You’ve seen the pre-promotional marketing in other industries: Brick & mortar shops tease Black Friday markdowns, concert venues promote tour dates well in advance, and online retailers share Friends & Family discounts before the general public. Creating excitement for a product ahead of its release date is a common and effective marketing tool. Anytime you see a sale countdown ticker on a website, or people waiting in line to purchase the latest smartphone or hottest new sneaker, you’re seeing pre-promotional marketing at work. Today, we’ll refer to the buzz that this pre-promotional marketing creates as The Countdown Effect. (Cue Foreigner).
We’ve seen marinas achieve The Countdown Effect through several pre-promotional marketing techniques, from promoting their July 4th celebration event months in advance, to letting boaters know early of discounted dockage the week after Labor Day. One of the most effective ways we’ve seen marinas generate excitement from boaters is by holding an Opening Booking Day, a date on which boaters can begin making reservations for the upcoming season.
Opening Booking Days let you market your marina less like a hotel to fill and more like a concert to sell out. Your marina is a covetable destination, worthy of anticipation and competition for its limited supply of dock and mooring space. If you magnify this anticipation by creating a sense of urgency around a set date, you’ll provide a boost to both your marina’s brand recognition and bottom line.
By holding an Opening Booking Day, your marina creates an extra opportunity to generate buzz amongst boaters as they get ready to book at your marina for their favorite cruising days. Opening Booking Days also give marina teams an early indication as to which dates are likely to be busiest, which in turn gives you more time to prepare for hosting those guests.
We’ve partnered with marinas using the Opening Booking Day marketing technique for the past few years and have seen some impressive results. Let’s look at some examples:
How did Edgartown and Nantucket create and maximize The Countdown Effect? Both are well-known cruising destinations, which doesn’t hurt, but their Opening Booking Day strategy and some key marketing tactics managed to give them even more of a boost. Even if you’re the type of marina that will likely never sell out on a given day, you can still maximize your bookings across your season with this simple marketing playbook. Let’s have a look at 5 tactics that helped these marinas pull off their Opening Booking Days:
Many marinas that we speak with have a list of seasonal customers (or members in the case of a yacht club). Not many have a list of transient customers however, and if they do, they may not have email addresses. If you’re in that second bucket, it’s not too late! Start building your email list today. Pull together any customer records that you currently have and put them into a Excel spreadsheet or a Google Spreadsheet. Let your team know that your guests' email addresses are a CRITICAL piece of information to collect when taking a reservation. If you’re using Dockwa for all of your marina reservation, we’ve got you covered: an email address is a required field for all contacts in the system.
This step is an obvious but critical part of the strategy. Choose an Opening Booking Day date on which your boaters are available to request reservations! Choose a date that makes sense – one that isn't too close to your season opening date, but close enough to the season that people are actively thinking (dreaming) about summer days on their boats, tied up at your marina. The best Opening Booking Days tend to be Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays – a day when most of your customers are more likely to be in front of a computer. A weekday in February, March or April is perfect. The best time to begin accepting reservations is 8am or 10am – again, when people are most likely to be at their computers.
Once you have your email content, consider adopting the email cadence below, which has worked well for Edgartown Harbor:
4. Maximize boater accommodation on Opening Booking day: Allow for online reservations.
Opening Booking Days can be major drivers of demand; marinas often experience higher-than-usual phone traffic as boaters simultaneously reach out to reserve slips and moorings for the season. In some cases, marinas have more boaters calling to make reservations than they can handle on one phone line and a limited marina staff.
Having an online reservation system lets your marina accommodate as many boaters as possible, both on your Opening Booking Day and throughout your season. And by maximizing the amount of boaters with which you communicate, you maximize your occupancy and potential for profit.
If you know the busiest days of your season, it might make sense for you to increase your rates for these dates before your opening booking day, especially since the boaters booking on your opening day are already likely to be in the market for those popular dates. Just be sure to disclose the adjusted rates for those dates on your website for you boaters to see!
Is your marina using or is considering using the Opening Booking Day marketing technique? Have any questions about putting our tips into practice? Let us know in the comments section and we'll be sure to respond with our take on the matter! And remember, if you're a Dockwa customer, you can always reach out to your Marina Success Manager to help you with you Opening Booking Day as well.
Happy Booking!