Is it worth sending a follow up email to an enquiry?

[964kevin]

I also think its a little rude to enquire about my home, then not bother to say thanks for the info.....

Yes, that irks me too as I wouldn't do it - but with the volume of holiday rentals having grown a lot since we started renting our property 7 years ago, increasingly I am receiving standardised enquiries instead of the personalised ones - and the sender of course is simply cutting and pasting it and sending it to loads of owners. There's no excuse even so when an owner replies in a non-standardised format, not to reply - even with another standardised email: "Thank you for your quick response but we have now found a property" would be better than a deafening silence!

I suppose the flip side is that there are many owners (none here though!) who don't bother to reply to someone enquiring about dates already booked.

I always reply, because that's the way I would want to be treated, and if the date is booked, I offer alternatives and sometimes throw in a discount as an incentive.
Its only worked once or twice, but thats kept the bills being paid.

Kevin

[Montana]

I too follow-up, a couple of days to a week after sending a very personalised reply which addresses all their questions. How long I wait depends on whether I've had another enquiry for the same property/dates.

At the moment, about 80% of the enquiries are for long-booked peak week dates, which are marked as such on the availability. I send a quick reply advising that we're sorry, but no can do, however as we do seem to offer a good match in every other way, perhaps come back another time. This approach HAS resulted in other enquiries and a couple of subsequent bookings, so I take the view that it's worth the couple of minutes in responding. I know I like to get a reply whenever I'm looking for my own family holiday

[Cotterdale]

I also track my emails this lets me know how many time an email as been opened and where. If it is opened a few time and we have availability I will send another email to ask if I can assist them further.