Customer Profiles: The Jupiter Hotel

Shannon Pratuch of The Jupiter Hotel

Organization Profile: The Jupiter Hotel is the brainchild of developers Tod Breslau and Kelsey Bunker. Established in 2004, the Jupiter is Portland’s first cultural boutique motel turned hotel in what was a seedy 1960’s motor lodge on the edge of downtown. After identifying the property, its proximity to the convention center, the downtown entertainment district and the Willamette River, the developers decided it would make the perfect hotel, nightclub, and social gathering place with affordable rates and exciting events.

Summary: Using a combination of BatchBlue Software, and other business solutions in The Small Business Web such as MailChimp, Shannon Pratuch, the director of sales and marketing for the Jupiter Hotel, is able to better maintain relationships with business-to-business and some business-to-consumer contacts for the boutique hotel. She has seen a sizable increase in referrals and repeat bookings since working with BatchBlue, while being able to integrate data between the software and other solutions like Freshbooks and Outright has saved her valuable time.

Website: The Jupiter Hotel

Historic Jupiter Hotel Charts Its Business Success for the Future With BatchBlue and Other Solutions in The Small Business Web

The Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon is a distinctive property with its own particular marketing needs. A mid-century remodeled hotel, the Jupiter appeals to a hipster, younger crowd with many creative corporate executives booking functions there. Shannon Pratuch, the director of sales and marketing for the Jupiter Hotel, says she relies on Batchbook social CRM, by BatchBlue Software, and other solutions in The Small Business Web to help keep the business thriving within its target demographic.

Much of Pratuch’s focus in 2009 and 2010 has been on building out the hotel’s sales contacts to increase repeat clientele. Since the Jupiter’s guests are so closely tapped into social media, Pratuch said, she opted to work with BatchBlue in large part because of its software’s focus on incorporating social media feeds into its contact management database.

“Batchbook is my hub for seeing everything that is going on,” said Pratuch. “I did quite a bit of research on CRMs, and previously I worked with larger-scale enterprise solutions. In my opinion, those products don’t have the flexibility and capability you need from a small business standpoint to turn on a dime. It can be adjusted to fit my needs. And, none have as deep a level of social media integration as BatchBlue.”

Pratuch, who works with the Jupiter Hotel through Scene Marketing Group and who owns a social media support company named iMarket Strategy, said the hotel needs to manage a host of business-to-business contacts. They include travel agents, corporate contacts who book events at the hotel and event and band managers who are contracted for entertainment services. Also, some business-to-consumer contacts, such as customers booking large gatherings for weddings, birthdays or Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, need to be tracked as well. The hotel’s team needs to be able to log communications with all of these people to be able to grow the relationships with each.

Before working with BatchBlue, hotel employees simply kept up with their own contacts via Microsoft Outlook, Pratuch said. Now, with Batchbook, entire teams are able to share contact and communication details that they were previously unable to do. They are able to use the software’s Super Tags feature to mark particular contacts with meaningful and unique data, such as how they were referred to the hotel. And, Pratuch is able to set privacy levels to ensure employee are only able to access the data they need to.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in referrals and repeat bookings since working with BatchBlue,” said Pratuch. “We now have a much smoother workflow for campaign management and lead management, and we have more insight into what makes a sale go from lead to a close. We are able to drill down into measurable sales data and analytics to correlate marketing pushes with sales. Also, we are able to see where sales leads came from and be able to track them through the sales process, which we weren’t able to do before.”

Pratuch also integrates the contact data in BatchBlue with MailChimp, another member of The Small Business Web. MailChimp makes it easy to send e-mail newsletters, manage subscriber lists, and track campaign performance by transforming professional marketing tools into an application that's accessible to anyone. With MailChimp, the Jupiter Hotel can better tailor its e-mail communications to the people is it trying to reach.

“It creates a really nice workflow because I can take control over the quality and quantity of marketing messages, and I can ensure consistency in messaging,” said Pratuch.

Pratuch also relies on The Small Business Web member Outright to track bookkeeping information and to submit information for her subcontractors who require federal W-9 forms and 1099 forms. For tax year 2009, Pratuch saved about $130 over previous years in submitting 1099 forms through Outright instead of a high-priced Certified Public Accountant. Because data in Outright can be integrated with BatchBlue and Freshbooks, she cut down on her paper trail as well.

These solutions, coupled with using many of the Google platforms, such as Gmail, ensure that the Jupiter Hotel’s marketing team can continue to extend the hand of hospitality to many new and returning guests.

”The fact that Batchbook is not a proprietary program and we can access it from any computer system is a huge benefit to my team. We need a CRM solution that’s as mobile as we are, which we can access no matter where we are working,“ said Pratuch.

Aside from the hotel, Pratuch also uses The Small Business Web member Freshbooks for some invoicing and to track time cards for Scene Marketing Group. She is able to automatically and efficiently set up recurring documents, saving her much time. Since the Jupiter Hotel is her main client and she is often dealing with many of the same contractors, the ability to share contact data between Batchbook and Freshbooks also is a bonus for her.

“I liken it to a cruise ship versus a fishing boat. Small businesses like the ones I work with get lost with products that are slow to integrate with our work process, like the cruise ships. Instead, we need nimble solutions like BatchBlue, MailChimp and Freshbooks, that can move quickly, like the fishing boats, to help us meet our goals.”