Day after day I get the pleasure of receiving email marketing letters from Vacation Rental Property Managers around the country. I love it because I get so see the different destinations and where some vacation rental markets are. I love to take a look to see who is sending good email vs. not so good and how much they send. I look at email marketing as a great resource to contact potential guests, brand yourself and give others awareness of your existence.
I may not be an expert by any means for email marketing, but I have picked up a few tips and tricks along the way that may be useful to others.
THE SUBJECT LINE:
In the subject like, make sure that you give people a reason to open your email. Use call to action phrases if needed. For Instance…”20% Specials on Vacation Rentals for the Next 3 Hours”. Instead of something like “California Vacation Rentals”.
THE MESSAGE:
Once you have figured out what you want to say make it visible and readable. Focus their Eyes. Use Structure that is simple and readable. Make sure you have a realistic call to action that is in plain sight and easy to see. It’s important to use pictures and different color fonts and font faces but try not to completely make a rainbow out of your email. The end goal of your message should be to have the reciever to do something: Call you, Email you, book a home, visit your website or even something else.
YOUR TIMING:
The first step to timing your email right is Identifing your market. For instance: if you rent homes in the Hamptons to New York business people, then you should send your email at a time when they would read it and see it. Also make sure you send it at a time when it wont Pile up with all the other email that is being sent. For Business contact usually the general rule is Tuesday – Thursday and 9AM-1PM.
Either Way, Email marketing works. I get the message and I open them. Most email marketing programs have stats where you can view the open rate and the click rate on any links you put in the site. With LiveRez Vacation Rental Software we give our partners the ability to export the emails for their leads and customers so they and then import them into their email marketing program.
We also have held and now pubished a webinar on email marketing, check it out: http://www.liverez.com/vacation-rental-software-downloads.asp
Thanks,
Tyler
