DataStrategy Archives - Flip.to Blog

Marketing reimagined—how Intracoastal Vacation Rentals is growing a right-fit audience and driving direct revenue

For any travel brand, finding a right-fit audience to inspire with the right message at the right time can be costly. That’s because dominant players often consume the travel industry’s profits, and many accommodation providers have the odds stacked against them.

That’s why reaching and inspiring travelers in the dreaming phase is a critical marketing goal—where you can tap a right-fit audience before their competitors even have a chance.

In North Carolina, Intracoastal Vacation Rentals‘ Business Development Director, Trisha Howarth, speaks to the hurdles—

“The biggest challenge of professional rental agencies is growing brand awareness and retention of the renter. We want to keep renters booking directly with the agency versus other online platforms.”

IVR has 180 rentals spread along the beach islands between Bald Head Island and Wrightsville Beach. Last year, Trisha’s vacation rental group joined NorthCarolinaBound—a collaborative of accommodation providers across the state aimed at driving direct revenue for the travel industry—to reach more travelers at the lowest cost possible.

Advocacy in the dreaming phase

“Building a clientele that continues to come back and rent through the agency year after year is really important. We’ve found a good way to do that is to grow our audience through Flip.to’s Advocacy platform.”

Through Advocacy, past guests introduce vacation rental groups to friends and family—a like-minded audience of similar demographics. With each passing guest, their properties are continually introduced to more travelers, swelling their audiences.

From there, the platform reaches the traveler at their point of inspiration in a one-to-one conversation that’s nurtured to fill the marketing funnel and help warm leads convert.

Discovery in the planning phase

The second part of the platform reaches travelers in a completely different traveler phase. Discovery sparks conversations with planners who land on IVR’s site, ready to book a trip.

The platform unveils these planners, learns about their intent and shopping window, and re-engages the planner along the decision-making journey to win them over.

“Discovery is helpful because it shows what resonates with our audience—what they’re searching for and how to engage them with the right message. It’s really going to help us with conversion.”

Visit North Carolina’s contribution

For a boutique agency like IVR, NorthCarolinaBound—sponsored by Visit North Carolina—is making a difference.

“VisitNC and the NorthCarolinaBound partnership is building an audience for the state of North Carolina, and helping smaller agencies engage in a platform that may otherwise be unaffordable for them. It’s really a win-win—helping everyone level up.”

Maximizing VR potential

Flip.to builds product with vacation rentals in mind. From learning a traveler’s individual interests, to taking into account booking policies that guide planners on when to stay, the platform is designed to eliminate friction for a smooth and intuitive user experience.

“Flip.to is constantly working to take care of exceptions, so I find they’re really attuned to working with the vacation rental market. They’re certainly on the right track, and will continue to improve the product.”

Better marketing, bigger results

For marketers, time matters. That’s why Advocacy keeps inspiring dreamers with only minutes of time per week, while Discovery continually wins over planners with almost no input needed.
As part of NorthCarolinaBound, Trisha is filling her marketing funnel with a high-quality audience through better conversations with travelers. This more authentic approach to marketing leads to a lower cost of acquisition for her audience, and with direct bookings, to higher revenue.

If you’re ready to reach, inspire and win over travelers with an approach centered on authenticity and trust, give us a shout—we’re excited to kick off.

Authentic conversations with travelers help Kingsmill Resort drive conversion and deliver higher revenue

Authentic conversations with a right-fit audience of potential travelers are central to the marketing strategy at Kingsmill Resort, led by Julie O’Neil, Director of Marketing and Public Relations.

“In addition to growing our Membership program, a good portion of my job is to fill the resort’s marketing funnel with new and repeat guests, and build brand awareness for the property,” says Julie, whose sales and marketing career has taken her from theme park to DMO, and now to the property side. Kingsmill caters to a diverse audience, as Julie shares,

“We get a nice mix of families, couples and groups throughout the year. When attractions like Busch Gardens and Water Country USA are open for the season, we obviously see more families. Groups often immerse themselves in our on-property amenities, like our Plantation and River golf courses.

What’s best about Kingsmill is the wide open green space. We don’t have a towering main building; just low density condominiums thoughtfully dispersed throughout the community.”

Landscape orientation photo of Kingsmill Resort grounds and building in summer. The resort sits in the background with a pond and lush green grass in the foreground. — Originally developed by ubiquitous brewing company, Anheuser-Busch, the resort sits atop 2,900 sprawling acres along the placid James River in Williamsburg, Virginia. Championship golf courses, a luxurious spa, in situ restaurants, and seasonal watersports make it a destination unto itself. Though the property is also at the doorstep of Busch Gardens and Colonial Williamsburg.

The resort thrives mostly on a drive market, the radius of which has expanded since the pandemic. Regardless of the demographic she would like to reach, Flip.to helps to grow a right-fit audience for Julie daily, and sparks the right kind of conversations Kingsmill needs to help win-over travelers.

As a direct result of better conversations, the platform has generated a whopping 360x return on investment in just one year:

Advocacy in the dreaming phase

Kingsmill’s owned audience has grown as their reach continues to swell through Advocacy’s storytellers. It’s a sign that authentic marketing resonates.

“Word of mouth marketing, and stories from guests are extremely important. The Flip.to platform really helps build awareness in an authentic way,” says Julie. “The guest stories we get help connect future travelers to a moment—celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, girls’/guys’ weekends—whatever may be important to them.”

Reaching travelers at the point of inspiration is crucial to filling Julie’s funnel. Plus, Kingsmill Resort’s growing audience has been introduced by friends and family of current and past guests, making them an ideal look-alike demographic.

From there, the platform nurtures Kingsmill’s audience until they convert, contributing to direct revenue.

Discovery in the planning phase

In a different segment of the journey, Discovery sparks conversations with travelers in the planning phase. The goal is to learn more about visitors who land on the resort’s site, understand their intent, and win them over.

Discovery unveils these planners, and very accurately reveals their travel window, so they’re no longer anonymous web visitors on an unknown path. The platform re-engages along the traveler’s decision-making journey—at the right time and with the right message—to help win them over for Kingsmill.

This largely works without input from Julie, increasing conversion at the bottom of the funnel and contributing to direct revenue—all while freeing her time for more laborious tasks.

Better marketing nets bigger results

The combination of Advocacy and Discovery for Kingsmill Resort led to an incredible $2.3 million in direct revenue in 2022, which proves that a funnel filled with a qualified audience, and authentic conversations around travelers’ wants, ultimately leads to bigger revenue.

That kind of victory is worthy of an ice-cold beer.

If you’d like Flip.to to spark better conversations with your travelers, and increase your conversion at the same time, we’d love to hear from you.

Ignite your marketing: How The Osthoff harnessed conversations with a warm audience to spark huge return

Previously, Adam Hartenberger of The Osthoff Resort shared how Flip.to turned him from skeptic to success story. Next, we’re looking at how Adam and team paired up with partner Revinate to put insight from the platform to work for another level up.

First, let’s recap how we got here.

Discovery for The Osthoff

The Flip.to platform strikes up conversations to win over planners and ultimately increase revenue. To recap, in just ninety days, here’s what The Osthoff tallied. 📈

The Osthoff is growing a massive, highly qualified audience. From there, The Osthoff aimed to increase the value of that audience—tapping Revinate and their Reservation Sales solution to do just that.

Pairing up with reservation sales

As the summer months approached, Adam identified a need period that he aimed to give a boost. With Discovery, he was able to identify a warm audience whose intent matched that need. From there, Adam worked with Revinate to set this audience on a longer-tail nurturing journey that ultimately delivered through to their sales call center.

The result? A home run. In fact, Adam’s campaign was so successful, The Osthoff’s call center asked him to hit pause.

“We started our nurtures in mid-July, and we had a summer campaign all built out, ready to go. We turned it on, and the reservations manager called. She said, ‘I don’t know what you guys are doing, but turn it off.’ Because all of a sudden, we’re having 1,500 conversations a week with people who are legitimately qualified, and they’re calling back!”

That’s when Adam realized he was really on to something. They dialed back their approach for that summer season, and instead, used the nurtures to feed a record fall.

“We start off with a welcome message—’Thank you for looking at us.’ We include some great imagery from the season they’re looking to stay. Then we explain why it’s good to stay at our property during that time….

I’m talking about hiking, rejuvenating in the spa, golf, etcetera.”

If you’re a planner, a message like this helps you pick up right where you left off with the Osthoff.

Sparking other creative approaches

Adam and the marketing team at the Osthoff aren’t settling there. They’re already looking ahead to continue amplifying impact—the exact kind of creativity that really moves the needle.

“As we come into a year of [Discovery], our next strategy is to remarket—because we know what your shopping window was last year. Let’s just replicate that. Let’s get two weeks ahead of that this year, and get in front of you at the proper time.”

Injecting hospitality into digital marketing

Too often, hotel marketing tends to be about the needs of the property, and not the wants and travel intent of the audience. Instead, Adam’s team is precisely on the right track, learning from the insights of their travelers to have conversations with planners about the things they were interested in.

The highly qualified audience Discovery is delivering makes those conversations especially potent, and ultimately leads to better conversion. Adam’s extraordinary results are proof positive.

If you missed the first part of The Osthoff story, read why marketing your hotel is far more than selling a room.

Discovery was built to spark better conversations with travelers. And better marketing ultimately nets better results—all the way to revenue

If you’re ready to reach, inspire and win over travelers with an approach centered on authenticity and trust, give us a shout—we’re excited to kick off.

What a shift toward first-party data means for destination marketers

As the subject of online privacy makes daily headlines in news outlets around the world, destination marketers are taking note. Consumers are more aware of their online privacy, and the oft poor marketing tactics that threaten it.

Big tech companies like Google are committing to the strategy, declaring its intention to send third-party cookies the way of Flash.

In doing so, the tech giant is putting privacy first—though without completely leaving publishers and other advertisers out in the cold.

As marketers in the destination space ourselves, we’ve long been talking about marketing practices that needed to change, specifically in travel. Not in an effort to make marketing harder, but to make it better. Better for the traveler and better for business.

We’re happy to say that destination marketers are leaning in, with the privacy-first approaches centered on first-party data. We spoke to growth innovator and longtime destination marketer Scott Schult for his take.

As Scott shares and Google demonstrates, putting your audience and your community front-and-center is the core of a great marketing plan. Having better conversations with these people—as real people—and earning their trust is a well-regarded, privacy-first approach.

That turns into more meaningful insight which builds stronger business—so long as you protect your audience.

As our audience, we’re putting you first, too. We’d love to hear about the first-party data strategy your destination uses at zstovall@flip.to.