If you’re serious about marketing your vacation rental, using software can do a lot to help. There are several types of software you can use to market, manage, and grow your vacation rental business.
In this post, we outline each type of vacation rental marketing software, and include some recommended software options you can check out.
1. Vacation Rental Management Software
Vacation rental management software platforms are designed to help you manage all aspects of your vacation rental. And many of the features can directly benefit your marketing.
With vacation rental management software, you can:
- Create a direct booking website
- Manage and automate guest messages
- List on multiple listing sites at once
Check out our review of the best vacation rental channel management software. Our top pick overall is Uplisting, but other options like Lodgify or Guesty for Hosts might be a better fit, depending on your needs and budget.
Compare vacation rental software options with our spreadsheet.
View spreadsheet2. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software
If you’re already using vacation rental management software, a CRM might be redundant or overkill.
That said, a CRM is very different from most vacation rental management software. If you’re running a large property management company with lots of leads, clients, and other contacts, a CRM can help you manage it all.
If you’re interested in trying out a CRM for your vacation rental business, we recommend taking a look at Zoho or HubSpot. Both options offer free plans, so you can try out their features with no risk and see if they’re a good fit for your business.
3. Email Marketing Software
An email list of past and potential guests can be a very effective marketing channel. You can use software like StayFi to collect emails from your guests and use email marketing software to send regular email updates to your list.
A few email marketing software platforms you might look into are Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Drip, Flodesk, and Active Campaign. Learn more about email marketing for vacation rentals.
4. Dynamic Pricing Tools
One of the best ways to optimize your Airbnb listing is to have a good pricing strategy. And the easiest way to improve your pricing strategy is to use a dynamic pricing tool.
We recommend Wheelhouse for the majority of hosts and property managers. Others you might look into are Beyond Pricing and PriceLabs. Check out our full review of the best dynamic Airbnb pricing tools.
5. Social Media Management Software
If you’re using social media to market your vacation rental business, there are social media management software options that can make it much easier. Platforms like Hootsuite, Buffer, Later, or Tailwind make it easy to create and schedule posts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Staying consistent can be one of the hardest parts of social media marketing, and using social media management software can help you by allowing you to batch-schedule all of your posts for a month or more at once.
Marketing Your Vacation Rental Business
While using marketing software can definitely be a shot in the arm for your vacation rental marketing, the software is just a tool, and it’s only as good as how it’s used. We recommend having a vacation rental marketing plan.
Here’s a quick recap of the software we recommend to help you in your vacation rental marketing efforts:
- Vacation Rental Management – Uplisting or any of these
- CRM – Zoho or Hubspot
- Email Marketing – Constant Contact
- Dynamic Pricing – Wheelhouse
- Social Media Management – Later, Buffer, Hootsuite, or Tailwind
We’ve also created several marketing resources to help you market your Airbnb or vacation rental. You can find them all in our vacation rental marketing guide.
