In a recent post , we discussed how the downturn in the American economy was leading to a substantive downturn in the $175 Billion corporate meetings market. 

Driven by companies slashing their conference, event and major meetings budget.  Such budgets incur not only event equipment rental and event hire costs, but also travel, accommodation/venue costs.

Surveys indicate that over 60% of all companies intend to reduce their spending on meetings next year.   See earlier  post in this blog – titled Why tough times should benefit the hire and rental industry

One factor that is concerning is why!  Many companies recognize the importance of holding client and staff events and meetings.  However in the current climate, many shareholders and Government Agencies providing stimulus funds perceive such events and meetings as lavish junkets.  Companies and Corporations are “sheepish” about defending the business value, hence opt to cancel them.

Now a coalition of event and meet industry- including event rental and event hire companies, as well as planners and organizers are fighting back.  They have formed a coalition to lobby the USA Government about the benefits of events and meetings to the USA economy and USA Corporate Health.

The “Keep America Meeting“ campaign provides on line information about the business value of the industry.  Furthermore it includes an online petition to be presented to politicians.

This initiative of the event industry is welcomed, and should be seen as a role model for other event and meeting industries is similarly effected countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK.

Making Life Ezy suppliers of the most innovative event and party rental software welcome the coalitions initiative.

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

Reminding clients the day before the booking is due for collection can reduce your no show cancellations.

If a client does not appear for an appointment, that costs a business money. It’s a missed opportunity for the organization unless a punitive “no-show” policy is put into place. An SMS is a polite, unobtrusive way of delivering this reminder.

For Companies that hire services or even equipment a no show is simply lost revenue.

Most hire and rental companies even if the hire or rent equipment are effectively selling time.  If that time is lost, it can be regained.  For example, if a client hires or rents a service from 10am to 12 pm and doesn’t show, then revenue for that time slot is lost.  Unless a walk in customer appears there and then or another customer can be brought forward.

Even rental of equipment is impacted.  If a client confirms a booking of a equipment for the day and then doesn’t show the sale for that day is arguably lost.

Therefore taking simple cost effective measures to reduce booking cancellations is worthwhile.

People Quicker to Respond to Text’s

It is not just the cost saving that drives SMS effectiveness it is people’s attitudes to text.  Research by USA Telecommunications Company Sprint has shown that people respond quicker to text’s than voice mails.

all age groups are more likely to respond to a text message more quickly than a voice message. Predictably, among adults under 30 years of age, 78 percent say they respond immediately or within minutes to a text message. Even 54 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds said they respond to a text

Integrate SMS in WorkFlow

For hire and rental companies, SMS is integrated into HireEzy. Simply opne the client booking, click SMS, icon, type in the text you want to send and transmit.  The SMS message is then automatically recorded against your customer record.

SMS is an effective tool in that  for a few cents, can reduce lost booking revenue of multiple dollars.

Using SMS with HireEzy is easy.

SMS credits are available from us, at discount rates.

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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• Vlingo Research: 94% of Teens Use Mobile Phone to Text (debaird.net)

Reduce Operating Costs by 30% – we have clients who have reduced operating costs and in some
cases doubled revenue by using HireEzy.

Option for a Fully Integrated Web Site – in which you can update and control the web content from
HireEzy with two simple clicks.

Protect your Cash by renting HireEzy – a small installation fee is charged to install HireEzy on your
premises.

The SMALLEST to LARGEST companies use HireEzy because of its affordability and scalability.
WHY CAN WE DELIVER SUCH PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS!

Natural Business Flow that cuts costs: HireEzy is a complete hire business management solution, designed to follow the natural flow of your business.

The natural flow starts with creating and managing market leads and ends with banking the cash. This is an extremely important difference and one that makes us the emerging market leader. Why have separate un-related systems and processes for marketing, for your web site and for brochure production, for hire operations, for servicing, for delivery and for accounting, when HireEzy provides one complete solution. Even the simple things save time and dollars like one click conversion of quotes to invoices that also updates the accounts with a new Account Receivable transaction.

Marketing- Lead Generation

Differentiate yourself as a leading professional company with the most incredible in-built Entertainment
Agents and/ Entertainment Manager marketing tools.  Full range of in-built easy to use digital marketing tools.

• Control your web content yourself, updating news, events etc (option)
• Inbuilt SMS functions
• Promotion Cataloguing system for products
• Produce High Quality Marketing Documents
• Produce your own full color Product Catalogues and full color marketing PDF’s
• Produce your own Fliers and E-mailers

Full Agent Marketing Relationship Management System

A specially adapted customer relationship management system for the Hire and Rental
Companies.

• Contact Details, Contact history,
• Standing Pricing Agreements/ Discounts/ Financial and Contract history

Event or Project Planning

Plan and manage events for your clients with the inbuilt event and project planning tools.

• Project manage events professionally.
• Reduce project risk.
• Full visual graphic reporting.
• Even includes sub-contractor management.

Bookings/ Inquiries and Availability

Manage Bookings professionally with the World’s most powerful booking management system. Respond quickly and easily to sales inquiries with accurate and timely information:

• Email or print off quickly tailored high graphic quality product information and pricing specific to their inquiry.
• Check availabilities, reserve bookings by status and confirm bookings.
• Track Bookings with Daily, Monthly, Weekly views.  Bookings are color coded depending on their status.
• One click conversion of quotes to invoices.
• Send reminder SMS to clients, a method shown to reduce no shows by as much as 25%.

Inventory and Logistics Management

Manage your inventory and logistics with a completely integrated business solution.

• Schedule and record stock maintenance.
• Improve inventory utilization.
• Produce pick lists for warehouse staff.
• Produce detailed delivery and collection schedules with route planning and directions through Google Maps; or tasking instructions such as set up, on-site inspections or disassembly.

Accounting and Contracts

A fully integrated accounting package that is driven by your bookings.
For example creating an invoice automatically generates an Account Receivable transaction, it also includes:

• General Ledger and Profit & Loss,
• Cash book accounting,
• Central Contracts store,
• Easily manage and calculate complex financial payments/ splits/ commissions

Collaboration and Workflow

Clients have stated that they have been able to cut as much as 30% of their operating time and costs by the use of through the in-built workflow tools. A major fallacy is that your whole system must be web based in order to collaborate with partners. Not only is this not true it is in fact a major business risk to you. As a number of recent clients have stated when the internet went down, we could not trade, we could not access our own information – we were completely at a loss.

MLE eliminates this business risk, but also provides you with the tools to collaborate effectively with your partners.

Other

• All you data is stored on your site, we do offer back up data services.
• Eliminate the business risk of not being able to trade or conduct business when the internet is down.
• Set staff access level s to data or functions by role or by person.
• Comprehensive range of management reports

Have a problem, then click live help and we can help you!

Works on Apple Macintosh or Windows based systems

Interested?  Then book an obligation free on-line demonstration, go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au

The target segment to consider focusing your attention on is families in the mortgage belt or suburbs. There are three key factors that drive this analysis:

Vulnerability to Unemployment Risks

The OECD has forecast that the most vulnerable labour groups are the oldest, youngest and unskilled. As a generalisation the mortage belt is generally made up of middle aged couples with either technical, trade or professional skills. Hence based on the most recent OECD forecasts, these are the least likely to face unemployment risks.

Interest Rates

Interest rates for mortgages across the board have fallen sharply over the last year. Some estimates show that this has meant that mortgage belt families have been able to free up a few hundred dollars per month. This saving to them is also being complimented by tax cuts in a number of countries.

Trend Towards Home Based Entertainment

There is a societal trend towards home based entertaining, rather than off premise entertainment. This trend has been accelerated by the recent global financial crisis.The home entertainment market is a target segment for party hire and rental companies. Another factor influencing the trend towards home entertainment.  Whilst interest rates are coming down, so are house prices.  So the overall sense of perceived wealth is declining, therefore home entertainment is seen as a low cost alternative to socialising.

A final point consideration in the potential growth of the home entertainment market is time.  During the boom years, perceived wealth amongst home owners increased rapidly but at the cost of perceived time to spend with family and friends.  Despite the increasing prosperity people seemed to work longer hours, unable to “find” the time to spend with family and friends.  As we move into new economic conditions, how people make and spend their time will be worth watching.  It may well create a new market opportunity for hire and rental companies.

Taking advantage of this segment is discussed in more detail in an earlier post Party Hire and Rental Companies could benefit from downturn.

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration.

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform

Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics

Marketing via Twitter

How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter

Marketing via Facebook

Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s

Marketing via YouTube

How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media

Marketing via WordPress

Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog

Home Entertainment Market

One such opportunity is the apparent growth of the home entertainment market.  At first glance this may appear to be of little interest, but further investigation suggests it could be worth consideration.

Rising wealth over the last decade from both increasing property values and incomes led to an increase in away from home entertainment.  People went to clubs, venues and events to celebrate, relax and enjoy.   Not so anymore, people are staying home and inviting friends around.

This trend to home based entertainment has generated some interesting Corporate and Industry responses.  The USA spirits industry provides an example of how you too could consider accessing this market.

”The fact that people can transfer some of their entertaining to the home provides us with a certain amount of insulation from the economic downturn,” said David Ozgo, chief economist for the Distilled Spirits Council. “It’s not that our business declines, our rate of growth slows.”

To access this market change Spirits companies are chasing the home-entertaining consumer with a vigor, finding ways to aid their customers to re-produce their favorite cocktails they previously drank when they went out.

Accessing the home entertaining market means more than just creating awareness of your products.  It means painting a vision to your target market of what they could do!  Here are some examples:

“Bring Back the 70’s” – Invite your friends and family around for a Barbeque, dance to Juke Box in the backyard under the party lights. Let us help you bring back the fun – XYZ party-hire

“Entertaining at Home Theme Packs”  – Make your next home entertainment event the best night of your life with our “Entertaining at home theme packages”.  Themes for every occasion!

Marketing such packages could include a combination of letterbox drops, newspaper advertisements, television advertisements.  However by far the cheapest remains digital marketing such as on your website and emails to your customers.  Even consider using social media and other digital marketing ideas.  Articles below explain how to use Social Media and Digital marketing.

HireEzy, hire business management software, has the tools to enable you to do your own emails campaigns to your clients.  With the full web option, you can even update your own website yourself, saving time and money.  It also improves your web site ranking the more frequently you change your web site information.

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration.

For more information www.makinglifeezy.com.au

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform

Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics

Marketing via Twitter

How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter

Marketing via Facebook

Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s

Marketing via YouTube

How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media

Marketing via WordPress

Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog