In this episode, hosts Steve Carran and David Millili sit down with Scott Buelter, founder of Ascent360, at the HSMAI Strategy Conference. Scott shares insights on how hotels and resorts can use customer data platforms to create more effective, personalized marketing campaigns.
Key topics covered:
- The importance of integrating data from multiple systems to get a complete view of guests
- Strategies for segmenting guests and creating targeted marketing campaigns
- Tips for growing a hotel's customer database responsibly
- How to use pre-arrival and post-departure email streams to enhance guest experience
- The power of genuine relationship marketing, including thanking high-value guests
- Upcoming trends in hospitality marketing, including AI-powered booking companions
Scott provides practical advice for hoteliers looking to leverage their guest data more effectively, from basic "table stakes" practices to advanced relationship-building strategies. Whether you're a small boutique hotel or a large resort with multiple amenities, this episode offers valuable insights on using data to drive revenue and improve guest satisfaction.
Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn page.
The Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More Media: https://makemore.media/
Episode Links
Scott Buelter
David Millili
Steve Carran
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The Modern Hotelier
Transcript
Automatic Transcription - please excuse any errors
Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are live here at the HSMAI Strategy Conference. We're joined with Scott Buelter from Ascent360. Thank you for joining us, Scott. Yeah. How you doing today?
Scott Buelter: I'm doing fantastic. Glad to be here. Good to be talking to you guys.
Steve Carran: Yeah. So before we dive into everything, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where'd you grow up? How'd you get here?
Scott Buelter: Yep. So, I grew up in Denver, Colorado, lived in the mountains, skied a lot, ended up living a lot of places, California for a while, and, uh, in California, I actually started a software company before the dot com bust.
Actually built sort of a decent company, it ultimately didn't work out but I sort of had the. The, the lust for, entrepreneurship ended up back in Colorado and, and started a, uh, business which was primarily serving, ski resorts and, you know, ski resorts sort of comp, complicated, data businesses and, uh, you know, been doing that for maybe 13
David Millili: So this is the first year. So HSMAI, traditionally this was called the ROC Conference and there was a day for marketing, a day for revenue management. It's now the Commercial Strategy Conference, which is coming up. The idea of bringing all these silos together. So how have you been enjoying this event and what has kind of anything stood out to you as you're kind of, you know, talking to people and listening to people, you know, some of the breakout sessions?
Scott Buelter: Yeah, so first, it's been a fantastic event, right? Met a lot of great people, a lot of interesting conversations, and I certainly like the idea of bringing those concepts together. So, the people that I've talked to, every one of them, they're great. is sort of here to learn, to get better, to talk, to listen, it's not a, a buying show, it's not just a sort of, booth to booth show, but it's people trying to get better at their craft, and I think that's pretty interesting.
Steve Carran: So for those that aren't familiar with Ascent 360, can you tell us a little bit about Ascent 360 and a little bit of the history too, how you got started and the problem you guys are solving in the
Scott Buelter: Yeah, absolutely. So, I spent a couple years at a company called Merkle, and Merkle is building marketing databases for Fortune 500 companies, right? We built Disney, Dell, Royal Caribbean, and these are 15, 20 million dollar databases, but when you put them into action, you, you run analytics on their customer base, You know who to sell to, you know who your best customers are, and they make, you know, five times their money, even if they're paying Merkle 30 million.
Now, what we found though, is that the model didn't move down market. and so, I said, look, I started a software company in the past, I'm going to go start another software company called Ascent 360, and we are going to build marketing databases for, you know, at a reasonable price. So, think about it as You know, 80 percent of the features at 20 percent of the price, and that's effectively what we've built over the course of what's now about 13 Yeah,
David Millili: And can you elaborate a little bit more on what exactly is a customer data platform?
Scott Buelter: Right. So, probably tell it within the vein of some of our clients, right? It's easy to think about it this way. So, one of our clients is, Telluride. And so Telluride is a very complicated hospitality company.
They have the Peaks Resort. they have a number of condominium complexes. They also run the mountains, so they have, tickets, passes. They have a couple golf courses. and so, if you were to go to Telluride and say, you know, tell me about a great customer, they would say, I literally have no idea, right?
We've got really valuable people in our spa system. We've got, lessons and rentals. And so, what we do for Telluride is we pull all of the guests from all those systems and all of their transactions into one place. We clean it, we de dupe it, and so what that actually ends up looking like What I like is a list of all their guests, how much they've spent, how many purchases they've made, and every sort of piece of the purchase, including like every pass scan, or every round of golf, or every visit to the spa, and what that lets them do is market to their guests in a smart way, right?
Treat the really valuable guests like they're high value guests, right? You want to treat them like people, you don't want to treat them like a number. And you want to take the time to make them feel special. Yeah.
Steve Carran: fun story, I actually went to the Peaks Resort for my honeymoon. Really? Yeah. Right, like, right after, right, right on the break of COVID, so, um, amazing resort and you can, you can just spend a whole week just there, just there.
So can you tell us what are successful components to create a successful relationship marketing campaign
Scott Buelter: Yeah, yeah. So, I think the first thing that you think about is, if you've got all that data, and you can know your guests, you want to start segmenting the guests into groups that are, that are somewhat meaningful, right?
So, you know, you you can, as an example, segment your high value guests, or you can segment your lapsed guests. And it's really about how do you build a strategy to achieve your business goals. So, you know, let's, let's even back up a second set and say, there's probably a lot of prospective guests in the database also.
So let's just say that someone is prospective, they enter the database, maybe they sign up for email, or on a landing page, and now you know that, hey, they're in the market, right? In the market for something. And now you say, well, I'm going to sort of nurture them through a stream towards becoming a guest.
And so you want to tell them the things that they need to know that's fundamentally different than a high value customer, right? how far is it? How do you get there? You know, what are the amenities? What's great about your resort? Where do you park? These sort of things that, that prospects want to know. so you can kind of consider that to be a high ROI program on its own, that you want a strategy. But then certainly you're going to have some of those guests that you do convert. And then how do you treat them? How do you bring them as a first time guest to your resort once they leave, right? How do you follow up with them?
How do you stay in touch? And then how do you turn them into a two time guest or a three time guest? The The one thing that we know from every database we have is that about 80 of the revenue is driven by 20 of the guests And so once you sort of ingest that and say, hold on, this 20 of the guests is really driving 80 of the revenue, you're like, well, how do I, how do I use that and how do I start treating those guests like they're real people and build a relationship with them?
So that's sort of the fundamentals of it.
David Millili: I know this will probably vary by market, but are there some top campaigns or like automated, whether it be email, that you think hoteliers should be doing? Because I've just noticed as a consumer, it seems like even though a lot of these hotels I stay at, they have my email, but they never do anything with it.
And when they do, it's just kind of out of the blue and you can tell nobody thought through. There was nothing for me in that
Scott Buelter: in that email.
Yeah. So I'd say there's the sort of table stakes that you need to do. And if you're not doing it, you're really, Far behind, right? And these are things like just a pre arrival stream, right?
So, you know, someone's coming to the resort. you want to sort of help them along the process. And, you know, some of those things are, well, if you know that they don't have a spa booking, or you know that they don't have a golf booking, like, let's tell them about those things. Let's get them interested in it. but then even help them with itinerary stuff, right? Tell them what the weather's going to be when they are On property, tell them the events that are going on, when they're going to be on property. And so what you'll actually find is if you're running a good pre arrival stream, first of all, you're going to successfully up up sell 15 percent of your guests or so.
And the second thing is, those emails have open rates of 75 80%. because, well, they're excited about coming, and all of a sudden you you are doing something of a service to them. I think Post departure is the same sort of idea, right, which is, you know, treating them quite well when they leave.
What we'd probably say is like, okay, that's table stakes, right? Now you start saying, well, how do I actually create sort of segments of individuals that you can talk to in a way that you kind of know them, right? And so the, the sort of classic You know, ski resort is, if they're a, if they're a known pass holder, right?
Pass holders are sort of fundamentally different than, prospects or even just day trippers, right? The guys who just come in, for a day or two, right? These are committed people, they're loyal, those sorts of things. what I'd also say is, I think it depends on, like, who you are and what your resort stands for.
And so, one of the things that we tend to recommend for our clients is to move beyond the I'm just trying to upsell or cross sell into a good relationship. And so, one of our clients, somewhat recently, was asking us for this suggestion and we said, Hey, have you ever thanked? your high value guests and he's like jeez I never thought about it And I said look, there are people, we know there are people who've been coming to your resort for 15 years.
They buy season passes every year. They, they golf, they bring their, their family, it's probably multi generation. And so we, looked in the database, we built an audience of those people. And we actually ended up sending that email through our system But from the owner of the resort, and he actually asked it to have a reply to that goes back to him.
So, it wasn't a marketing email, it was text based, it said, Hey, I just want to thank you, you're very important to us, you're part of what makes this business successful. And you wouldn't believe the responses that he got, right? People were replying, like, You know, I grew up on this mountain, right? This is basically where I consider my childhood to have been.
And, you know, and people wrote, and I've never ever received an email like this. So, and that's like the essence of relationship marketing.
Steve Carran: Obviously hotels are always looking to grow their database, right? Do you have any tips for hoteliers on how to grow their database, but also do it responsibly, right?
We want to make sure the data and the contact information is clean. So any, any tips for hoteliers on that?
Scott Buelter: Yeah, so I mean, first I would say, you know, get your systems integrated into a database, right? So get the PMS integrated, you know, if you're renting, chairs or palas or, or whatever, like get that integrated and then you're gonna certainly grow organically.
But the, the sort of secret to growing the business from a prospect perspective is to get a bunch of lines in the water, right? So let's just say we went, the three of us went fishing together and we only brought one fishing pole. It's like, how many fish are we going to catch? Not that many. So let's instead go on the boat, let's each bring three poles, let's throw them all in the water, we're going to catch a lot of fish. it's exactly the same, right? So in our platform, we've got a landing page builder. And, you know, build content that people want to read, they're, they, they are learning about either the area, the activities, and then, of course, on those have sign up forums, right? Or even have engaging digital marketing that leads to those landing pages, and it's not like, a lot of resorts we find, they actually have one email sign up on the very bottom, and that's literally it, right?
Instead of saying, okay, if we can put out 9 of these, 12 of these, we're going to start capturing people. And what's more impressive is you're going to capture them in ways that you know about them, right? So let's just say that you put one of those landing pages is all about the sort of fun family activities you've got, right?
And so it has pictures of kids, it has, you know, let's just say you've got a water slide or whatever it might be. All of a sudden, they're going to be filling out that one. And now you know they've got a family, maybe on that forum you even ask, are you interested in kids activities? And now you know how to communicate with them, right? you're communicating with that guest the same way you're communicating with a single 28 year old, right, you're really falling flat, right? the single 28 year old wants a landing page that says something fundamentally different, right? Maybe, you know, what's happening and Spring break or is there music nearby? You know, are there just things that they like to do? Maybe, you know, sailing or, or, or adventure on the water, whatever it might be. And so we tend to think that people take a pretty narrow view of data acquisition and they should just sort of build a real strategy, spread it out, and you're gonna grow your database.
David Millili: That's great. So, you kind of touched on it, but we've talked a lot about, you know, the getting the guest data that you have that are already booked. You just started to touch on it, but. Those who do sign up after that landing page, what's the next step there? So, they hit the landing page, theysign up, what's the next step to get them to actually convert and become an actual customer? So,
Scott Buelter: heart of that is you need some sort of strategy for the whole thing, right? So, once they sign up, you, you, you actually know something. And you know that they are sort of in a booking window that let's call it 40 days or 45 days in hospitality. so they're, they're in market, they've raised their hand, and they're actually telling you that they, they want information.
And so our strategy would be start delivering them a predefined cadence of emails or text messages or even digital ads, right? If you use our tool, you can also push things into audiences and do digital ads. But give them the information they want. Now, what's also true is that they, in many cases, just simply want a discount, right?
They're hoping, if they sign up, they're gonna get a discount. And so we would say, like, don't give them a discount or don't give them a discount all that quickly, right? If you can see, this is what you should be looking at, if you can see that they are opening and interacting with those emails and those emails.
are linked back to your site, and then you can see that the web traffic is coming from those people, then you don't need to offer that discount. You don't need to take action. You know, depending on how, you know, how sort of high value your package is, right? If it's a ski vacation that's going to cost 15 grand, you're probably going to call them as well.
but if it's, if it's less, at some point you're just going to kind of follow a cadence to drive them there. And I would base that cadence purely on what your booking window looks like. Got it. Yeah. Some, some of our clients have a booking window that's like two weeks. Some of them have more like a three and a half months, something like that.
Steve Carran: That's great. So here we're obviously discussing what's new and hospitality. Yep. What trends do you see Upcoming over the next couple years that are gonna, you know change and make an impact on the hospitality marketing side of things.
Scott Buelter: so, the one that we are executing on, is sort of a version of AI, and it's a version that I haven't heard enough people talk about.
And so let me, let me explain what that is, right? So we've got a database, we know everything about the customer, and so we are training AIs on who those customers are, what the attributes are, those sorts of But sort of through our platform, we've got, um, Text messaging, such that when someone books, you can send them a message that says, you know, thanks for booking, you're staying at the, you know, Denver Lodge on the 24th of December.
Right? Standard stuff. What you want to add, or what our product is sort of evolving into, is that you can say, and please know, I'm an AI and I can help you with anything at the resort, right? So the AI is trained on everything at the resort, so they can start interacting with the AI to learn where to park, where to eat, you know, are there healthy eating options, are we allowed to bring pets, those sorts of things.
But the, the magic comes in with how that AI interacts with your booking APIs, right? Because the AI can also say, By the way, you're in a standard room and we have suites available. Would you like to upgrade? And the AI can interact with the API and tell them, this is the price, these are the dates available, that sort of thing, right?
So, yes. And, and I, and I tend to think that, there's sort of a, a, sort of a narrow thought on what some of these AIs can do, and it, the, the, the intent is to say, now the AI becomes your sort of booking companion for maybe it will make, uh, dinner reservations for you, it will book a spa for you, it can see the inventory, and it can make the transaction, right?
So that's what I tend to think is the future of what you might call, you know, whole database marketing and AI,
Steve Carran: Absolutely,
And that frees up the time from the front desk to provide a better experience for guests coming in. I mean, absolutely incredible.
Scott, this was a pleasure. I appreciate you stopping by and talking to us. Absolutely. It's been fun. Ascent360 is doing some really, really cool stuff. Make sure you keep an eye on them. How can people get a hold of you and find out more about Ascent360?
Scott Buelter: Yeah, so, I'm at Ascent360. anybody can send me an email, sbilter at ascent360.com. connect with me on LinkedIn. Or just send us a note at sales at Ascent360. you know, we've got a team willing to sort of dig in and help people understand what we do, how we can help them, and how we can kind of move them to the, to the next level.
Steve Carran: That's great. Yeah. Well, So another episode of The Modern Hotelier and, uh, have a great day.