Despite the title of this post, we are not suggesting managers constantly stay in contact with their guests - that would be annoying. Rather, we’d like to feature a useful email product that is available called “Constant Contact” (www.constantcontact.com).

A key component of vacation rental marketing is developing long term relationships will repeat customers. Families often travel to the same location each year, which calls for managers to stay top of mind as the calendar turns.

Managers have an assortment of techniques to keep guest records, but executing an efficient outreach campaign can prove challenging. This is where Constant Contact (CC) emerges as a useful tool. CC offers an easy to use email campaign tool. For as little as $15/month CC allows you to save your guest emails and send out well formatted, professionally composed emails during key promotional times. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive and it’s effective.

For example:
Acme Rentals has two key seasons - the summer and winter. Acme knows its guests tend to book three months in advance.

• Acme sets up two customer lists in CC. One is labeled “Summer Guests” and the other is labeled “Winter Guests”
• In May, Acme sends out a promotional email to its Summer Guests thanking them for their business and reminding them to reserve their home early before all units are booked. In the email they feature Summer events and “things-to-do” that guests may be interested in.
• Acme sets up a similar campaign in September for its Winter guests.
• Acme also sends an off season message to all guests highlighting new services (24 hour emergency number) and new homes they now offer.

Constant Contact makes this process easy and offers reporting tools to help you monitor who read your email and whether they clicked through to your site. Constant Contact is offering a 60-day free trial if you would like to give it spin.

*Note: FlipKey is a standard subscriber of Constant Contact, but has no formal business relation or affiliation.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Food for Thought, New Service Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.