After a first conversation with Adam, Marketing Lead at Avenue HQ, it struck us how little applied
knowledge is available for flex-office businesses on the topic of marketing and sales automation.
Taking the bull by its horns, we asked Mike, one of the biggest automation enthusiasts we know,
and founder and general manager at SharedSpace, to jump on a call with Adam and share his
thoughts.
We had this idea to bring operators with a golden thread to share knowledge. About equal in
size, SharedSpace is operating its spaces since 2015, while Avenue HQ is on the market since
little over a year but growing quickly. Aside from size and industry, both operators have in
common the enthusiasm for new technologies and process optimisation. We were lucky enough
to assist their discussion, and we are lucky now, to share the findings with you. This is the first
part out of two.
Best of breed & continuous improvement
We covered this earlier, but one of the first topics which came up was Zapier, the if this, than that
"glue" for business apps. Zapier has been successfully implemented at SharedSpace and
allowed Mike to experiment with, implement and continuously improve his operational processes.
Because it allows integrations between apps across the operational spectrum, Mike was able to
easily connect the best solutions for his business.
Marketing automation & tour scheduling
Why tooling up? Because the conversion rate from your website’s visitors to tour bookings is very
high. This is the case at SharedSpace: the software they choose for frictionless bookings
is Calendly, an Atlanta based scheduling software. Here is what you should look for in a
scheduling tool:
- Make sure the tool sends calendar invites, which make tours more sticky. This will help prospects actually show up;
- Ensure the tool adapts to your needs in terms of supporting booking tours in several locations (interesting fact: WeWork website will suggest a space based on your current location);
- Some alternatives to Calendly are ScheduleOnce, Hubspot or Skedify.
Tech @front door: walk-ins and free day passes
Did you hear about the iPad? SharedSpace uses iPads at the reception desk for walk-in registry.
The idea is welcoming visitors to come and sign up for a free day of work. Some of the
supporting systems are Envoy and Proxyclick. OfficeRnD is working on this feature too.
By allowing walk-in registry, you can basically look at free day passes and tour bookings as one
and the same thing. This means that people logging in from your iPad will automatically be imported from Envoy (or any other software of your choice) to Rialto’s CRM. With an easy integration, Rialto automates the sales and marketing of your space, and you can follow-up easily on all your leads.
