At last week's VRMA East event, there was a wonderful discussion on Repeat Guests.  In a recent industry study, it was determined that it costs 6x to acquire a new guest vs. booking a repeat guest. 

That is some serious money.  I can add from experience, that the multiplier is much higher in the general eCommerce industry.......more like 10-15x.

Holding on to your guests and keeping them coming back is not rocket-science according to the recent discussion at the VRMA conference.  It is about making it a priority, and starting the sales process for the next visit, the moment they book with you for the first visit. 

The guest experience was broken into several stages, with ideas on each stage.

• Pre-Arrival - find out why they are coming, who they are bringing
• Arrival - 'welcome home', let them know how happy you are to see them
• Stay - treat them like family
• Check-out - provide special offers
• Post-Stay - stay in touch with emails, newsletters, offers

In my April Webinar, I will cover each of these areas in detail.  Please join us for this event on Thursday, April 23.  See details and chance to sign-up below.

Webinar:  Repeat Guests - 9 Ways to Make the Most of Guest Relationships

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I am excited.  Very excited.  VRMA, the Vacation Rental Manager's Association, is reinventing itself and bringing together our industry like never before.  VRMA has launched a new website at www.vrma.com - check it out.  It is a great source of info about the industry.

VRMA has also launched Discover Vacation Homes as a national public awareness initiative for our industry and to make vacation homes a primary vacation option for travelers. 

Be a part of it!  Vacation Managers have the opportunity to become a part of VRMA - check it our at www.vrma.com.  In addition, Discover Vacation Homes offers vacation managers a position at the leading edge of marketing and positioning the vacation home rental industry.  Don't sit on the sideline, be a part of the goings on. Check it out:

WATCH Video For More DetailsCreate more business for YOUR company, YOUR owners, and YOUR destination.  Don't miss out on the many benefits of this national campaign!

      Join the Cause!

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In the current economic climate, the temptation is to cut back on marketing and promotion. While this may seem like a sensible course of action, it has the potential to harm your business in the long term.  If possible, now is the time to put space between you and your competition.  Travelers are still out there.  They are just looking for different 'values' in a vacation and have changed their decision process for booking that next trip.  Invest in adapting your business and marketing efforts to these new Values and Vacation Planning Process.

Following are several specific online marketing activities to focus on.  None of these have to cost much money, they just have to be executed diligently and with very specific goals in mind.  I will cover each of these items in more detail in future posts.  For now, use this as a checklist for your online marketing activities:

• Focus on Campaigns/Specials Be specific with your marketing activities, making them value based and targeting specific events or seasons.
• Flexibility in your Rates, Offline&  Online Do not limit your travelers in the # of days they can book for and adapt pricing to different demand levels.
• Invest in your Website  Create and update content to be engaging and useful.
• Optimise your Web Site  Search engine optimization, page layouts, and click-paths are all areas toi look into.
• eMail Marketing  Use email campaigns to promote special offers and collect new email addresses at all possible opportunity.
• Protect your Brand Online  Make sure your brand is visible online and becomes something travelers trust in and can recommend to friends.
• Monitor Online User Reviews Continually monitor reviews posted on popular travel sites
• Use a good Analytics package Do not fly blind, make sure you know your traffic, clicks, and conversions information.
• Respond to Market Conditions Look what is happening in the world, country, economy and respond to these changes.

In summary, challenging times lay ahead for the vacation home rental industry, but if your website and online presence are in order, the internet sales channel can be an area of revenue growth for your business in 2009-10.

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I have discussed the importance of niche marketing, picking your target customer, and speaking to the specific needs of a certain traveler on several of my webinars.  (check the out - Recorded LiveRez Webinars)  One example I have used is providing vacation home rentals for participants in the Coeur D'Alene Ironman race. 

I am an avid Ironman Triathlete and was surprised to see a marketing email from North America Sports (the organization that puts on the Ironman races) promoting a new website for vacation home rentals at the various North America Ironman race locations.  The site:  www.nasvacationproperties.com

Cool.  Great idea.  Very focused.  Bringing vacation home rentals mainstream.  Broader exposure for our industry.  All good.

Then I clicked on the link.  Ahhhhhh!  What is that?  What do I do?  Where do I shop the homes?  What can I click on?  Are my colors messed up? 

Website - always remember to follow the principles of :

• Affinity (you assure me that I am on the right site for what I need)
• Usability (intuitive & simple navigation and activities)
• Focus (I know what you want me to do with a clear call to action)

Then I checked into the actual vacation homes.  What homes are available?  Where do I book?  Is there only 1 home in each location?  All this is doing is popping me to a VRBO listing.

Now I pride myself on being a positive person and I think you will have to look very hard to find a negative tone in any of my posts.  But I cannot comment on how poor this website is and how poor the execution/delivery of the promise of a great vacation home in the Ironman location is.

Take-away:  when you have the ingenuity & courage ( like www.nasvacationproperties.com has shown), then also take the time, care, and resources to execute at the highest level.

I wish NAS Vacation Properties all the best and hope they continue to improve their offering, presentation, and website.
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No vacation home rental sites in the Top 10! Got to change that. (back to the new years resolutions....let's make that happen)

On a more serious note, check out the traffic. Interesting downward or even trends on the various sites, except for facebook.com and wikipedia.com. Since all the traffic on wikipedia.comis probably people looking up 'stimulus package', 'depression', 'recession', and other uplifting economic terms, I want to focus on facebook.com.

Note the substantial increase. I have also see a substantial increase in activity on my personal Facebook page. I have had a Facebookpage for well over a year and until this summer, there was never much activity. In the fall, suddenly there were lots of friend requests, updated status (some of these updates really need not be shared), and I found myself searching for old acquaintances. I admit, I even started updating my status.

Why should you care? I think we should care about anything that is growing and capturing people's (potential guests) attention. Social media such as facebook can help us to reach our market and, maybe more importantly, to understand our market. What gets people's attention? What are the talking about? What do they have strong opinions on?

....and if you want, you can come visit me (Ralf VonSosen - only one there) and make me your friend on Facebook.

Ralf
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Recently I had a conversation with a vacation manager about her strategy of week-to-week rentals.  We agreed that although that was a good strategy in the past, it might not be what she wants to do for 2009.  As a matter of fact, she already changed her business model to adapt to the changing traveler booking habits.

Here are some noteworthy stats - based on 2007/2008 bookings:

• For 1 Week 25% 
• For 6 days 20%
• For 3/4/5 days 15%

My expectation, and what i am observing across our many vacation managers is that the % of 7 day rentals is decreasing and travelers are looking for more flexibility.  While not being able to afford the full 1 week vacation, they do not want to forgo the vacation completely and a few days is much better than no vacation home at all.

So my advice is, put the old 'week-to-week' rental only strategy on the shelf while the economy and travelers are in recovery mode.

Ralf
www.LiveRez.com

 Targeting, segmenting, personalizing......whatever you want to call it, I am a huge fan and believe that much of online marketing success depends on the ability to do this well.  Following are 10 tips on how to look at the visitors to your website and how to target them with messages that will resonate wiht them.

Returning Visitors

Returning visitors already know the basics about your site. Help them learn more, have a richer experience, and convert faster by targeting a different experience after their first visits. For example, you might replace instructional or introductory language with more relevant content on a second visit based on what you want them to do next.

Frequent Converters

For frequent converters, give them targeted rewards – these visitors are the most valuable, and it pays to engage them more effectively.

Or, encourage infrequent purchasers to convert again by identifying them and then providing a more compelling offer.

Registered Users

Most sites devote a lot of real estate to user registration. If a visitor has already signed up, fill that valuable space with different content. A magazine site, for example, should remove the subscription sign-up content if an existing subscriber is visiting the site. If someone is already receiving your newsletter, use that sign-up space to promote something else.

User-Generated Content Providers

For visitors who contribute to reviews or discussions on your site, make it even easier and more rewarding to participate more. Highlight other opportunities to join your site’s community with layout changes or calls to action.

Weekenders

People behave differently depending on when they visit your site, so target campaigns based on day of week or time of day. If you have offers, promotions, or content that expire at certain times, targeting content based on time of day or day of week will give you an easy relevance win. Inform visitors of upcoming shipping cutoffs, show different content to lunchtime visitors, and try day of week offers to help drive conversion metrics.

Category Loyalists

Give your visitors what they are telling you they want. For the portion of your traffic that repeatedly visits the same category, make the favorite category even more prominent. Try changing navigation to put a visitor’s top category first in the list. Or deliver targeted calls to action and offers associated with the favorite category.

Searchers

Show returning visitors content related to their last site search. Or, make search functionality even more prominent for people who search frequently during their visits to your site.

Deciders

If someone provided job title as part of site registration or a request for information, focus your messaging based on that information. Create segments for different levels of responsibility to increase engagement and to identify decision makers or business owners. Speak to decision makers differently than decision influencers for greater relevance.

Locals

Even on the Internet, a visitor’s geographic location can make them likely to respond to different messages. Would you tell them something different if they were within a few miles of you?

Yahoos and Googlers

People who come from search engines may behave differently. They have used a keyword that you can use to align your solutions to their needs. For that matter, any traffic source may bring users with similar preferences. Use this knowledge to be more relevant to them.

 Ralf
LiveRez

On my way into the office this morning I listened to an interesting discussion about how some travel companies are utilizing travel insurance to help travelers feel more comfortable about booking a vacation.

Do not lose bookings to anxiety!

There is tremendous uncertainty about incomes, jobs, and personal wealth among our target market.  In order to avoid losing potential vacationers, that will not book a vacation just because they are uncertain about their future income,  we can address that anxiety by offering travel insurance.

We have all positioned travel insurance for the purpose of helping travelers in case unforeseen events prohibit them from taking their vacation.  Well, the most likely unforeseen event for many travelers is the involuntary loss of income and inability to pay for the vacation.  Some insurance companies will guard against this loss of income due to the loss of employment.

Take the time to find out the details about the employment requirements the insyrance company has - could be 1 year employed or even 5 years employed at the current company.  Also be aware of other potential conditions.

Once this information is clear to you, offer it to customers to help them ease their anxiety about booking their 2009 vacation home.  This can also become a differentiators for you and make you stand apart from your competition.

Ralf
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Now this guys looks like he knows his SEO facts.

If you are like me, and most of the vacation home rental managers I talk to on a daily basis, you are always looking for an edge to get visitors to your website.  In the spirit of getting an edge, I ran across a great educational post about walking the fine line of kosher SEO tactics.  Beware the risks.

Dirty SEO tricks you should avoid by Rich Cherecwich

Getting reinstated in the search rankings takes time, and the search giant has a four-step process for getting back on track:

1. Determine what went wrong. In most cases, it's a Google webmaster guideline that has been violated.
2. Solve the problem.In the case of doorway pages related to domain buying, get rid of them. With link buying, it's a much harder and lengthier process. If you purchased links on a blog, you'll have to contact those bloggers, and they in turn will have to remove the links to your website.
3. File a reconsideration request.Within Google's webmaster tools, there are full instructions for a filing a reconsideration request. You'll want to explain what happened, notify them that it's fixed, and tell the search engine that you won't use that deceptive trick again. A team from Google then reviews the request and checks your website to make sure any violations have been cleaned up.
4. Stay away from the tricks."This is probably a given -- don't it again," Lasnik says.

Stay clean and say 'No' to bad SEO practices.  My advice. 

All the best.

Ralf
www.LiveRez.com

"Thank you, I am fine.  I am just looking."  We got them all the way into our store (vacation home rental website), and they are 'just looking'.  Let's put our salesperson hat on and 'make the sale'.  We know they are not just here for fun (they are interested in booking a vacation home, or at least getting more information for a future vacation home).  They could be having fun on www.hulu.comwatching TV shows and movies, or playing web boggle at www.wordsplay.net. 

In our house, CTR stands for 'Choose The Right".  Boosting CTR (Click Through Rates) is like helping our web visitors Choose The Right. : )

So what can we do to actively sell to them on the web?  Here are 10 ideas (which I think are pretty good) from Reid Carr - an eCommerce expert published on iMediaConnection.com.

Read the full article:  10 ways to boost falling click-through rates by Reid Carr of iMediaConnection.com

1. Test
I wanted to cite this as tactic No. 1 because it should be at the forefront of any advice or recommendation that I outline. While there are "best practices," we've concluded through experience and testing that things are always changing and each case is unique. You have to establish appropriate rules for testing to give everything a fair shake. But once you've done that, establish a hypothesis and go.   Rule nothing out. You will be amazed at what is successful. But beware: Don't let any finding become your secret sauce that you turn to for everything. Every campaign, client, product, placement, and timing causes your targets to react differently -- so be on your toes every time.