Email marketing remains an effective means of driving ROI with relatively low costs, increasing direct bookings and customer retention in hospitality businesses. A successful email strategy offers numerous advantages that include increasing direct bookings and customer loyalty.
For maximum growth of your email list, it’s best to strategically position opt-in forms on your website and social media to encourage subscriptions, then utilize segmentation and personalization technologies for creating targeted, engaging content.
Segmentation
Email marketing for hotels can be an extremely powerful form of promotion. Email allows businesses to form direct relationships with their target audiences while cultivating long-term customer loyalty. But to maximize return on investment it is key that businesses create a solid email strategy which includes segmentation, personalization, automation and content delivery.
Email segmentation is the practice of breaking up target markets into smaller groups based on shared characteristics. This helps businesses tailor their marketing strategies, enhance customer experiences, and maximize sales performance – be it demographic, psychographic, behavioral or geographical groups.
Hotels may divide their audience based on the type of vacation experience their target guests desire. Furthermore, hotels may target specific demographics – like business travelers or luxury tourists – in order to increase conversions and maximize ROI.
Once your hotel has established an email database, it is imperative that it remains active. This can be accomplished through welcome emails, loyalty rewards programs, seasonal offers and feedback campaigns – each type of email providing customers with consistent, tailored communications from you and helping to establish lasting and personalized relationships with them.
Hospitality email marketing can also be an effective way of advertising special events or deals available at your hotel, increasing web traffic and drawing in new guests. In addition, blog posts about local attractions and restaurants can increase brand recognition.
Make them feel special by offering exclusive offers only available through email marketing in hospitality – something Best Western used successfully during and post COVID lockdown to promote staycations stays through attractive packages of deals.
Make sure your email designs are responsive and optimized for mobile devices to increase search engine ranking and open rates, while adding high-quality images or videos that engage audiences more.
Personalization
Email personalization is an effective way to engage subscribers and make them feel like your brand wrote their email specifically for them. While this might sound simple, personalizing emails helps your emails stand out among crowded inboxes and boost open rates – just add their name as part of a subject line or personalize the CTA with something like, “Book Your Summer Stay with Our 5% Discount.”
Personalization becomes even more effective when combined with list segmentation. By gathering information about each subscriber–like their location or past bookings–you can craft emails that feel tailored specifically to them.
For example, when new subscribers book your hotel for the first time, send an email featuring a welcome kit complete with local recommendations and tips – this will not only make them feel special but may increase the odds that they return in future stays.
If a subscriber hasn’t purchased from your company in some time or hasn’t opened your app in awhile, consider sending them an re-engagement campaign via email to remind them about your brand and potentially lead to another purchase.
Personalize your hospitality email campaigns by capitalizing on the unique experiences and seasonal offerings of your business. Emails that include holiday or event promotions are particularly successful at driving engagement as they remind subscribers about the value of your brand. In addition, send post-stay surveys tailored specifically to the responses of individual hotel guests that showcases your dedication to their experiences.
Personalizing email marketing strategies is an excellent way to build customer relationships and maximize ROI in hospitality businesses. Email must be used alongside other strategies like social media and SEO in order to achieve optimal results, but having dedicated copywriters and graphic designers on staff is vital for email success. Creatives On Call offers creative professionals that have years of industry experience that understand this marketing channel well.
Automation
Email automation is an indispensable asset for marketers, enabling them to send highly tailored and targeted emails without needing to manually do it themselves. Email automation saves marketers valuable time while freeing their attention for more meaningful projects – plus it ensures all emails sent by a brand remain consistent and free from errors.
Hospitality industry hoteliers can use email marketing automation tools to effectively engage their customers and develop strong relationships while saving both time and money with email marketing automation tools.
One effective strategy for doing so is creating automated workflows to nurture leads and convert them to paying customers. This involves sending relevant emails at just the right moment during their journey – such as special offers, updates about new products or birthday greetings – targeting certain segments of your audience with this type of email can boost conversion rates while improving guest experiences overall.
Email marketing automation can also help to create re-engagement campaigns. Re-engagement emails aim to draw back in users that have left your site without making their purchase, such as when someone adds items to their cart but has yet to complete checkout process. By setting clear goals and measuring its performance, email automation provides an effective means of keeping tabs on its effectiveness.
As part of your email marketing automation strategy, it’s important to remember not to overdo it. Over-emailing may irritate and alienate subscribers; therefore it is best to limit how often it’s used. Furthermore, don’t forget to add a personal touch by crafting messages with genuine sounding names rather than mass mailing. This will increase trust with visitors who may return again later on.
Content
Email can be an extremely powerful customer service channel. Hotels can utilize email as both a marketing and customer service channel by sending timely, relevant, and useful messages that build trust and loyalty with customers. In order to do this successfully, hotels should avoid sending generic content that fails to resonate with its recipients; rather, email personalization and automation tools should be employed to craft engaging communications that increase conversions and ROI.
Although email can be beneficial in hospitality marketing, too many hoteliers utilize this channel in a non-helpful manner that may even annoy or distract guests. Therefore, creating a strong email marketing for hospitality strategy that includes building lists, segmenting audiences accordingly, personalizing emails for each segmentation grouping, planning content accordingly and measuring results can be key for success.
One effective strategy to do so is by sending dynamic emails based on guest behavior or preferences. Hoteliers could, for example, use emails to highlight local attractions that may interest guests or offer discounts for specific activities that could boost engagement with both new and returning customers alike. In doing so, hoteliers could encourage booking by driving new business through targeted email communications and encouraging them to take action quickly.
Keep your emails interesting by testing different subject lines and content combinations. Hoteliers can do this by sending identical emails with different content/image variations, one at a time, to see which version performs better; once this process has concluded they can use that version on all their mailing lists.
Hoteliers can create powerful messages by telling engaging stories that connect their audience with their brand. For instance, this could include emphasizing its history, commitment to sustainability or unique experience that differentiates it from competitors. These stories should contain clear calls-to-action (CTA) that inform readers what steps should come next – such as ‘Book Now” or “Explore Our Menu.”