screen. This information can later be used to create marketing lists in the Select Names screen. RezStream highly recommends that you take the time to gather and enter this data. It only takes seconds to find out about customer referral sources and interests.
Tip: If your reservationists fail to collect the referral source over the phone, create a registration card that asks customers how they heard about you and what they are interested in doing in your area. This information is vital to evaluating advertising allocation and future marketing projects.
Referral source report options in RezStream Professional
RezStream Professional provides a variety of reports for users to choose from. These reports can be previewed before printing or a PDF can be created for emailing purposes. The saved PDF file will be located in C:\ProgramFiles\RezStream. RezStream Professional users have the option to view the Referral Source Tracking report for a detail of all referrals and revenue generated by a specific date range. The Management Analysis report will also give you this same detail, but includes a higher-level view of total revenue and occupancy percentages.
To access the Referral Source report in RezStream Professional
On the left side of the Reports screen, under the Accounting and Financial report folders, click on the Tracking folder to view the Referral Source report. The Tracking reports can be used to track sales by contact category, referral source, geographic origin, entry date, employee, and reason for stay.
To access the Management Analysis report in RezStream Professional
On the left side of the Reports screen, under the Accounting and Financial report folders, click on the Summaries folder to view the Management Analysis report. This report can be generated for a date range and shows general information about your property.
- This report displays the following information:
- Daily Rentals
- Unit Days Possible
- Unit Days Rented
- Percent in Use: occupancy percentage
- Income / Unit Day: Calculated as Daily Rentals/Unit Days Rented
- Booked for Period: Reservations that were taken AND fell between report date range
- Booked for Future: Reservations that were taken between report date range but booked for a future date
- Point of Sale
- Cancel Fees
- Hourly Rentals
- Graph: Income by referral source for reservations that arrive during the time period specified by Referral Source
- Graph: Income by referral source for reservations that arrive during the time period specified by Contact Category Source
- Graph: Income by referral source and category for invoices that were booked during the time period specified by Referral Source
- Graph: Income by referral source and category for invoices that were booked during the time period specified by Contact Category Source
Additional Resources:
For more information about referral source tracking and reporting or other functionality of RezStream Professional, view our user manual accessed from the following web page: http://www.rezstream.com/documentation_rezstream_professional.htm.
As always, RezStream support can be reached at 303-872-0220. Normal support hours are Monday through Friday, 8AM to 5PM, MST.
