As Revinate’s Senior Hospitality Marketing Strategist, I always say I have the best job in the company. I have the pleasure of working directly with our Revinate Marketing customers to unlock the enormous power of their property management system (PMS) and help them build an email marketing strategy that gets results.
As a hotelier, analyzing and leveraging the data trapped within your PMS should be one of your top priorities. How else can you market to and serve guests if you don’t understand who they are, where they come from, and what they buy?
When I work with a customer, the very first thing I do is take a ‘fine-tooth comb’ through their database, extracting the key data points that will be instrumental in creating their email marketing strategy.
Below I’ve listed the top five PMS data points (with real customer examples) that every hotelier must understand in order to create targeted email campaigns that drive engagement, direct bookings, and ROI. As we say, great email marketing starts with great data.
1. Demographic Profiles
To understand your guests at the most basic level, you must collect guest demographic information during the booking and check-in process. The higher your profile coverage of data points such as city, country, gender, and reservations with families, the more you’ll be able to segment your database and target your guests with content they genuinely care about.
Real Customer Example: Revinate Marketing customer Mountain View Grand segmented their database into two groups – 1) reservations with children and 2) reservations without children. Then they tailored their email marketing campaigns accordingly so the message and imagery would appeal to both groups.
2. Booking Behavior
Which packages and promotions bring in the most bookings? Which guests prefer value-add promotions versus discounted offers? Who likes to stay on your property over specific time frames? Answering these questions will allow you to send the right promotions to the right guests while building even richer guest relationships.
Real Customer Example: Serrano Hotel sent this holiday promotion to guests who stayed with them over the previous holiday season.
