Email Marketing: 5 Tips to Success in the Vacation Rental Industry

One of the tools we see that is underused or not used properly in the vacation rental industry is direct email marketing. Often, people consider this to be an “old” tactic or their email itself looks like it is from 2001. However, with the proper efforts, email marketing can be one of the most powerful tools in your vacation rental marketing arsenal. But what makes a good email marketing campaign, or even a good email for that matter? Here are five tips you can use to improve or launch your next email campaign.

Make sure you are mobile friendly. We live in a world where everything is at our fingertips in this little device called a smartphone. If your marketing plan doesn’t revolve around this device then you should look at revising it. Some statistics say that over 60% of emails opened are on a mobile device so your design and methodology should revolve highly around mobile. At ICND we are always updating our custom email templates and improving them for mobile usage. In many ways this goes beyond just pixel size.

Viewing Email on Mobile Device

Have the right focus and goals. Don’t try to make bookings with an email. The point of sending an email is to drive traffic to your website, not to make bookings. Although we can attribute bookings to email campaigns through analytics to show the value and return on investment, this should not be the goal when designing and planning. Because of this, you want to make sure your brand is consistent across the board. For example, if your email talks about a specific vacation rental special, when your buyer clicks through to the website they will expect to know more. Whether that is in the form of rental properties, information about the specifics of the vacation special, or how they can receive the discount in the near future, you will need to make sure they know what to do. Focus on driving traffic and let your website do it’s thing.

Create a message. One thing we suggest with our email marketing is to drive a specific message. Instead of focusing on several different topics in one email, focus on one and really drive the message home. This makes sure that your audience knows what you are trying to promote and will allow you to understand what offers your target audience wants and does not want.

Make it a visual experience. Many emails can be bulky with random images and a lot of text. Though you should follow the 80/20 rule with text to images, make your email a visual experience. Take some time to put your best foot forward with your imagery and select things that really capture what you are promoting. One thing to remember is if your email has too many images, it is likely to be marked as spam. You can also add another layer of spice with colors and fonts. This can be slightly tricky when you are designing for 28 different email clients i.e. outlook, gmail, yahoo, iPhones, etc… so if you get stumped, we are always here to answer your questions.

Testing and measurement. When you are done and have everything just the way you want it, don’t forget to test your email before sending. This will tell you if it is going to look right when the recipient receives it through their email client. And if by some chance it doesn’t look right, a view in browser link isn’t a bad thing to have at the top. Also, don’t forget to measure your campaigns. It is all for nothing if you aren’t measuring how your email campaigns are performing.

You can use http://www.litmus.com to test your email campaigns.

All in all, there are many things that go into creating and executing a successful email. These five points, although valuable, are just skimming the surface when it comes to everything you have to do. So if you want to add or improve your email marketing but some of this just seems a little too overwhelming, reach out to us and we would be more than happy to answer questions and start you off on the path to success with your direct email marketing.

Palmetto Vacation Rentals Launches A Newly Redesigned Site

The owners from Palmetto Vacation Rentals recently decided to upgrade their site. Len felt that the site was too busy and distracting for guests. Now it has streamlined specials, easier navigation putting the most important information into the hands of guests. Easier maintenance and administration reduces the amount of time spent supporting the site so the team can focus on helping guests to ‘Find The Best Myrtle Beach Vacation Rentals’

We did a major re haul on their property detail pages as well. As you can see below potential customers have lots of choices.

The top features an option to compare the favorite properties the user may want to compare, and recently viewed properties just in case!

Palmetto Vacation Rentals

They can share this property via social media channels to show anyone the property. If the customer is not quite ready to book and wants to know more information, the option to do so is right there on the page! There is even an option the print the page, and it will come out in a printer friendly format

Implementing these items into a new site, not only makes the site more user friendly, but also drives up the overall conversions.  Take a look at the new Palmetto Vacations site and see what your site might need to be adding to help your guests overall experience.

 

 

 

The Cart Abandonment Mystery: Solved for Vacation Rentals

We can all agree that one of the most frustrating things to see is when a consumer is one step from buying and then for some reason, they don’t. A good majority of the business model in the vacation rental industry is based around e-commerce so having the proper tools for that space is essential in closing the deal and generating revenue. And no matter who you are, we all have issues with cart abandonment.

Cart abandonment in vacation rental marketing terms is when a user gets to a check-out page and then leaves for various reasons.  (There really are not “carts” for the rental industry.)

On average cart abandonment is responsible for over 82% of lost sales every year, that’s a huge number! However, ICND clients have been able to turn that negative statistic into revenue due to some of the tools they have access too. Some clients are recapturing 20% of the abandoned traffic which results to an average of $50,000 per month recaptured that otherwise would be lost; that adds up to $600,000 per year in generated revenue from a simple process.

Automated Emails Bring Potential Guests Back

The magic is in the tools we use and it starts with our booking engine. Our booking engine sends out a “reminder” email, much like Amazon, if the user didn’t complete their purchase.   There could be many reason’s someone abandon’s their booking.  Maybe they want to compare pricing, maybe they get distracted.  Who knows.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: The consumer reaches the “Booking” page and starts entering information.
Step 2: For some reason, they don’t book but the information is recorded and stored in your database.
Step 3: After a certain amount of time, if they don’t convert, the system automatically sends a follow-up email to remind them to come back and book.

But what’s awesome is we offer a back-end dashboard that tracks ALL of these emails:

  • When they abandoned their checkout
  • When the reminder email was sent
  • When it was opened
  • Whether they returned and booked or not
  • Oh, of course, their name and email address
All emails and stats for the cart abandonment are recorded in your back end.

Let’s Make It Easy for the Guests

We all know a user will visit your website multiple times before booking.  That’s just how it is.  So what if we made it easier on them to return and BOOK?  That’s why ICND was proactive to introduce this concept to the VRM industry and the results have been exceptional.

If a potential guest abandons their checkout, we ALSO have a nifty little gadget that shows them the unit they abandoned once they RETURN to the site.

Rentals Cart Abandonment
When a user returns to your site and didn’t book, they get this, sending them down the sales funnel faster.

Seamless Integrations

Our Lead Tracker tool organizes and categorizes leads so they are easy to segment and market too. It will also capture as much information as it can such as name, phone number, and property ID.

This is a simple process to grow revenue and improve your brand’s image by staying in front of your audience. If you’re curious about implementing this strategy into your overall marketing toolkit, give us a call and we’ll show you how you can start growing your revenue and creating more satisfied customers.  Don’t forget to check out our award winning website designs for vacation rental companies as well!

Get Less Abandoned Bookings

4 Quick Wins for Getting More Direct Bookings

By Vanessa Humes

As vacation rental marketers, we work so hard to get visitors to the website and into the booking funnel. We watch them spend minutes on the site (using technology like HotJar) finding the perfect rental and even get to the booking page. But then it happens. The mouse stops moving. The session ends. WHAT?! If this is what you have been experiencing, here’s a few easy things to do, and some more complicated that will help you drive conversions and more direct vacation rental bookings.

1) Add Urgency Features to your booking pages. We first saw these on hotel sites in 2015 like Hotels.com and thought, “Hey, what a great idea. Let’s try that on our vacation rental booking engine”. Since then, it’s become almost a staple. Urgency helps communicate to the visitor that there other people searching on the site, this property has been viewed, or that your dates are popular and you should hurry up and book.
2) Make the booking experience super quick and easy – even on mobile.
By “super quick and easy” we mean less clicks and easier forms. No more than a couple steps. Find your rental, here’s a page to book. Sometimes other booking engines break up the check out into steps, but we don’t. One page, easy to navigate forms, and boom – you’re booked.

3) Give them a deal. Are you hiding your specials? Why? Specials drive conversions, especially when you make them easy to book online. Simple promo codes at check-out are convenient ways to allow for discounts. Or you can add a modal pop-up to collect email addresses and give a specific amount off, like $25. Implementing this is sure to drive conversions and add email addresses to customers who are ready to book direct with you!

4) Send them an abandonment email. If Amazon does it, you should probably do it too and here’s the results to prove it. When a guest gets to the check-out page and abandons the form, we like to send them an email a few hours later. Sometimes people don’t want to do it on their phone, or just want to triple check with their traveling party. So make it convenient and send them an email directly back to book their stay. We also have a pretty cool trigger on the bottom of the site to get them back to where they left off with booking.

Don’t make them think!

So there you have it. ICND is the leader in bringing these great ideas to the VRM industry first. These strategies are proven to help drive direct bookings on your website. You worked so hard to get them there, you might as well put as much effort into having the features to help get them to book with you. For more ways to drive bookings, check out our websites in live action in our portfolio or contact us today.

How to take advantage of Google Search Trends

Google trends is one of the best and most versatile tools available for any marketer out there. There are literally billions upon billions of searches performed in Google every single day. So why not gather that information and use it at your will? You can use Google trends to discover basic data about your brand, your market share, your competition and seasonal trends.

“Google Trends gives you a glimpse into the topics the world is searching for.” The trends begin in the year 2004 and go forward. These trends can be sorted by types of searches (web, image, news, products, or YouTube), geographical areas, time span, and categories, and the tool allows you to compare up to five search terms at a time.

There is a variety of ways you can use Google trends to gather the data you want the most.

When performing a search on Google Trends, you have the option to set four variables or parameters. (default shown in bold)

  • Web Search – Image search – News Search – Product Search – YouTube Search
  • Worldwide – Option to choose a specific Country
  • 2004-Present – Past 7 Days – 30 Days – 90 Days – 12 Months- Choose a Year
  • All Categories – Arts & Entertainment – Autos & Vehicles – Beauty & fitness – Books & literature – Business & industrial – Computers & electronics – Finance – Food & drink – Games

 

For an example take a look at these screenshot. You can see the search term “Charleston vacation rentals” and see the interest over a period of time for that specific search term.

 

This example shows  you the interest over time of the keywords, Outer Banks and OBX. As you can see year over year, there has been less searches performed for Outer Banks. However, you can see people are starting to use the term OBX instead of the full name.

 

 

Understand your competitors

They say, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. The best way to beat your competitors is to understand them. You can learn a lot from your competitors graphs. If they are doing well, you can research the “peaks” and see how it was created. If they are doing poorly, you can research on what to avoid and understand how to adapt your marketing strategy.

Monitor Your Brand

If you are not monitoring your brand, you should be! When you monitor your brand, you should be looking out for active ways that you can improve your market share and positively increase your brand presence. Google trends can provide you with a detailed report on how you are faring. Just enter your company’s name and it will show you the information of “interest over time” via a graph and data on how searchable your brand on a per year scale.

Seasonal Trends

If you need to write content for your blog, or for your website, understanding seasonality is a critical factor. There is no point in publishing content that your audience may not likely to engage with. Google trends can help you find the most relevant topics for the time of year, you need. This will drive your content creation and give you ideas on what your audience is attracted to.

Building your brand online can be a daunting but rewarding task. Explore the benefits of Google trends and see how it can get you ahead of your competition. If you do not want to be bothered with all this research and data, let InterCoastal Net Designs do the work for you. We have a full vacation rental marketing and SEO team at your disposal.

Give us a call today at 866.249.6095!

Top 5 Rental Website Conversion Tactics to Boost your Bookings

Do you find your website generating a large volume of traffic but not yielding enough conversions? This is one of the many challenges many vacation rental managers face when it comes to their digital marketing success. Identifying the potential causes of failing to convert those lookers into bookers is the first step into solving this very common problem.

Can you answer these questions that as a marketer or manager should be able to answer?

Think about your online conversion rate.  If you get 1,000 visitors to your website a day, but only convert 2% that’s 20 reservations.  But what if you could increase that percentage to 10%?  That’s 80 more reservations a day you are making online.  This is why website conversion optimization is so important.  We want you to increase your traffic, but we want you to also focus on converting a higher percentage of that traffic.  That’s where the real money is.

It’s important that you have a team that knows what they are doing: where to put things, how to word things, what color to make calls to action.  What makes a person go or stop, and how to funnel traffic throughout your website.  That’s what we specialize in Conversion Focused websites.

 

The Top Conversion Tactics

Conversion Tactic #1: Make it Mobile!

It’s really important visitors can navigate your site from any mobile or desktop device.  Most people are shopping on mobile devices and make their purchases on a desktop.  This is the same with travel purchases. But mobile conversions are on the rise, so you need to be thinking about your mobile architecture and usability for mobile navigation.Incorporate marketing – people open their email, see start shopping

For 30% mobile 80% bookings come from desktop.Mobile traffic is up 200% in the past few years.

 

Conversion Tactic #2: Up Your Elements

So let’s talk about some of those elements that help funnel your traffic.  One of the most important things it to make sure your quick search is above the fold.  Use cool verbiage in your calls to action, like “Begin Your Adventure” rather than just “Start  your Search”.  Use brighter colors to call their focus for book now.

It’s online marketing’s job to get traffic to your site, but it’s usability and functionality that uses some psychology to make them book.  This is a screen shot of our booking engine.

The visitor has landed on the website and began to search.  They could be shopping around for price and availability.  We’ve incorporated urgency into our booking engine.  We show that search has only produced X amount of properties, or 82% of our inventory matching your search results is booked, reserve now, or showing that 22 people have viewed this property in the last 3 hours.  These elements show the visitor, they need to take action before their selection is gone.

Conversion Tactic #3: Make It Easy!

In order to find a property, you’ve got to have the tools to help them.  Having a refine search with popular features is necessary for your visitors to drill down and find the perfect property.  If you’re a hotel, this maybe different for you, you only have a couple room types, but making it easy for them to find those room types, pricing, and ability to book them.

Then you want to make sure you are tracking our searches.  What are your most popular arrival dates?  What is the average length of stay people are searching for?  Do you have a lot of people looking for something that is pet friendly, but only a handful of pet friendly properties.  This could open up opportunities for you to expand your inventory.  Let’s say you get a lot of people searching for 3 BR oceanfront at the <xxx> Resort, but you only have 1.  This could be an opportunity to market to owners there telling them you have the demand, but you need more supply.  Having tangible results from actual searches performed on your website could be a powerful tool to potential owners – especially with the analytics to back it up.

Conversion Tactic #4: Focus on the Booking Page

Take a look at your conversion rates from your check out pages.  This is probably one of the most important pages.  You work so hard to get a visitor there.  Obsess over this rate.  We pay so much attention to the pretty pictures and design, and you may think this is just a standard form.  It’s not.  We’ve learned from improving our clients check out pages and also from looking at what the big dogs do –

  • strip out your navigation,
  • make the form easy to fill out and fit on one page,
  • and easy to fill out on a mobile device
  • have your totals adjust as they add on or opt-out of things like travel insurance
  • make sure they know it’s secure, and make sure it’s simple.

Conversion Tactic #5: Watch the Users and Adapt

Navis is going to tell you a lot about what happens to a lead after they’ve made contact with you or booked, but if they didn’t get there –say they landed on your website and bounced or exited before booking or making contact, you have to take a look at your funnels in Google Analytics.  This is going to be going in and looking at your pages, page views, and conversions from those pages.

Say they land on your specials page, but don’t know how to execute the special.  Well it can result in an exit rather than a booking.  If you see high bounce or exit rates on your pages at any point in your funnel, you are going to want to drill down and figure out why.  You can install more tracking through Crazy Egg heat mapping or watch video clips of visitors looking at your site and what they are doing.  This going to tell if your visitors are getting lost, if they are backing out at the check out pages, or trying things that will help with conversions.  Maybe it’s a call to action, maybe your promo code field is not visible, you have to dig in and see what visitors are doing to help make changes to your funnel.

Final Converting Thoughts

“Beautiful websites don’t generate leads”. There are a ton of fantastic web designers out there that can create a great and beautiful website, but they may not be centered around conversions. We like to call those websites “All flash and no cash”. When you go with ICND,  you are choosing a company that has researched and implemented the elements that will help you increase you conversion rates.

VRM Intel Live 2016!

Stay in the loop.

If you’re like ICND, you hate missing out on industry news.

Your company realizes that vacation rental marketing strategies change drastically from year-to-year (heck – sometimes even month-to-month!). That’s why you need to join us in Wilmington, NC on October 26th for the 2016 VRM Intel Live! Conference.

You’ll get the chance to see some of the top names in our industry give never-before-seen presentations you simply can’t afford to miss!

Just to name a few:

– 2017 Marketing Plans with Amy Hinote

– Cutting Costs and Increasing Profitability with Ben Edwards

– Listing Site Optimization and Independence with Amber Mayer

Click here to get the full schedule for VRM Intel Live! 2016.

Don’t let the competition pass you by.

In an industry that changes as rapidly as Vacation Rental Marketing, events like VRM Intel are of utmost importance. But it’s not simply the fact that you’ll learn new strategies at the conference that makes it so important.

The thing is, everyone who attends will learn these new tactics.

That means that if your company has decided not to attend VRM Intel Live! this year, they are essentially handing over the reigns to all their competitors – who will surely be there.

Join ICND in making sure the foothold you’ve worked so hard to achieve isn’t lost completely due to a single poor decision.

Get your name out there.

But VRM Intel Live! isn’t all about the competition.

You know as well as ICND that getting your well-earned good reputation out into the industry while building new business relationships can be equally important. This conference is the perfect opportunity for that.

Some of the biggest names in the vacation rental marketing industry have already signed up to attend, so don’t miss your chance to meet them face-to-face & in one place!

Can’t make it in October?

That’s perfectly okay! Team ICND will also be attending the VRM Intel Live! Conference in Sandestin, FL on November 30th. It features all of the same presentations and events, so we hope to see you there too!

Click here if you still need to purchase tickets for the Wilmington Conference.

Check out Team ICND at VRM Intel Live 2016!

Can’t attend the conference, but want our marketing advice anyway? No problem – reach out to us via Facebook, Twitter, or drop us a line at 866.249.6095 – we’re always here to help!

ICND scored VRM Intel’s 2016 Best New Vacation Rental Website!

The news is in! VRM Intel has selected its Best New Vacation Rental website for 2016. VRM asks the industry professionals to submit their favorite vacation rental company management website that have launched in the past 12 months to compete for the best. There were several deciding factors that went into judging the best pages. Does the site promote your brand, the destination, and the homes in a professional way? Is the website responsive with great quality photos, descriptions and amenities? Is it easy for the consumers to refine their searches to find the right set of homes, and can you sort the searches in a logical way based on prices, bedrooms, and occupancy? How do you rank in google, and how easy it is for guests to sign up for your deals, promotions, or newsletters? In addition, will the website load fast on a computer, tablet and cell phone. InterCoastal Net Designs came in 1st with www.topsail-realty.com and 5th with www.oregonbeachvacations.com.

Ranked #1- Topsail-Realty.com

Topsail-Realty.com met quite a few of those deciding factors and more. As soon as you land on the page you see a high quality montage of the Topsail area in the header video and featured properties on the homepage

intercoastalnetdesigns

Additionally, it features quick call outs to popular search pages.

 InterCoastal Net Designs

Interactive display for homeowner acquisition that leads to a professionally done property management page!

intercoastalnetdesignsdisplay

Topsail Realty also features a quick search that lets the consumers select quick options like, high internet, dog friendly, and smart homes. The refined search allows for visitors to drill down their search results by area, location, amenities, beds, baths, and price range and also sort by number of beds, occupancy, or alphabetical order. In addition, search results allow property manager to pin properties to the top that need more attention.It contains urgency features which shows the number of people interested (viewed) the property

intercoastalnetdesignsurgency

 

The calendar doesn’t allow you to check dates to arrive that would be outside booking parameters (must call to book partial stays).  This results in less error and confusion for the customer.

Property detail pages were decorated with a split cost calculator, social media shares, request more info forms, reviews Q&A, calendar block out dates,  and a break down of pricing – combines total, but ability to see details of charges.

The booking page is optimized with the ability to add on add-ons at the checkout.

intercoastalnetdesignsaddon

 

Ranked #5- OregonBeachVacations.com

Oregon Beach Vacations came in at 5th place. The header is decorated with a beautiful enticing picture of the local area. We made it easy to help the consumers refine their search to find the right set of homes with the property detail page. It includes the sticky availability search & custom calendar to select availability

 

oregonbeachpropertydetail

In addition, the search results were refined to include urgency features, to let the consumers know how popular the property is, and the percentage of properties already booked. We also made it easy for the consumers to see the ratings of their destinations and the overall reviews of the company

oregonbeachproperties

Vacation rental agencies choose us, because we create websites that both impress and boost your presence with the industry, all while working within various budgets. We will take care of all the details—customer service is what we do best—so you can focus on your organization—what you do best. We design your website to be responsive and mobile. We have a team that keeps up with the latest industry news, so you don’t have to!

InterCoastal Net Designs set the design standard for vacation realty websites. Our commitment to excellence in design and usability, keeps us at the top of our industry and a step ahead of our competitors. Don’t hesitate to contact us to learn about building a custom website for your company.

 

 

VRMA 2016 National Conference

No one likes to miss out.

In the world of Vacation Rental Marketing however, you simply can’t afford it. Our industry changes greatly from year to year (even month to month) and your company’s response to these changes can truly make or break your site.

But imagine if you knew everything you could possibly need to know about the state of VR Marketing in 2016.

Well, that’s exactly what you’ll learn when you join Team ICND at VRMA National 2016! We’re giving 3 presentations at the conference, all packed with information and strategies you can’t pass up.

2017 Marketing Game Plan

With the seemingly endless supply of marketing advice you can find these days, which sources can you really trust? To put it simply – not many of them.

That’s why you need to hear from ICND – a company in your specific industry that knows exactly what you’re going through.

We’ve been very successful using the strategies Brandon Sauls (President), Vanessa Humes (Director of Sales), and Paul Hanak (Director of Marketing) are going to teach you in the 2017 Marketing Game Plan presentation – and we want the same for you, so don’t skip this one!

Big Dog Conversion Tactics

Many companies get lost in the weeds because they’re not willing to think big. They believe all they need to do to get by is to figure out what the competition is doing and then to do that slightly better.

Here’s the thing – they’re right.

But do you want to just “get by”, or do you want to play the game like a Big Dog and rake in those Big Dog conversions? If you answered the latter then you absolutely have to come hear Brandon and Vanessa’s Big Dog Conversion Tactics presentation.

Leverage Social Like a Pro

Did you know that when the first trains were invented, people were terrified to ride them because they genuinely thought the human body would melt at speeds faster than 30 miles per hour? Because of this, the first companies to start utilizing the train for business ruled the game for decades.

This story seems pretty silly to us nowadays, but it’s a perfect example of how a simple lack of knowledge about a new technology can lead to your competitors passing you by.

We’ve had a ton of success using Social Media for our clients, and we’ve learned a lot along the way. That’s why our lead Saleswoman April Burns is giving her Leverage Social Media Like a Pro presentation, and you can’t miss it!

Check out Team ICND at VRMA National 2016!

Can’t attend the conference, but want our marketing advice anyway? No problem – reach out to us via Facebook, Twitter, or drop us a line at 866.249.6095 – we’re always here to help!

Click here to get the full schedule for VRMA National.

We are headed to the Streamline Summit!

 

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We are excited to say that some of the ICND crew will be headed to the Streamline Summit starting September 28th – 30th. Like always we will be discussing trending topics in the website development and digital marketing world. We will also be highlighting some of our business automation tools that help streamline process and improve profitability.

 

Overall, we are so excited to give back to the industry and to help others achieve their business goals. We will see you at the Summit!