Getting traffic to your website is essential if you want to get your holiday rental in front of a wider audience. However, traffic is only part of the equation. You also need to encourage those website visitors to make a booking. Having them show interest in your holiday let is a great start, but you also need to try and convert more of them into customers.
Start an email marketing campaign
Email marketing is a very powerful way to connect with your target market. Plenty of people will visit your website and show an interest in your holiday let, but they might not be looking to book a holiday at that time. If they leave and never come back you have no way of contacting them again. This is why it makes sense to encourage them to sign up to a mailing list so you can stay in touch with them. Sending them an email when you have something useful to share about your holiday rental will keep your property in the forefront of their minds, so that they will be more likely to come back to your website when they are ready to book.
To make this work, you must be able to tempt them to sign up with a sweetener of some kind. Special offers are a great idea. A good example would be to invite them to sign up to receive a 10% discount off their next booking with you. Make it clear they will receive regular special offers and news about your holiday let if they sign up for your email list. Everyone likes a good deal, and anyone who is considering booking a stay in your holiday rental will certainly want to sign up to find out more.
The best way to do this is to use third party mailing software such as Mailchimp.com which is easy enough to sign up to and use and is free below a certain number of subscribers. Once you have created your mailing list they will provide you with a sign up form that you can embed on your website to capture email addresses.
Create two lists – one for prospects and one for guests
Previous guests are going to need a different marketing message to prospects that have visited your website, but haven’t made a booking yet. Previous guests already know what it’s like to stay at your holiday property, so here you will be focusing on encouraging them to return.
In contrast, prospects will only know what they have read on your website. They won’t have stayed in your property yet, so it’s your job to encourage them to do just that. This is why it works well to have two email lists so you can send targeted information to each. Assuming the content of the email is useful to them, this should result in a more engaged mailing list and therefore more bookings. Each group will be more likely to read their emails if they are firmly targeted towards them.
I’m sure you can see how important it is to connect with your website visitors. Letting them explore and then leave is a wasted opportunity. Finding traffic is often the hardest part – wouldn’t it be a shame to let it go to waste?
If you focus on building email lists to connect with previous guests and prospects and sending useful targeted information to them you should notice a steady increase in the numbers of bookings you receive over time.
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