LiveRez escaped a major technological mishap due to prevention.

A fire at Seattle Fisher Plaza late Thursday night disrupted Internet service for several companies – including one that handles online credit card transactions for hundreds of thousands of businesses. LiveRez.com was one of those businesses.

LiveRez, a complete online vacation rental property management solution, is focused on increasing online bookings.

Due to proactive company owner Mr. Tracy Lotz, business at LiveRez.com has continued without a hiccup.

A manual switch was programmed during the creation of LiveRez.com, which gives the Property Owner the option of handling credit card processing in house. Early Friday morning, when news broke of the fire, the LiveRez.com support staff went to work contacting each of their property managers via telephone, e-mail and Twitter– walking them through the simple step of clicking the manual credit card option, and its business as usual.

“We averted a major disaster,” says Tracy Lotz, Founder and CEO of LiveRez.com. “4th of July weekend is the biggest travel weekend of the summer, and in these economic times, property managers cannot afford a problem on what could be the biggest money maker of the year.”

Lotz averted another disaster on the accounting end.

Other online vacation rental software companies require clients to switch from proven accounting platforms like QuickBooks to their own accounting platforms, which reside online.

Thus, property managers must incorporate their mission critical accounting into online rental software, leaving it vulnerable to events similar to last night’s fire.

Lotz has always held that this was not a great idea because companies like QuickBooks and Peachtree have already perfected this aspect of the business. The LiveRez QuickBooks Integration is one of the many reasons Property Managers choose LiveRez.com.

Microsoft’s new Bing Travel service was also knocked offline by the blaze.

The small electrical fire started in the basement of Fisher Plaza at an electrical vault- the section of the building where city power lines meet the building’s transformers, said Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen. Thomsen said it appears equipment failure on the part of the customer caused the fire.

Day after day I get the pleasure of receiving email marketing letters from Vacation Rental Property Managers around the country. I love it because I get so see the different destinations and where some vacation rental markets are. I love to take a look to see who is sending good email vs. not so good and how much they send. I look at email marketing as a great resource to contact potential guests, brand yourself and give others awareness of your existence.

I may not be an expert by any means for email marketing, but I have picked up a few tips and tricks along the way that may be useful to others.

THE SUBJECT LINE:

In the subject like, make sure that you give people a reason to open your email. Use call to action phrases if needed. For Instance…”20% Specials on Vacation Rentals for the Next 3 Hours”.  Instead of something like “California Vacation Rentals”.

THE MESSAGE:

Once you have figured out what you want to say make it visible and readable. Focus their Eyes. Use Structure that is simple and readable. Make sure you have a realistic call to action that is in plain sight and easy to see.  It’s important to use pictures and different color fonts and font faces but try not to completely make a rainbow out of your email. The end goal of your message should be to have the reciever to do something: Call you, Email you, book a home, visit your website or even something else.

YOUR TIMING:

The first step to timing your email right is Identifing your market. For instance: if you rent homes in the Hamptons to New York business people, then you should send your email at a time when they would read it and see it. Also make sure you send it at a time when it wont Pile up with all the other email that is being sent. For Business contact usually the general rule is Tuesday – Thursday and 9AM-1PM.

Either Way, Email marketing works. I get the message and I open them. Most email marketing programs have stats where you can view the open rate and the click rate on any links you put in the site.  With LiveRez Vacation Rental Software we give our partners the ability to export the emails for their leads and customers so they and then import them into their email marketing program.

We also have held and now pubished a webinar on email marketing, check it out: http://www.liverez.com/vacation-rental-software-downloads.asp

Thanks,

Tyler

http://www.LiveRez.com