From fostering demand to nurturing loyalty, your marketing strategy should sit at the core of your revenue management strategy.
NB: These are extracts from a guide produced by Cendyn, one of our Expert Partners
It can be used to deliver more personalized, relevant communications to each guest, no matter what channel they come through. It can also help you align the elegant simplicity of automation with the power of intelligent segmentation, dynamic content and targeted digital marketing to help drive revenue when you need it most. If ever the two disciplines were more tightly woven together, it’s now.
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We’re going to show you seven ways to deepen the connection between your marketing and revenue strategy.
Revenue strategy isn’t just about using historical demand and future forecasts to set the right price, it also requires an accurate understanding of your guests so that you can communicate well, market effectively and put yourself in pole position for conversion.
1: Capture more data on guests with technology
Your CRM is primed to be a revenue engine – but it needs the most precise, up-to-date information to rev up to full speed.
Revisit each stage in the customer journey and verify that you’re aggregating as much relevant data as you can. As you unify everything into a 360-degree view, across online and offline advertising channels, you’ll have everything you need to connect the dots across marketing, reservations and revenue.
Your revenue management system should also be primed to include the most accurate revenue data on your guests. Ensure your RMS is capturing ancillary spend as well as room price as this will attribute to your bottom line.
2: Improve your attribution
As you capture more data about your guests, you can improve your attribution so that you can better track the relative success of your marketing.
All of that attribution is fed back into your CRM to close the loop and catalyze impact.
Use a unique token for each campaign so that you can fully attribute each booking to its last touchpoint. You can use UTM parameters for your links. Or better yet, use custom landing pages for each campaign so that you can also orient the copy and offer to the target segment. That way you have a very clear understanding of how each segment responds – rather than making assumptions that may or may not be accurate.
3: Tie total guest spend data with marketing efforts
Not only is it important to understand who your repeat guests versus your first-time guests are, but also knowing how and where they spend their money is just as important.
Using your CRM solution, you can distinguish who your most valuable guests are from a broad perspective, but you can also leverage more granular data to understand their individual preferences, for instance:
- WHO ARE THE GUESTS THAT FREQUENT THE RESTAURANT, SPA OR OTHER REVENUE SOURCES IN THE HOTEL?
- HOW DOES THIS SPEND IN ANCILLARY REVENUE CORRELATE TO THEIR ROOM TYPE OR BOOKING BEHAVIORS?
For example, you can compare to see if guests who typically stay in an upgraded room also spend time in the spa services on-site or vice versa.
4: Optimize communications across the guest journey
Each touchpoint is an opportunity to solidify your relationship with guests. Every time they give you information on what they want and when they want it, you should be building those bonds of loyalty.
At each of these stages, ensure you are:
- SEGMENTING TO YOUR GREATEST CAPABILITIES
- TESTING DIFFERENT PERMUTATIONS OF COPY, MESSAGING AND PERSONALIZATION
- ALIGNING YOUR NURTURING STRATEGY WITH YOUR REVENUE EXPECTATIONS AND FORECASTS
5: Automate everything you can
Automation is essential for success, but it can only work well if you have the right data and segmentation in place.
Once you have tested and optimized your communications, you can put it all on autopilot. Things to automate:
DATA INTEGRITY: Good data leads to better insights whereas bad data is a disabler. Eliminate tedious manual entry by letting your CRM do the work for you. Data entry should be automated and your data should be merged and de-duplicated so there are no overlapping records. Not only does this avoid extra work on your part but it prevents embarrassing mistakes like inundating guests with the same email because they are somehow in your database multiple times.
LIST HEALTH: You’ll also want to keep your list healthy by removing inactive users. Use your CRM’s automation capabilities to move inactive off your lists at a predetermined time. By removing users that haven’t opened an email in a while reduces bounce rates, protects the integrity of your email address and keeps your marketing message out of the spam folder.
6: Manage capacity constraints at your hotel
A number of potential factors may influence capacity constraints at your hotel at the moment:
- SOCIAL DISTANCING
- RESTRICTIONS ON NUMBER OF GUESTS ON PROPERTY AT ANY GIVEN TIME
- STAFFING LEVELS
- WAITING REQUIREMENTS IN BETWEEN STAYS
7: Use dynamic content for better marketing personalization
While dynamic content can (and should!) also be automated, think of it less as a “set it and forget it” type of automation and more something to continuously iterate.
Configure rules in your CRM that adjust the images, copy and creative of your communications, all based around things like:
CHANNEL: You’ll want to speak differently to guests depending on how they booked. If they came through a country-specific OTA, for example, perhaps you should communicate in their preferred language. Or you may want to reward a returning guest with an upgrade.
Bringing Revenue and Marketing together
The ideal revenue and marketing strategy is a manifestation of a guest-centric mindset, enabling you to deliver the best experience possible for each and every guest. With rich guest data at your fingertips, you can deliver impactful personalization that makes an impression with guests.
As you turn one-off guests into repeat business, and then continue to nurture that tighter bond over time, you can maintain your brand’s market share and grow your revenue – even in challenging times like these.
You can read the full guide here
