This article provides some general best-practice tips to improve your conversion rate on SafariBookings. Improving your conversion rate is the best way to increase your profit without spending more money.
General tips
- Make sure your quotes look great and are personalized. We prefer the use of SafariOffice for this reason. SafariOffice allows you to easily create beautiful and personalized quote requests for free.
- Try to reply within 4 hours after you receive a request (the sooner the better). Speed is very important to clients, as it shows that you are eager to help.
- Make sure you answer all relevant questions thoroughly and honestly (answer in the interest of the client, even if it might not be in your interest – you will always benefit more in the long run). Also, be detailed in the information you give. Telling the client about the transfer, the type of vehicles, the food, and the guide (these are just examples) builds trust with the client.
- Make sure the price that you send is not higher than that which they can see on SafariBookings. If it is higher, (in some cases this is unavoidable) make sure you explain clearly why the costs are higher than shown on the website.
- Make sure you follow up on all quotes you send. You should send a follow-up email 3 working days after you sent the quote to inquire if the client received your email. If they do not respond after 2 working days, you should send another follow-up email. Make sure you always write in a very friendly manner and do not push the clients. Just ask if all is clear if they have additional questions, and how you can help them further.
- If clients leave a phone number, call them. If clients leave a phone number, they won’t mind you calling, and it works very well to connect with them on a more personal level.
- If you receive a request during the evening (for example from a US client), or during a weekend, it would be ideal if you still replied with a short email thanking them for their email and the opportunity to offer a quote. Explain that the office is currently closed and that you’ll email them a quote first thing in the morning (or Monday morning if on a weekend). You can just copy and paste an email for all requests outside of office hours so it only takes a couple of minutes and you can do it from your phone. However, do not use an auto-reply. That won’t have the same effect; people will know it was a machine/computer that emailed the auto-reply.
- Make sure your brand looks good: Have a good-looking website (including the About Us page), social media, and make sure that you have recent and high-scoring reviews. Clients usually do a lot of research before deciding to book a tour with a tour operator.
Create a professional itinerary for each request
As we mentioned earlier, making sure each client receives a professional and personalized itinerary is very important to generating more bookings. There are many ways to do this, such as using Photoshop/Indesign, a Word document, a web page, or using a tool such as SafariOffice. We prefer SafariOffice because it is free, user-friendly, has SafariBookings integration and produces beautiful .PDF itineraries for you to share with your potential clients. You can sign up here if you haven't already.
Here are some more tips:
- Make sure to save the itinerary as a .PDF file - it looks the most professional.
- Mention clearly that the deposit has to be (partly) paid upfront. Also, mention when the payment is due. This is relevant information that should not be hidden somewhere in the attachment. You must make it clear that you need the deposit to pay for the accommodations to confirm their reservation. We get a lot of questions from clients who don’t understand why they need to pay a deposit – they think the tour operator is going to keep that money. They do not realize the tour operator needs this money to pay for the accommodations.
Finally, mention that they can pay the deposit using a bank transfer or credit card (at a surcharge). For US, CA, and AU clients it is important that you accept credit card payments. It is OK if you offer them at a surcharge.
A reply like this doesn’t take that much time to create as most can be reused. It will answer the majority of questions clients have during this stage of the booking process. As a result, clients will feel that you understand their needs and, if you understand their needs during the booking phase, you’ll probably also understand their needs when they are on safari.
What is the best email format?
When emailing a quote to a potential client, the way your email comes across is highly important. Read on to find out some of our findings and tips on writing a successful first email after receiving a quote request.
- Make sure your email has a clear subject and clearly says who the message is from.
- Write a good, short introduction of yourself and your company, about 3-5 sentences. Make sure it shows that you are a trustworthy company with a lot of passion for their country and showing its safari highlights to clients. Spend some time making sure this introduction is as perfect as possible - you can re-use it for all quote requests.
- Politely and informatively answer all of the questions the client asked, if any. Make sure to re-check this before you finally send the email to make sure you did not miss any questions.
- Mention the price in the email itself, not just in the attached itinerary. Clients want to know this right away, and having to search for it is not a pleasant experience. After mentioning the price, refer to the full itinerary as a PDF attachment for further details. Don’t include the full itinerary in the email itself, as that doesn’t look professional and will result in an overly long email.
- Finally, try to include a headshot photo of the staff that is handling the email communication in the signature of the email. This adds a face to a name and trust (which is important when choosing a tour operator). People can get a first impression on whether they trust a person or not just by looking at their face. So, a good headshot photo is an opportunity to create trust. The same goes for a good company profile photo.
These suggestions will help you build rapport with the client and make them feel safe and comfortable, all contributing to helping increase overall lead conversions. Most of these tips are easily and freely integrated into our free-to-use tool, SafariOffice. Please check it out if you are looking to improve your itinerary creation, we think you will enjoy it and improve your business prospects as a result.