Your 3 Minute Guide to Homeowner Drip Campaigns
Quick tip: Authenticity and engagement are the secrets to getting the most out of your drips.
What is a Drip Campaign?
Put simply, drip campaigns are automated sets of emails that are sent according to a specific timeline or triggered by a user’s actions. Drip campaigns provide answers and information that your audience is looking for. Typically drip campaigns are designed to nurture your relationships to build the know, like and trust factor of online marketing.
Right, so when do I use one?
Drip is an umbrella term that covers countless uses but for your purposes: automated emails keep homeowners engaged with your brand. Below are examples of different types of drip campaigns.
Knowing, Liking and Trusting You
Vacation rental home-owners respect the convenience and security of rental property management but remain tentative. After all, this vacation home is the escape they worked hard for. Leads might lurk on your page non-committal and in need of reassurance.
Bridging the gap between knowing of you and trusting you is simplified when you offer expertise and address concerns.
A Warm Welcome
Property owners do their fair share of window shopping. While you might have done a wonderful job of being visible, they might not be ready to commit. Many actually sign up for a newsletter looking for more reasons to trust you.
A welcome campaign starts your relationship off on the right foot. It’s a personal welcome which has become a customer expectation. In fact, open rates for instantaneous welcome letters typically reach up to 88%.
Offering Social Proof
Recommendation emails are sent to potential homeowners who have been through a previous drip campaign but you haven’t quite secured their trust.
Your aim is to put minds at ease by offering endorsements such as testimonials, videos, helpful statistics and examples of your wins. You may not know the exact barrier but providing anything that inspires confidence helps.
More Strategies:
Other ways to leverage drip campaigns include:
- Onboarding – Welcome new homeowners into your partnership assuring mutual, long term success.
- Ongoing Engagement – Check-in to see how your homeowners are doing and offer any up-sells or new opportunities that are emerging.
- Renewals – Reminding homeowners to re-subscribe to services for another year.
- Unsubscribers – One final email to try and re-engage the potential lead. Why are they leaving? How do you improve? Could you tempt them back with a final pitch?
How to build a drip campaign that brings in results
1) Lay out your campaign goals
Without having a clear intention, you can actually push homeowners away if you seem out of touch. Whether you want to improve brand awareness, increase engagement or even showcase a virtual event, deciding your aim ahead of time is vital.
2) Know your target audience
Your leads should only be getting messages related to their needs. Improvements in web analytics allow you to understand where a particular lead came from. What specifically did they click on to reach this point? Perhaps they signed up to receive more information about your services? Knowing where they came from informs and empowers your message.
3) Decide how many touch points you’ll have
Roughly 7 touch points are required for a client to know, like and trust you meaning on average clients need 7 different exposures to your brand before buying. Most drip campaigns use between 4 and 11 emails spaced out over a number of weeks with recipients expecting 1-3 per week. Design a campaign offering new, informative advice in readable chunks.
4) Craft your message
A drip campaign is intended to be as close to individualized as possible i.e. not spam. Knowing your audience is a critical feature in crafting a campaign. Will attaching a case study, process handbook, videos of happy homeowners or just a ‘to the point’ email be most effective? Understand why they are in your funnel and answer their questions before presenting features.
5) Evaluate and adjust
Today, AI and analytics customize client experiences beyond belief. You can now learn how far through your email a client got before they got bored and left. What did they click on? What resonated and what missed the mark? Believe it or not, Sesame Street studied what dialogue and characters held children’s attention longest and created their shows around analytics. The most successful companies in the world power their strategy with data.
Still not sure where to start or haven’t had success so far?
A streamlined, well thought out drip campaign is a vital tool for increasing your leads and your inventory. If you don’t currently have one or have one that isn’t working, our team at Vintory is on hand to create a captivating campaign for your audience. We provide the marketing rocket fuel for vacation rental property managers across the country to achieve impactful results.
Question:
What digital marketing tool do you think attracts the most leads? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Author: Brooke Pfautz
Brooke is the CEO and Founder of Vintory and is well known in the Vacation Rental industry as the authority when it comes to growing Vacation Rental inventory. You'll find Brooke at his home office, on the latest Vacation Rental webinar or podcast, or at industry events across the States.
