Email Marketing Foundations – Part 2

Okay, this is episode two out of the two episodes on email marketing foundations. In this episode, I'm going to be answering a couple of questions. And I am going to talk to you a little bit more about lead magnets and give you some ideas for lead magnets that you can share with your audience. Not going to go through all the introduction and the music and all of that. I'm just going to dig right in. Let's go. So in today's episode, I'm going to answer some questions and talk a little bit more about email marketing. Question number one was when is the best time to send emails? And to be honest, that depends on you and the people that you're sending your email to you. Most of the email service providers, mail champion convert kit, and all of the big ones will allow you to send it. At the time of day where they are. So if you say 9:00 AM then wherever the person who receives the email pop up at 9:00 AM. And that's a good idea. let's say, most of your audience. As busy moms. You don't want to send an email at seven 30 in the morning. That's probably the busiest time of their day when they're getting their kids up and ready for school. So you would want an email to go out a little bit later in the day but if your target audience is an older demographic, then their kids are older or they're empty nesters or whatever. Then seven 30 in the morning probably is a good time to send out an email to them. One thing I advise is just try different days and different times. The only rules on that are I wouldn't. I would not send emails on Saturday. Those are really busy days. Most people make their weekend plans for Saturday. I wouldn't send it out on Sunday if you send it out on Sunday is maybe send it out Sunday afternoon. It's three or four o'clock. I would not send emails at all on Monday, Mondays are just generally really busy day for people getting caught up with all the things they miss last week, or, starting their new work week. So I. I would say Monday and Saturdays are for sure. The two days that you don't send. And then you can play with the other days of the week, maybe one, one newsletter you want to send out on a Tuesday at 9:00 AM. And then the next newsletter you send at Wednesday at five. Now with some. Email marketing programs, you can actually split it so you can do a half and half where half of your audience gets it at 9:00 AM. And the other half gets it at 4:00 PM. Or you could set that up now? No, that's a little bit advanced. So to answer the question. When should I send an email? The answer is you need to decide that on your own. I would start with Tuesdays at nine to 10:00 AM or Tuesdays at three, between three and 5:00 PM. The next time I would send it on Wednesday at 3:00 PM or Wednesday at 6:00 PM. And then what you're going to get on, want to do is check your statistics. Behind your emails. After a couple of months of sending it at different times. I also want to mention that you should do this with your social media too. You should vary the times of days and days when you post. The second question I was asked is what should I include in a monthly newsletter? And this is a really great question because a lot of people, all they do is send their email subscribers, a link to their website, to book. Sometimes I see a little bit of a snippet of information. The first thing I do is create a email newsletter template. And that template is going to have boxes for all the different things. So every time I send out a new email newsletter, I just use the template. I put the things into their boxes. Always start your email with a message always use their first name. Hey, Amanda, it's Jody from blue skies, vacation rentals. With fall right around the corner. I wanted to share some of my, our favorite fall activities and some tips for how to enjoy the blue Ridge mountains in October. And then sign your name just a quick little, one sentence, little thing. That's building that connection. They're seeing your name, you're sending it to them first name so that you're, you're building a connection. Then you want to write a little article, a couple of little blurbs So for example, You have a target audience of adults and you want to write an article geared to adults I have a client in wine country and I wrote an article about all the Michelin chef restaurants in the area. And literally each paragraph was about four sentences long. It named the restaurant. It talked about the chef that was there and gave just a little bit of detail. And then it linked back to that business. I may, if I can find that newsletter, I will. We'll screenshot it and put it in the show notes. So you can see it. The next thing you want to do is you want to add a couple of other blurbs about upcoming events or little known places, something else. For those people who aren't necessarily interested in the Michelin restaurants. Now you don't have to do this. Your entire newsletter could be all geared to these Michelin restaurants, but I encourage you to add a little something else to that. Just a little bit more little blurbs, maybe it's about. The farmer's market, or maybe it's about I think in this newsletter, we talked about the rodeo, the upcoming rodeo. Especially if you have multiple properties with multiple guests avatars, then you want to bring in a little bit more layer. Now this, the most important thing is that you want everything to be able to tie back to your properties. In some way, and that can be in a little way. So maybe one of the Michelin restaurants is right across the street from one of your properties. In that article you might mention this restaurant is right across the street from our. Beautiful property conveniently located right across the street from this restaurant. And then you've just dropped it in there as a little hint. Oh, by the way, if you are somebody that loves Michelin restaurants and you want to vacation in our area, if you stay at this property, you can get. You can be right across the street from this Michelin restaurant. Now you also want to be sure and have a call to action. Within every newsletter to book your property, but you need to give them a reason to feel a sense of urgency or a reason to check. The calendar. So you want to say, Hey, are you excited about visiting the blue Ridge mountains this fall to see the changing leaves we, have just a few dates available, check out our calendar, you might want to focus on just one property each month. If you have a bunch of properties, maybe one or two, or the focus, and you can create that sense of urgency by saying. We only have two weekends left for ski season at this property. If you're looking for the perfect place for a group of 10 to take out on the mountains, this winter, then check out this property. So that sense of urgency is what's important. Give them a reason. Maybe you just added new decor. Maybe you just brought on a new property. If you're a property management company, you just brought on a new property and you want to give your email subscribers a chance to book before anybody else hears about it or something like that. Make it a reason why they need to book now. And of course not, everybody's going to be interested, not everybody's going to click through, but the people who are interested are going to click through the people who are looking for a fall getaway are going to click through and look at what is available. I'll also want to mention when you're doing this. You want to link to the specific page? I have a specific property. Now a lot of times when I'm speaking to clients about this, they want to say but I don't want to do that because I want them to go back to my search page. And see all my properties. But you want to feature a specific property to them. You can even say it in the email, Click through to visit our yellow rose of Texas cabin. If the, your dates aren't available, be sure and check out our, check out all of their properties or check the availability button to see what is available. So you can remind them that you have more than this one, but you want it to be instant. Here's a picture of the yellow rose cabin. that click on the page and they go to the yellow rose cabin. You don't want them to click on the button and go back to your homepage or click on the button and go to another page of your website. Then you want to share a review? I put the review, usually in the middle of the newsletter or in the bottom. After I talk about properties. But when you share a review, don't just share a review. I want you to share it, but again, put it into context of this connection. You're building with your, the people that are reading it. So you want to say, oh, We received this great review from Karen. Last week I wanted to share with you. Karen was here with her family. We love hearing from guests like Karen. And then you can either type in the review that she left or take a screenshot of the review or take a photo of the review and insert that. And that's more social proof. Then you want to end with another connection builder. You want to say. Thanks Jody, for reading this newsletter really appreciate it. Follow me on Facebook. Reply to this email. If you need any more help planning your trip to the blue Ridge mountains this year, I'd love to help you. Okay. Now, the last question that I received was all about. Lead magnet ideas. This is something that people struggle with all the time. Remember a lead magnet is the thing that you give people for free. In order for them to want to sign up, to receive your newsletters. And you have to give them something very specific. To your avatar. You might, even if you have multiple avatars, you might even different lead magnets for those avatars. Suzanne at urban shores did a great job of creating. I think she has three. Lead magnets for three different types of guests avatar. And she only has one property right now. One of hers is about planning a romantic getaway. One of them is planning a wine trip getaway, so very specific. So you want to be sure that you are specific to that avatar because those are the people you want reading your newsletters, and those are the people you want booking your property. You also want to be able, you want someone to provide something that's easy to consume. So you want something that they can look at and read through in maybe 10 minutes or a little bit less. And that it's easy for them to say, Hey, I'm going to print this or I'm going to save this. And come back to it when I need it. You also want something that's not everywhere else that they can't find anywhere else. And I know that's the hard part is coming up with something unique and different, but you can come up with some ideas. I have a blog post on my website that I'll link to in the show notes. It's all about lead magnet ideas. Instead of a guide to things to do in. The hill country you might want to put how to plan a romantic weekend in the hill country. Maybe you want to provide safety tips for hiking in Joshua tree. Or If you're in an area that has a big events venue. Maybe you want to share the upcoming music schedule that would be a great lead magnet. My husband and I go out to music all the time and I would love it if I had a newsletter that was just everything that's coming up that's easy research right there. And of course with that lead magnet though, you would have to change it out seasonally, but still it's easy research. You could put it together pretty quickly. Packing lists are also really good lead magnets. If you're in a destination where people are flying in or it's a once in a lifetime trip or they don't come off in a packing list or a how to get around guide would be great. Bucket list are always fun. But I didn't want to tell you about one of my favorite. Lead magnet ideas. If you have a drive to destination, then you can do a road trip toolbox. What that would be would include is like road trip games for kids. Music for the road, like a Spotify or Pandora playlist maybe it's rest stops. Best restaurants along the way. Those kinds of things, that would be a really fun. Lead magnet and it could be different to every location. So I do have one idea that really rocks that I want to share with you. And this is so simple and so easy, when you go to a visitor center or even some hotels still have these and they have those tourist brochures, all in, in the little slots. You can grab a few of those tourists brochures. And you can take them to somewhere office Depot or FedEx store and you can put them all together so that you've created a guide. For people, that's really just a bunch of already created ride guides. So you want to put together these guides together in a collection. And of course, when you send that. If possible, you want to create your own little PDF to go along with it and add to it that has some information about you and your properties. So that when they download all of these things together, they've got your information in there as well. So you definitely want to try to include that. If I didn't explain that. Let me know, so I can do a video about it. Anyway. So those are some of my ideas for lead magnets. So, those are just a few of my ideas for lead magnets. I hope one of those spurred you into creating something. Start with something really simple. Um, and you can add to it and add to it. Just do a three-day itinerary with, uh, some of your favorite activities, make it personal. Remember to include information about you and your properties and how they can book with you and connect with you. And then, you know, in three months time do something different. Add to it. That's what Suzanne with urban shores did. She started with one very simple guide and then was able to go back later and add to it and create another one. And then she went back to it and created. another one. Well, that's it for all of the answers to your questions and a little bit more tips on email marketing. Hope that this helped you. And let me know if you have any questions at all about email marketing. I would be glad to give you a little more help through Instagram DMS, or you can email me Facebook messenger. Wherever you are. And however you want to connect with me, let me know if I can help. You can also download my free marketing action plan. Check it out. You can go to my Jodie porn.com backslash links and. It's called the vacation rental marketing action plan. Okay. That's it for this episode, all about email marketing, the followup to my foundation's episode from earlier this week. Remember email marketing should be part of a, of your vacation rental marketing plan. But it's just part of the plan. There's a lot more to it. So I want you to stay tuned to the other episodes that I'll be doing in this foundation series to help you understand. Which marketing tactics will work best for your audience.