Email marketing is a cornerstone of hospitality marketing.
NB: This is an article from Revinate
Many hoteliers consider email marketing to be a time-consuming effort with different one-time campaigns. But there’s a faster, easier, and more effective way. Step into the life-changing world of email marketing automation.
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By using automated email marketing campaigns, you can deliver personalized messages to guests, improve engagement, drive bookings, and increase guest loyalty – all with streamlined processes working in the background.
Hotel marketing automation: one-time vs. automated campaigns
There are 2 primary forms of email marketing. One-time campaigns are the most common. These may include monthly newsletters, alerts about property updates, or new packages you’re promoting. It’s easy to fall into a one-size-fits-all approach with these – sending a generic blast to your entire database. But sending out too many of these “spray-and-pray” emails may lead to high unsubscribe rates. This is something you definitely don’t want.
An alternative is to include email marketing automation in your mix. These are proactive campaigns that are automatically sent out to a highly targeted audience based on specific predefined triggers or events. You set them up once and they continue to run in the background for months or even years. And due to the ability to segment and personalize these emails, hoteliers experience an average of 71% higher open rates over one-time campaigns.
Some examples of hotel marketing automation emails include:
● “We Miss You” emails are sent out after a set period of time to inspire a return visit.
● Booking confirmation emails help drive ancillary revenue through upsells and upgrades. You can capitalize on the fact that your guests will pay more for room attributes such as specific views, room types, and room location.
● Welcome emails are sent upon arrival. These help ensure guests know about hotel amenities and services, cutting down on repetitive phone calls to your front desk staff.
● Post-stay emails may include post-stay surveys, or “win back” campaigns to entice guests to book directly with the hotel on their next visit.
● Cart abandonment campaigns are triggered if a guest leaves your website before completing the booking process. You can include an incentive that inspires them to return and finish.
Additional ideas for automated emails triggers include celebrating a booking anniversary, birthday, holiday, loyalty, newsletter signup, etc.
As much as 83% of hoteliers are concerned about shortages in skilled labor and 60% are concerned with staff productivity issues. Implementing automated email campaigns help address these issues by simplifying your marketing efforts and minimizing challenges due to reduced staff. Automated campaigns also help drive revenue.
For example, EOS Hospitality used Revinate Marketing’s email automation to drive an average of $32k in direct revenue per campaign.
