Vacation Rental Internet Marketing - Email Campaigns

The goal of your email marketing campaign is to turn your new leads into bookings and nurture existing customers.

To keep ahead of your competition, your vacation rental internet marketing must include email campaigns. This content should include relevant information that matters to perspective customers and repeat bookers.

Email Content

Identify your Subscribers

Take time to develop a buyer persona—a fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on analyzed data. This will help you understand what a day in the life of a potential client might be like and how to address their needs.
To learn more, read Paveya’s blog article, “Vacation Rental Website Design - Identify your Customer”.

Deliver Content that Matters

Vacation rental companies might want to promote upcoming events and make announcements that matter to your customers. For example, your email newsletter might include

• a list of discounted home rentals for a particular week;
• a schedule of events in your area for the month of July;
• a promotion of pet-friendly homes in your rental program;
• a press release about the completion of a new tourist attraction;
• an announcement of road or bridge construction that might impede travel in your area;
• an update from your town about leash laws; or
• an article about what your vacationers can do with recyclable materials.

Social Media

People frequently share emails, and that means that you can contact someone that is not yet on your email list. Include forward and social sharing buttons in your email messages.

Include Call-to-Action Links

Call-to-action buttons ask your new lead to take action on an offer such as booking a rental special or downloading an article, whitepaper, or eBook.
Create a simple graphic or sentence in your email that links to an offer on a page of your website—a landing page. There you might ask your email subscriber to fill in a form to

• request an article that lists everything that they might need to bring on vacation;
• download a calendar of events; or
• sign up for updates on discounted rental homes.

Call-to-action links can help you create new leads and montior the effectiveness of your email campaign.

Email Design: Keep it Simple

Here are a couple important reasons to make a simple design:

• A plain text email is what your subscribers receive from friends or colleagues, without graphics or videos. You're free to just say what you want to say, and the reader can just ... read it. 
• It's easier for the email message to render. Emails with several design elements—large images or videos, for example, might load slowly or display incorrectly. Some of your recipients' email accounts might have images turned off by default, so your email might look unorganized or lacking content. Don’t rely on images to deliver your message.
• Sometimes your recipients are reading your message on their mobile devices—will your customer wait for that huge email to load? If they do, will it still look as good as when you designed it on your desktop computer? Unlikely.

Insert a concise signature and footer. Include your name, title, social media links (one or two), a link to your website, and maybe even a postscript. For example, "PS: Check out our exciting photos from our special event." Studies show that people usually scroll to the bottom of an email to make sure that they didn’t miss anything.

Best Practices

Adapted from Paveya’s eBook, "The Complete Guide to Optimizing Email Marketing for Conversions"

1. Do you have permission to email the people on your list? Use contacts that signed up on your website. Never purchase or rent contact lists.
2. Include an unsubscribe link. If you don’t, you might be marked as a spammer. Spam complaints will hurt your reputation and even hinder future email deliveries.
3. Segment your list. Make sure you send the right message to the right customer. Create at least 2 campaigns: one for potential bookers and one for existing customers.
4. Personalize the email whenever possible.
5. Write in the second person: "Here is what you should bring on vacation".
6. Create consistency with “from” name and email. Email from an individual person, not a team. No-reply emails not acceptable with marketing emails.
7. Create clear and compelling subject lines that are less than 50 characters.
8. Use actionable language in your call-to-action links. For example, "Download now" or "Request a brochure".
9. It is better to focus on benefits instead of features. Write to the pain point of the reader or answer a frequently asked question.
10. Be brief, less than 200 words.
11. Send test emails to different types of email accounts such as Google, Yahoo, and Gmail.
12. Make sure you use an email delivery system that provides analytics.
13. Analyze your email statics. For example, study how many emails were opened, which links were clicked, and how many emails were forwarded.
14. Send email campaigns every 3 to 6 weeks, depending on the season.

Although many people who fill in the form on your website to receive your email newsletter are still in the research stage, you can use this opportunity to establish brand awareness and offer specials for the upcoming vacation season.

Paveya looks forward to helping our customers CREATE leads, CONNECT with customers and GROW their business.