Snappstay: Growth Marketing & Digital Strategy

Category: Travel Tech · Short-Term Rentals Channels: Email · Social Media · App Stores · Web Timeline: June 2025 – November 2025 Project Type: Growth Marketing, User Acquisition & Digital Strategy

SnappStay is a short-term rental marketplace built on a simple promise: lower fees for hosts, fair and transparent pricing for guests. After we designed and launched the SnappStay mobile apps, the next challenge was getting people to use them.

Over six months, we ran SnappStay's growth marketing and digital strategy end to end. That meant planning and executing campaigns to grow both sides of the marketplace: more host sign-ups on the supply side and more guest bookings on the demand side.

SnappStay entered a market dominated by well-known platforms with huge budgets and strong brand recall. To compete, it needed to:

Build awareness from zero in a crowded travel market

Persuade hosts to list on a new platform alongside, or instead of, the one they already know

Give guests a clear reason to book somewhere unfamiliar

Grow both sides at once, since a marketplace with listings but no guests, or guests but no listings, doesn't work

Do all of this efficiently, with every channel measured and accountable

We built the strategy on SnappStay's strongest differentiator, its fee structure, and turned it into a clear message for each audience:

For hosts: Keep more of what you earn. For guests: Know exactly what you're paying, with no surprises at checkout.

From there, we designed a two-sided acquisition funnel. Each audience got its own messaging, landing experiences, and conversion goals, tracked separately so we could see what was working on each side.

📧 Email Marketing (SendGrid) We set up SnappStay's email marketing on SendGrid:

Onboarding sequences that walk new hosts through listing setup

Nurture campaigns that re-engage hosts who started a listing but didn't finish

Guest campaigns featuring destinations, new listings, and seasonal travel ideas

Transactional and lifecycle emails that support retention and repeat bookings

📱 Social Media Strategy & Content Calendars We planned and managed structured monthly content calendars across SnappStay's social channels, mixing:

Host-focused content on earnings, fee comparisons, and listing tips

Guest-focused inspiration featuring properties and destinations

Brand content that builds trust and explains the SnappStay difference

Campaign pushes timed to travel seasons and booking peaks

🎯 User Acquisition Funnels We mapped the full journey from first touch to conversion for both audiences:

Separate host and guest funnels with channel-specific entry points

Conversion-focused messaging at each stage

Drop-off analysis to find and fix leaks between awareness, sign-up, and first listing or booking

📲 App Store Optimization (ASO) We optimized SnappStay's iOS and Android store listings (keywords, descriptions, and visual assets) to improve discoverability and turn more store visits into installs.

📊 Analytics & Performance Dashboards (Google Analytics) We built analytics dashboards that gave the SnappStay team a live view of:

Traffic sources and channel performance

Host sign-up and guest booking conversion rates

Campaign engagement across email and social

User retention and repeat activity

These dashboards made every decision data-driven. We shifted effort and budget toward what performed and cut what didn't.

A clear market position: SnappStay's lower-fee, transparent-pricing message now runs consistently across every channel

Supply-side growth: structured onboarding and nurture flows turned more interested hosts into active listings

Demand-side momentum: content and email campaigns brought guests into the booking funnel and back again

Measurable marketing: full-funnel analytics gave SnappStay visibility into acquisition cost, conversion, and retention

Growing a two-sided marketplace is one of the hardest problems in digital marketing, because you have to win over two very different audiences at the same time. This project shows our ability to:

Turn a product advantage into a clear brand message

Run coordinated campaigns across email, social, and app stores

Build acquisition funnels that serve both hosts and guests

Use analytics to keep growth accountable

Because we also built the SnappStay app, product and marketing ran as a single effort. Insights from campaigns fed straight back into the user experience.

SnappStay went from a newly launched app to a platform with a recognizable brand, active marketing channels, and a working acquisition system for both hosts and guests. It shows how we combine strategy, execution, and analytics to help new products compete in established markets.

Tools & Platforms: SendGrid · Google Analytics · App Store Connect · Google Play Console · Social Media Platforms · Flutter