(Q1 2025 Recap) 90 Days Inside Lodge Social

Every quarter, I do a Lodge Social internal update.

Said less fancy, I document:

• Our failures / wins.

• The lessons we should have learned.

• The goals for next quarter.

And share those notes with the team.

This time, I'm going to share these thoughts publicly.

I think it will be worth your read. Welcome to my brain.

#1: Bookings Are Expensive. Try Email

Last quarter, we acquired bookings directly from ads for anywhere between 25% and 100% of the purchase value.

Meaning, if a booking was worth $600, we paid $150-$600 to acquire that booking.

This isn't unusual. I knew this from day 1.

But, those prices are steep. Really steep.

So, in Q4 last year we had an idea to extend those ad dollars.

The idea:

• Giveaway something in exchange for an email address ($ discount).

• Create an automated email sequence that "sells the stay" and send it to those emails.

We call this "The Welcome Email Sequence." Q1 was our first full quarter of testing at scale.

Result: Every 1 booking we get directly from ads, we get 4x more through this sequence.

It worked.

#2: Start Using Photos As Ads

Video was the only ad type we'd run on Meta.

This quarter, we tried photos and carousels.

I'm not saying the results were insanely different. Photo worked. Video also works.

I am saying producing a photo ad is much cheaper than video.

Which can lower the barrier to entry to Meta Ads for rental operators who have limited resources.

We just use listing photos and throw headlines on them using Canva.

#3: Winning Ad Formats

One of our primary goals last quarter was to find an ad format that does consistently well.

We tested a few dozen. Only three did well on repeat.

• Guest callouts

• "Yes" videos

• Stories

#1: Guest Callouts: Headlines that speak directly to our perfect guest. (i.e. "This Peaceful Getaway is perfect for families").

#2: "Yes" Videos: We placed text on our video everyone agrees with (i.e. Summer nights are the best)

#3: Stories: We told a story with the footage. Example:

If our headline is "< spring mornings"

We would create a video where the actor is doing a common morning activity at the stay.

#4: Dig Deep

This one is a note to self.

Every 30-90 days, my team and I dig deep into the data to learn:

• What trends are "popping off."

• Which ad formats and social posts always do well.

• What combination of words and headlines we should keep using.

Whether it's 30 or 90 days depends on how many big tests we're running.

Here's the note to self:

It's hard to do these. We sit in a room for 3-4 hours and don't leave until we've analyzed each client from every angle.

But it's so worth it. The things we learn in these 4 hours are responsible for 80% of results.

Just do it. Get jacked up on caffeine and do it.

Hello, Q2

I can't believe it's April. Can you?

Last quarter, our main objectives were this:

• Test the validity of The Welcome Email Sequence.

• Refine our ads process strategically and creatively.

This quarter, we have two main objectives:

Objective #1: Make Our Stays More Irresistible

If you have read Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers book, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I'll sum it up:

We want the stays we work with to have an offer so good, potential guests would feel silly NOT booking.

I haven't seen this approach done before in the industry. So we're moving slow with it.

Objective #2: Humanize Our Ads

This quarter, we're testing a new ad format. Here's how it'll look:

• Keep the footage from our old ads the same. (shots of the outside, inside and actors moving about).

• Pair that footage with a voiceover that describes the experience.

I believe a human speaking to the viewer (a.k.a another human), will produce more valuable actions.

That's the plan.

That's all for today. I'll see you in the next article.

Before you go

I spend about 10 hours writing this newsletter each week. The rest of my time is spent running Lodge Social.

Our marketing team will help you get more guests to like, share and book.

Work with me and my team here.

Links you might like:

1. Learn more about The Welcome Email sequence (The Lodge Social)

2. How Outpost X went viral from the Utah desert (Tremento)

3. How to stop the scroll in your first 3 seconds of content (LinkedIn)

4. Sam Parr is a newsletter Sensei to guys like me. Now he’s in the STR space. (YouTube)