The Owner Community blog over at HomeAway had a great article in their newsletter about 11 types of travelers that might rent vacation homes in the fall.

I’d argue that these tips aren’t ONLY for vacation rental managers; hotel and resort managers could hop on the bandwagon also.  Keep in mind, in many locations “Off-Season” is longer than “On-Season” in this economy; the lines between seasons are blurry.

Here are some tips for maximizing your fall, and the possibility of turning your “slower” season (between summer vacation and holiday getaways) to your busiest. The ideas here can be developed for nearly any location, although some do require Mother Nature’s help.  You can’t peep at leaves in Palm Springs!

1)  Leaf Peepers – This is big business in the Northeast, but some locations have great color but not a lot of recognition – get the word out if you’re a great destination for seeing the fall colors.

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I read a great article today over at StateOfSearch.com on optimizing images for search engine rankings.  It was put together nicely and a great resource for “how to” tips on making your images rank in Image and Universal search.

The tips aren’t all that different from what we’ve been saying for awhile now, validation is always nice, but putting all the tips together makes the underlying theme of image search apparent: ALWAYS use keywords where you can.

As with most things ranking – keywords are king – and should be chosen for images with as much thought as they are for the content on your page.  Start your image optimization with fresh keyword research.  I’d take this a step further and see if anyone is searching for your keyword AND image keywords appended together, such as {Keyword} + photo, photos, pictures, pic, pics, image, images, etc.

Once you’ve found your keywords, assign them to the images you have on your website.  You don’t want to overdo it – so maybe one or two keywords per image.  After you’ve assigned them – you can do this by listing the URLs and the photo descriptions in Excel – start optimizing the photos.

Here are the steps according to the comprehensive article cited above: (more…)

Compete released some interesting data yesterday about how consumers view traveling off-peak in light of the current economic conditions.

The data was pretty interesting; most surveyed said they were more likely to travel off-peak in 2010 vs 2009, more than 50% were looking at traveling when the deals could be had and the destinations might be less packed.

What does this mean for hotel, resort and vacation rental managers? It means your off-season might not be as quiet, and your on-season might be a bit slower because your normal visitors are waiting for that off season deal to hit their social network or email box. (more…)

For years Blizzard has been advising our clients to respond to reviews placed at websites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Yellowpages.  Until today – reviews left at Google Maps (now called Google Places) were the stepchildren that didn’t offer this feature.
Belabor the fact no more!

Announced today at the Google Lat Long blog, Google now offers verified business owners the ability to respond to reviews made directly on their Google Places page!

Responses will be featured below the review:

At Blizzard, we recommend everyone: 1) be aware of all reviews made of their business, 2) respond to reviews in a public forum where appropriate; and 3) understand that all feedback is valuable.

Google agrees with this stance and gives some helpful tips for responding to reviews:

1) Be Nice - This isn’t just a guideline – it’s a good idea.
2) Don’t Get Personal – Remember that you’re replying to feedback about an experience, not about you as a person.
3) Feedback is Helpful – Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow.

If your business listing isn’t verified, we advise you to do that as soon as possible.  If it is verified, start responding to reviews  – both negative and positive – to engage with your audience and ensure future viewers of those reviews see you care about each and every guest.

Recently the Blizzard office has partnered with Constant Contact as our Email Marketing service of choice.  They have a great platform, easy to use features, and the ability for clients, project managers and experts to collaborate on all blasts to send frequent, solid messages to subscribers.

With these great features comes a few frustrations.  We have run into a few instances of lists being a bit “dirty” and ending up with a few too many spam reports according to Constant Contact’s rules.

Constant Contact has a loose rule of around 1 per 100 email addresses in any particular send, we have seen lists closed down for less than that.  Constant Contact has pretty standard spam rules, and whether you’re working with them, MailChimp, VerticalResponse, or iContact, you’ll probably have the same issues if you’re working with an old list or one you’re not sure about the origin of.

If your list is flagged as spam, these companies require you to show proof of subscription for a percentage of the list. Every person I’ve talked to at Constant Contact has given a different percentage, so if this does happen, you’re going to hope you get someone in a good mood on the phone when you call for your list review.

We have been looking for a solution to clean up these lists BEFORE we load them into Constant Contact, and with trial and error we’ve come up with a pretty successful way to ensure our lists are clean and less likely to raise red flags with your email marketing provider.

Step 1:

• Make sure the subscriber list is as updated as it can be in the CURRENT email marketing program and also in Constant Contact.

Step 2:

• Draft a blast in the CURRENT program thanking them for participating and asking them to reconfirm their desire to receive messaging from the client.  Ask them to “Click Here to Update Subscription” or “Click Here to Unsubscribe” within that email with big easy to read buttons.  Anyone who wants to update their subscription will be taken to Constant Contact to do so, where we’ve already uploaded their information and they just need to update and/or confirm it.
• Anyone who wishes to unsubscribe will do so within the CURRENT email marketing program that doesn’t have as strict rules when it comes to spam reporting.

Step 3:

• Once we have a satisfactory open rate, the list of unsubscribers can be exported from the CURRENT email marketing program and then applied against the list in Constant Contact.  Anyone who wishes to stay will have already updated their information in Constant Contact.

I imagine we’ll get an open rate of around 20 to 30%.  That 20-30% could make or break our list when it comes to our first send with Constant Contact.  When the line between good and bad is blurry, we need all the help we can get to make sure we’re doing things to help our marketing, not hinder it.

Benefits to Having a Clean Email Marketing List

Learn More about Email Marketing!

Register for Blizzard’s Webinars designed to help you build better blasts, and send the right person the right message.

Email Marketing Basics: Designing Blasts that Convert
Tuesday, June 1st, 11 AM MDT
Learn tips and techniques to simplify your email marketing design and increase your click-throughs and conversion rates.
Sponsored by Mouse On House

Email Marketing Basics: Segmentation and Targeting Your Email Lists
Tuesday, June 8th, 11 AM MDT
Learn how to segment and target your email lists for better conversion rates.

Need help getting your email marketing program off the ground?  Blizzard has a new plan that’s designed just for you.  Call or email our team today for more information!

I wanted to share this awesome resource with our readers because it really sheds light on the analytical process we follow when determining how hard it will be to rank for a particular term.

In some cases just putting the keywords on a page and building a few links is all you need to hit the top 10.  More cases than not – the keywords that will bring the most traffic are MUCH harder to rank for – hence the concept of Keyword Difficulty.

If you’re looking for insight – check out The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Competition: Tips from 35 Experts on Analyzing Competitive Keywords.

This comprehensive article gives a snapshot of the ideas surrounding Keyword Difficulty from 35 SEM industry leaders.  There’s some great insight here to put your quest for that number one ranking into perspective.  There are so many factors to consider, beyond the metatag and the link.

Some of my favorite points are highlighted below:

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The economic news is very doom and gloom these days – but if you’re a drive-to destination – you’re in luck.  Gas is getting cheaper!

Today I paid $2.22 a gallon.  That’s pretty high still – we’re not very far from some major ski areas in the mountains of Colorado.  That being said – I’m more likely now to drive myself to a vacation than I was just six-months ago.

Marketing to these drive-to shoppers presents some unique challenges, especially for vacation rental managers.  There are some tips I can suggest to take advantage of this market – If you have any of your own to add – please feel free to list them in the comments below: (more…)