Email marketing is one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways for your coliving brand to reach more potential members, build your community and boost revenue.
A solid email marketing strategy is vital to ensure you are communicating with your target markets at every stage of their journey, from initial interest to when they become a fully signed up member. It’s also where people want to receive information from the brands they are interested in, with 73% of millennials preferring communications from businesses to come via email.
So, how do you utilise the tool effectively for your brand? Below, we have listed a variety of tactics to implement, from pre-sign up to post stay, which will level up your coliving space’s email marketing and boost conversions…
BEFORE YOU BEGIN…
GET CLEAR ON YOUR STRATEGY
A clear and effective email marketing strategy is vital in achieving your overall marketing (and business) goals – but in order to get results, you firstly need to truly understand who you are trying to reach.
Coliving is all about community so it’s important to adopt a tailored approach and nail both your brand tone of voice and the content you share – the last thing you want to do is alienate potential members by sending generalised, impersonal content they aren’t interested in.
To figure this out – and ensure your email marketing hits the right note with your target audience(s), we recommend creating customer personas (which are data-based fictional profiles of your members). You should utilise the data you have to build a picture of your members.
Ask yourself:
- How old are they?
- What amenities are they seeking?
- What are their booking motivations?
- What is their profession?
Having your customer personas pinned down will help you to tailor your email marketing strategy and content to your different segment’s interests and preferences. The goal is to make your target audiences feel you are speaking directly to them through your marketing.
Your email marketing strategy should address each stage of your member journey, from initial interest through to post-stay. Structuring it this way means that you have clear processes in place to reach, engage and convert your target audiences into paying members.
Investing the time to outline and develop an email marketing strategy is a crucial first step for your brand, allowing you to clearly outline your goals and the tactics you will use to achieve them.
PRE SIGN-UP
GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST
Building your email list is one of the most effective ways in developing a relationship with potential members and educating them about what your brand has to offer them.
To grow your email list, it’s important to focus on what your potential members are looking for. For example, if they’re visiting your website and checking out your brand, they could be interested in learning more about the local neighbourhood and what it has to offer them. Creating a free downloadable neighbourhood guide with local tips and hidden hotspots could be a great incentive for users to sign-up to your email list because it will provide genuine value to your potential members. This could be displayed via a pop-up when they visit a particular page on your website.
You could also set up a waiting list for your coliving space with a sign-up form and place this prominently on your website. Not only will this add an air of exclusivity to your brand, but it also helps to gather valuable data from potential members that you can use in your future email communications with them.
Avoid being lured into purchasing an email list. The success of email marketing is all about sending tailored, quality content to a genuinely interested user therefore buying a list will waste your time and money – and could risk damaging your brand’s reputation. It’s all about quality over quantity.
SEGMENT YOUR EMAIL LISTS
It’s important to consider how you are going to utilise the mailing list you are working hard to grow. There’s little point in investing time building this list and then leaving it to lie dormant – doing so means you will miss out on member sign-ups and revenue.
While it may seem like the most time efficient way to communicate with your email list is to hit ‘send-all’, it will actually lead to very few results and is a surefire way to fatigue and alienate your database. Generalised mass-email blasts are becoming increasingly less successful and will lead to your brand leaving revenue on the table. This is why it’s really important for your brand to get smart when it comes to email by segmenting your email list.
Segmenting your email list works to increase the return on your investment by sending relevant emails to different segments of your audiences so they can actually connect with your message. It shows you are communicating with your audience as individuals and are clearly tailoring your emails to what they’ve shown interest in.
Of course, setting up a mailing list with users who are not – or who have not been – members of your coliving space is the first step in segmentation. You have the opportunity to break this list down further based on their information, interactions and experiences with you.
For example, if someone downloads your local guide to the neighbourhood from your site, you can create an email funnel which will send them related information. This provides you with the opportunity to deliver more value and build a relationship with the user, increasing the likelihood that your brand will be at the forefront of their mind when they make a decision about where they want to live.
Instead of sending generic emails with information that might not be relevant, segmentation allows you to personalise your email communication to match the needs of a particular target market – and will therefore lead to better results for your brand.
SEND NEWSLETTER CONTENT
Another type of email content you can send to potential members on your mailing list is a monthly newsletter.
Sending a newsletters offers the opportunity to keep in touch on a regular – and consistent – basis with your target audiences and helps your brand develop a relationship with your potential members. Be sure to include valuable information that they will be genuinely interested in (and want to read more of!) as well as any relevant special offers you are running and updates on your space. Then, all you need to do is add a killer subject line and you’re good to go.
While a monthly newsletter is a great way to keep in touch, be wary of using one-time email campaigns like this to simply just push discounts and special offers – it won’t work and will increase the likelihood of users unsubscribing.
PRE MOVE IN
NAIL YOUR PRE-MOVE-IN MAILERS
Next, let’s consider how to communicate with members who have signed up but not yet moved in.
Personalised pre-move-in mailers are a must to give your members all the information they need ahead of their big move. This personal touch will also reassure them that they have made the right decision to join your community.
You can do this creating a series of emails to send in the run-up to their move-in date. This could include mailers on weekly activities you run that you think they may be interested in based on the data they have shared with you and information on your facilities to refresh their memory. You could also send a mailer with details on what they can expect on the day they move in to ease any worries they may have.
In addition to this, it would be a nice touch to send a welcome mailer on their move-in day to ensure they know how happy you are to have them choose to live with you.
Pre-move-in mailer content will take time up front to create. However, setting up an automated email funnel which sends content to specified users in specified timeframes means everything will run smoothly going forward without you needing to lift a finger. Just be sure to monitor your emails on a regular basis in case they drop you a message with questions or queries.
Looking for support with setting up the right emails to send at the right time to the right person? Drop us a message – we can help you.
DURING STAY
KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR MEMBERS
Once members have signed on the dotted line and moved in, it’s really important for your brand to continue communicating on a regular basis. The last thing you want is for members to move in and feel like they have been dropped or forgotten now that they are spending money with you.
To update your members on what’s happening locally as well as any events running in your space, we recommend sending a bi-weekly newsletter. This will also help foster a true sense of community – which is a key booking motivation for those opting for a coliving lifestyle – and therefore will increase resident satisfaction.
In addition to this, it’s a great way to update them on practical information they need to know as well as upsell activities, talks or events taking place in your space.
POST-STAY
SET UP QUARTERLY CHECK-INS
It’s always sad to see people move out but we like to think of it as a ‘see you later’, not a goodbye.
We recommend sending a personalised email to your member – ideally within three days of their departure – saying that you hope they enjoyed their time living at your space. In the same email, you can ask for their feedback on their experience and invite them to write an online review. Be sure to make it as easy as possible for them to do by including a direct link to the review platform. This will help your brand work to continuously improve the member experience and with 93% of consumers stating that online reviews impact their purchasing decisions, it could also influence your future member’s choice in staying with you.
A successful post-stay email campaign doesn’t end after the thank-you / feedback-request email. While they might have left you for now, there is every chance that they could return in the future so it’s important to keep in touch with past members. It’s also a great opportunity for turning your past members into brand ambassadors, increasing the likelihood of them recommending your coliving space to their peers.
You could do this in an authentic way by sending them an email on a quarterly basis to check in with them. This could include relevant updates about your brand and an offer such as a refer-a-friend programme to encourage them to share information about you with those they think could be interested. It’s really important that the content you send to your past members remains personalised and tailored to them – if you send a generic mailer and your past member realises this, it could significantly tarnish the relationship that you have built.
TRACKING YOUR SUCCESS
Using the data you have at your fingertips will help you to learn more about your target market’s interests and behaviours which can inform your guest personas, strategy and email content.
The great thing about email marketing is that it is one of the most measurable marketing tools out there. From who opened your email campaign, to where the subscribers are located and what individual links they have clicked on, you can track literally everything. It allows you to gain valuable insight into what is – and what is not – working so you are able to switch things up and optimise the email content you send out to improve your ROI.
You can analyse your email marketing through two lenses – email performance and subscriber activity. When reviewing your email campaign performance, be sure to look at metrics including the open and click through rate of your funnels. It’s also important to review the landing pages you are directing users to. Doing this on a regular basis will inform you on what content is resonating with your audience segments – and more importantly, converting.
When looking at subscriber activity, it’s all about understanding the behaviour of your audience and the ‘health’ of your mailing list. To do this, you should review where your most active subscribers are coming from and how their engagement with your content varies. You should also look at inactive subscribers and their habits so you are able to implement tactics to re-engage them.
Taking the time to track your email marketing will ensure you get more bang for your marketing bucks. It allows you to be more efficient with your time (and money!) and deliver the most relevant, targeted content to your mailing lists in order to boost bookings and revenue.
Email marketing is one of the most reliable, effective, and cost-efficient ways to communicate with members and get results – looking for support with using email marketing for your coliving space to boost revenue? Drop us a message.
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