Vacation rentals are a great way to earn extra income, but with so much competition, and so many booking sites, it can be difficult to fill up your rental as much as you would like. Email marketing is key to ensuring that your vacation rental is never empty.
So how do you conduct email marketing successfully for you vacation rental? I’ve collected the following tips to you help you grow your email list and use it to convert those emails into customers.
- How to Grow Your Email List with WIFI Sign In
- How to Use Lead Magnets to Grow Your Email List
- How to Use Your Email List to Increase Your Vacation Rental Bookings
- How to Write a Subject Line Subscribers Can’t Pass Up
These tactics are crucial for your business and each comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Understanding the details of each strategy will help you choose the best combination of options, and I’ve curated the information below to you make those decisions.
How to Grow Your Email List with WIFI Sign In
When you are making a plan to grow your email list with the intention of using it for marketing your vacation rentals, it is important that it does not impact the guests experience in a negative way.
One of the simpler ways to collect the emails of current guests is to leave a guestbook out at the rental, and encourage guests to sign it, and leave their email in the book before they leave. However, the downside to this is that the conversion rate is low, and some guests have illegible hand writing.
You could also just ask your guests for their email if you meet them, or over text. But if you have frequent guests this could be a lot of work. The most efficient way to collect the emails of guests who are already staying at your vacation rental is to automate the process.
One way of doing this is by capturing the guests email when they log on to the WIFI. You may have noticed yourself that some businesses and hotels require your email address before you can log into their WIFI. You can employ the same technique with a service like Flamingo WIFI.
The benefit of this tactic is that is doesn’t interrupt the guests experience and doesn’t seem pushy, in addition, you will get nearly all of your guests’ emails because everyone wants to use WIFI.
The downside to this technique is that it’s a little sneaky, and some guests might not like receiving a surprise email from you, especially if they don’t remember agreeing to receive emails from you. If you do use this technique, I would suggest giving the guest an option as to whether they want to receive information from you or not.
The key here is to always be respectful of your guests and be transparent in your tactics. Collecting emails is one thing, keeping your guests happy and converting them into return guests, or having them recommend you to their friends, is a more subtle art.
How to Use Lead Magnets to Grow Your Email List
This strategy is all about circumventing the OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) that potential guests often book through. In order to do this, it’s important to incentivize those who do visit your site before they move to book on an OTA’s site.
You can do this with lead magnets. A lead magnet is basically a way you add value to a visitor to your site in exchange for their email address. For example, if a guest visits your site, and before they leave you offer them a ‘Free Guide to Cheap Flights’ that can be delivered directly as a pdf to their inbox, that’s a lead magnet. You get an email; they get quality, curated information.
So, what are some examples of lead magnets you can use for a vacation rental?
- Ultimate guide – You can create an ultimate guide for the area where your vacation rental is located. For example, if you have a rental property in San Diego, create an ultimate guide of all the things there are to do in San Diego, and offer it to a visitor to your site in exchange for their email.
- Discounted price – Offer your customer a discounted price on your vacation rental, or some service that you offer (bike rental, nearby business, tour) if they sign up for your email list.
- Newsletters – Create a weekly, biweekly, or even monthly newsletter about happenings in the location of your vacation rental so that potential guests can stay up to date and plan accordingly. To sign up for the newsletter, they will give you their email.
- Extras – Throw in extras like a complementary bottle of wine, movie tickets, gift cards to restaurants, etc.
Just make sure that whatever you choose to do is tasteful. Don’t create an ad that says “HEY! I’ll trade you a free guide for your email!” Be subtle and respectful. Something along the lines of, “Check out our free ultimate guide to (vacation rental location). We want you to have the experience of a lifetime!” Followed up by a field to enter their email address.
One of the best ways to capture your potential guests email with a lead magnet is to use an exit-intent pop-up. Exit-intent pop ups automatically sense when the user’s cursor is going to the exit button, and then they present a popup with your lead magnet.
The great thing about this is that it won’t annoy the user because they are already on the way out, so they aren’t interrupted while reading, or annoyed when they first get to your site.
If you do decide to use a lead magnet make sure that they are convenient for the user, and that they offer some immediately useful, interesting, and relevant information to the user.
Even if the guest moves on from your site and doesn’t book with you, you can still capture their email at the information and evaluation stage of their query.
How to Use Your Email List to Increase Your Vacation Rental Bookings
Once you have a long list of emails from former and potential guests, what do you do with it? Optimizing your email list is more important than collecting it, if you have 1,000 emails, but none of them convert into a sale, then what was the point?
Send Welcome Emails
Personalization is almost always appreciated. It’s much nicer to receive an email opening, “Hey John” rather than “To Whom it May Concern”. This strategy is especially true when you are sending welcome emails to new subscribers—make them feel like they are already your guest.
“Welcome emails are incredibly effective: on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them on a per email basis than other promotional emails.” (From wordstream.com)
You can use these welcome emails to showcase your vacation rental property with professional photographs, or include possible itineraries of activities nearby, or even offers for discounts.
You should definitely include details about the property, and it would be best if you had some kind of ‘welcome book’ in a pdf that they could download. And don’t forget your contact info!
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
This is particularly important for a vacation rental. People want to be able to imagine their vacation; they are going to be thinking about it at work, they are going to be thinking about when they are stressed.
You need photographs of your vacation rental that will make your subscribers want to show them off as if they were showing pictures of their newborns. It could even lead to more subscribers!
You don’t want a potential guest leaning back in their chair at work, flipping through their mental rolodex, and passing your vacation rental up for a lesser spot that presented itself better.
Having great copy is important, but nothing is like a clear, well shot photograph of your vacation rental taken at the perfect angel in the right lighting. In fact, you should probably keep the text to a minimum and allow the photograph to do most of the talking.
Read more about taking amazing vacation rental pictures here.
Kick Your Potential Customers into Travel Mode
This is where your newsletter comes in handy. Don’t just show a picture of the place, show beautiful shots of the nearby area. After all, most guests are not traveling just to sleep in your vacation rental, first they imagined going to the place where your vacation rental is located.
Beautiful beaches? Lakes? Mountain? Nightlife? Whatever you believe attracts most of your customers to the area, showcase that with beautiful photographs to help them imagine their vacation.
If it is beautiful beaches people come for, have a photograph of a relaxing beach. If it’s outdoor activities, show people being active in the mountains. If it’s nightlife, show photographs of streets crowded with people having a good time at night.
Your goal is to nurture their imagination. Even if they aren’t thinking of your specific vacation rental when they are dozing off at work, they will still associate your vacation rental with the beautiful pictures you showed them of the area.
Entice Them with Deals and Discounts
Keep your peak season in mind when creating your newsletter and sending emails. You want to try and keep your vacation rental booked even when it isn’t peak season, and the best way to do this is to plan before peak season is over.
Off-season is also a great time for you to get ahead and book your vacation rental for peak season by offering discounts and irresistible deals for booking far in advance.
When you are creating an email for discounted peak season bookings, keep in mind that your customers are always on the lookout for a good deal, and they don’t want to let one pass them by. For that reason, add a time limit to the deal.
For example, you could offer your guests a 24% discount if they book within the next 24 hours. Imagine your potential guest turning to their partner and saying, “Check out this awesome deal I just found, but we have to make a decision now!”
People always talk about going on vacation, but they always put it off because it requires a lot of planning and money, so it’s easier just to imagine it and save it ‘for next year’.
If you offer a deal like this, you may catch them in a spontaneous moment, or better yet, encourage their spontaneity. They’ll think, “I’m finally going to do it”.
But what about booking for your off-season?
Do what you do for peak-season but in reverse. Start offering deals during peak-season for off-season. Lower prices, lower minimum nights, be more flexible, offer promotions, and pay attention to holidays that might fall during off-season.
On top of all that, consider what the area has to offer during the off-season. Is it quieter? More relaxed? Are there less tourists? Communicate that in your photographs and in your copy.
Maybe some of your subscribers want peace and quiet, maybe they don’t want to be one of the other thousands of tourists.
Read more about Pricing your Vacation Rental here.
Optimize for Mobile
Transactional searches happen on mobile more than on a computer. And 50% of all email is opened on mobile devices according to campaignmonitor.com.
Make sure that your emails are designed to be aesthetically pleasing for mobile. Not just the copy, but the pictures as well.
The easiest way to get someone to click out of an email is to have misaligned photographs and text that forces them to pinch and swipe their phone screen, only able to look at fractions of the photograph at a time.
Be sure to check the design on mobile before you send it out. Send yourself one first, check it on your phone, and make sure it is an email you would want to receive.
How to Write a Subject Line Subscribers Can’t Pass Up
The information in the above section concerned using email tactics that fit specifically with vacation rentals. However, understanding what creates a high-converting email more generally will also help you turn subscribers into guests.
While pictures are vital for your vacation rental strategy, copy is still important. Let’s go over some general guidelines of what makes a great email subject line that will engage and help convert your subscribers.
My email inbox has literally thousands of unread emails from companies that I forgot to unsubscribe from. I click on pretty much none of them.
Most people don’t.
The only way for you to get people to actually read your great email and check out the pictures is to write an excellent subject line. The subject line is the headline of emails.
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
From the “father of advertising” David Ogilvy.
According optinmonster.com 33% of email recipients open emails due to intriguing subject lines, while 69% throw emails in the spam folder without ever opening them.
Here’s how to be part of that 33%.
Emojis
Some people hate using them, and most people use them way too much. However, it seems that emojis have a positive correlation when it comes to people opening your email.
For one, it helps your email stand out from the rest, which are usually just text. In addition, it helps clarify your subject line with emotion.
Don’t believe me? Many companies have already jumped on board.
“The marketing automation company analyzed 9,400 mobile marketing campaigns, suggesting that emoji use grew 1,071% on Android and 662% on iOS within the past year [2015].”
From mediapost.com.
Ok, people use emojis, but do they work?
“Companies who use emojis in their email subject lines have a higher open rate of as much as 56% over companies who don’t.”
From optinmonster.com.
Of course, throwing 10 heart emojis after your subject line about your vacation rental doesn’t mean an automatic uptick in conversions. Also, emojis don’t have to be faces.
As a vacation rental you can use a plane emoji so that your email automatically stands out as a travel email, or throw a horse emoji in if there is horse-riding available in the area.
Kayaking, snorkeling, climbing, beach umbrellas, food, there are emojis for nearly any activity that you are likely to be using for advertising your vacation rental.
Life is Happening Without You!
This is what may refer to as “fear of missing out” or FOMO. The feeling that everyone is having fun without you. You will be excluded from reminiscing about the great party over the weekend because you were home alone knitting a sweater for your kitten.
This is an especially effective tactic for vacation rentals.
We talked a bit about using ‘last chance’ tactics earlier, giving subscribers deals that were offered at a limited time. You can use this same strategy in your subject line.
For example, “Last chance to get 30%! Beautiful Beaches Await! Don’t miss out!”
Read more about psychological triggers here.
Curiosity
People love novelty. If you can use your subject line to ask a question, or intrigue people with something out of the ordinary or surprising, you can reel them in.
For example, if your vacation rental property is in San Diego, your subject line could read something like, “5 Things You Definitely Didn’t Know About San Diego”, or “San Diego Secretes Even Locals Don’t Know About”, or a question, “Have you Heard About San Diego’s Gidden Gem?”
If you have the persons email, that means they are already interested in traveling to the area, and using the promise of interesting information about that place is an effective hook.
All of these ideas should be used creatively for your particular vacation rental, and the area it is in. Get to know what kind of people your guests are and create emails that they would want to read.
Want to know more ways to maximize your vacation rental income? Have a look here.