Owning vacation rentals is an excellent way to bring in additional income or even become your full-time job. Most vacation rental hosts begin by using popular marketplaces such as AirBNB and VRBO to list and market their vacation rentals. It’s the best way to get your feet wet as those platforms handle a lot of the heavy lifting for you and already have the renters searching for availability.
After a vacation rental begins to establish itself, perhaps begins to bring in return visitors, you may start to consider taking bookings outside of the platforms and going ‘direct to consumers’. After all, the fees that these platforms charge can eat into your net profits as well as be prohibitive for some guests booking your accommodations. But there are also concerns. Will you attract the ‘right’ renters? Renters that will be respectful of your property, not cause damage, pay on time, not abuse cancellation policies, etc.? Read on to learn the secrets of attracting quality, repeat guests using email marketing for your vacation rental.
Vacation Rental Email Marketing
Into the room comes email marketing. Email marketing primarily targets guests who have booked with you before. Therefore, you somewhat already know them as guests. Can can greatly reduce the stress that comes along with direct booking. The next question becomes, how do you create a newsletter list for marketing your vacation rental? Some platforms like VRBO will openly share the primary booker’s email address in association with their past booking. Other platforms like AirBNB do not provide this information and you would have to manually request it from the guest. In either situation, the only email you are receiving is the primary bookers. Many vacation rentals may have 3-11 additional people staying for every booking. How do you land the email addresses of ALL guests who may be occupying the space?
Leveraging The Power of The Digital Guidebook for Vacation Rentals
Digital guidebooks have a lot of benefits they provide to your guests. A few of the most prominent benefits are:
- Reduce guest questions by providing them with your digital guidebook prior to their arrival
- Digital guidebooks can explain complex questions with pictures, videos, and more modern media
- Digital guidebooks can be updated from anywhere in the world with an internet connection allowing hosts to keep the information more relevant
Back to building your newsletter marketing list. A new feature on GoGuidebook allows you to require guests who view the guidebook to register with their contact information. The process is similar to going to a coffee shop or an airport and getting on the public wifi. Once the guidebook visitor submits the form, that data is stored in your GoGuidebook account and can be downloaded at any time to a spreadsheet file.
When vacation rentals use a digital guidebook, it’s commonly viewed by not only the primary booker but also other guests staying at the accommodation. This is especially true if the vacation rental host uses the GoGuidebook QR codes which can be printed and placed within the accommodation, giving quick access to anybody inside the unit.
Using A Newsletter Email Service
Once you begin to collect a list of names & email addresses of past guests, you’ll likely want to use a newsletter email service to design & schedule the re-marketing emails. Our preferred and recommended service is Mailchimp. They offer excellent design tools and their backend system is easy to use. They offer a free forever plan for up to 500 contacts which is a great way to get started.
We recommend reaching out to your email marketing list with a mass email at least once per quarter. Except for special circumstances, we don’t recommend sending more than one email per month maximum. These emails can typically focus on upcoming seasons or special events in your local area. They can also focus on recent upgrades or amenities you added to the property. Try to have some purpose to the email beyond a generic message asking the visitor to come back and visit. Try to include local, relevant photos in the email when possible to tug on those nostalgic heartstrings.
How To Get Started
Signing up for GoGuidebook to begin collecting visitor emails using your digital guidebook can be done at https://goguidebook.com/signup/. We offer a 14 day free trial where you can fully test the ‘Required Registration’ feature as we call it. Once you begin to collect email addresses, you’ll probably want to wait a minimum of three months before sending the first marketing email. Have questions about email marketing for your vacation rental or the digital guidebook service by GoGuidebook? Send us an email at hi@goguidebook.com.
