Metadesk Onboarding

You might be asking yourself, so how does this work?

Hi there - If you’re reading this, you should have received your welcome email by now. To kick things off, we send you an email outlining the steps we need help with on your side.

These steps include:

1. Giving us the required info we need to get you all set up - we do this via a spreadsheet we refer to as a workbook.

2. Granting us access to your Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager accounts

3. Sending a request to your booking engine provider

4. Setting up a new metasearch channel within your booking engine, and channeling rates appropriately

Typically, that’s all we need from your side. But with so many different variables between booking engine providers, 3rd party add-ons, and even unique configurations from property to property, sometimes we have additional requests. But don’t worry, we’ll reach out of if we need anything else.

Once we have those steps completed, our team can begin building our your new metasearch connections.

As a summary, here’s what takes place:

Google Tag Manager - Pixel Implementation

The first step is tagging certain variables within your booking engine’s data layer. This means that when a reservation is made, we capture all of the data we need to populate your reporting. This data is also what we use to manage the algorithms that optimize your campaign for revenue production.

Engineering (Techy Stuff)

When you complete the steps above with your booking engine, that allows our software to receive rates and availability through API. We consume information and create connections that index and continually refresh this information with metasearch providers, like Google.

Quality Assurance and Testing

As we mentioned above, with so much variance between environments, we often have to tweak or adjust our various configurations. In this phase, we confirm a few things:

1. That Availability and Rates Information (ARI) is flowing from the booking engine provider to our system

2. That the rates we’re receiving via API match the rates shown on the booking engine

3. That our pixel is firing and capturing data correctly. For this we make test reservations, and often time have to adjust and refine our tagging. 

Campaign Development

Once our connectivity team has confirmed that engineering is completed, and everything is testing successfully, we add your property to our platform and can now create your campaigns.

We use the data we collected on your property (property size, type, market, ADR, total inventory) to set up your initial budget and bid amounts. We also turn on an algorithm that is optimized for conversions and revenue production. For the first 30 days or so, the algorithm is in a learning phase. We monitor performance and look for opportunities to boost production if it seems we’re off to a slow start.

Portal Access and Reporting 

Now that your campaigns are live it’s time to give you access to your portal. Before we do this, we need to create your reports.

To create reports, we need data flowing for a few days to a week. We need a certain amount of data to properly QA your reports.

Once everything is set up, we’ll send you a welcome email with login information to access your portal and reports.

We look forward to serving you and taking care of your metasearch advertising needs. As we work together to increase your direct revenue and reduce reliance upon OTA’s, we hope you find our platform user-friendly and effective.

If there’s anything you need to discuss or have questions, please contact us at CustomerSuccess@Metadesk.pro