Dynamic Data-Driven Marketing

November 1, 2021

Successful marking requires you to get the right message to the right person at the time. Sounds simple, but as you all know, it is far from simple. The good news is every property manager has information available to them right now that can help make crucial marketing decisions. Utilizing the customer data captured every day, you can find insights on personalizing communications, improving customer satisfaction, and increasing ROI.

Data-driven marketing is the strategy of analyzing information a business collects on its customers (first-party data) to develop a strategy to optimize marketing plans. (Using third-party information is possible, but changes in the industry make that a topic for another blog.) The information collected from a property’s bookings, websites, social media, and customer surveys provide valuable insights into your target audience, their preferences, motivations, future behaviors, and the entire guest journey.

How to Implement a Data-Driven Marketing Strategy

You have a world of data at your fingertips, but where should you start to access, analyze, and apply the data? Like anything, start with a plan and take it a step at a time; it’s a manageable project. A lack of understanding, technology, or resources can hinder your efforts, but progress will prevail with industry experience, team support, and a commitment to your plan. Two-thirds of leading marketers say that the smartest and more impactful decisions made with data analytics are superior to those based on gut instinct

Identify your Goals: Each vacation destination and property management business is unique. Identify your goals, perfect guest, profitable homeowner, and target market. Your next step is to decide what type of data will help you drive decisions. Data will answer questions like where your brand has excelled, where improvement is required, where you need to focus your marketing efforts, and how you can enhance the guest experience.

Utilize the Data: Organize and evaluate the data you have within your property management system for a complete customer analysis. Analyze data across all platforms, channels, and devices (social media, mobile apps, website, call tracking, transactional data/sales history) and create a strategic, data-driven marketing campaign to take action and deliver appropriate content at the perfect time. Depending on the insights you want to discover, you may need to hire an outside resource to help you with the data analysis.

Apply your Insight: Use your new insights to uncover the best channels for marketing, segment your audience, create personalized campaigns and enrich your brand communications to deliver a better guest and homeowner experience. As an example, segment your guests according to their interests and feeder market to personalize an email campaign.

Track your Campaigns: Monitor your progress to see which campaigns yield positive results. Use the new information to optimize your data-driven marketing strategy and improve the performance of future campaigns.

The Benefits of Data-Driven Marketing

Data-driven marketing gives invaluable insights into your target market (guests and homeowners), allowing you to identify their preferences and build customer satisfaction rates and higher ROI. The data speaks for itself; businesses that use data-driven personalized strategies deliver five to eight timesĀ the ROI on marketing spend.

“Marketing without data is like boating without a motor.”

Scott Hahnert, Senior Data Analyst at Vintory