Whether you consider yourself a hotel guest mobile messaging expert or are in the process of learning about this unique marketing channel, there are plenty of tricks of the trade that you can implement into your text messaging campaigns that will keep guests engaged and satisfaction high.
NB: This is an article from Fuel
In this article, we’ll look at some of the most important do’s and don’ts of a hotel guest mobile messaging campaign.
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DO SEND MESSAGES WHEN GUESTS ARE MOST LIKELY TO ENGAGE
Hotels should stray away from reaching out to guests at moments they’re least likely to interact. Whether that’s the dead of night or during their busiest times of the day, the likelihood that a guest engages with any type of marketing messaging is low and can also be seen as intrusive during these periods.
So how do hotels determine the best time of day to deploy text messaging campaigns? If you’re running an existing campaign, it’s as simple as reviewing your analytics data.
Or you can take out the guesswork and use AI-optimized hotel-to-guest communication technology. Our Guest Messaging Solution for hotels uses predictive send time optimizations that send messages at the precise time a guest is most likely to interact. This means less work for hotels and a more streamlined send process, resulting in higher engagements and a better hotel guest experience.
DON’T SEND TOO MUCH, TOO OFTEN
Bombarding your guests with text messages will only result in opt outs. Instead of trying to get your guests’ attention 24/7, your send strategy should be to optimize sends during specific phases of the guest journey.
In fact, hotels can implement a successful hotel SMS/text campaign by sending no more than five text messages throughout the entirety of a guest’s stay, including pre-arrival, welcome, and check-out.
With this knowledge in mind, use the correct tone of voice based on the message you’re sending and stray away from being too self-serving. Remember, the goal of a mobile messaging campaign is to improve the hotel guest satisfaction.
DO MAKE BETTER MOBILE MESSAGING MARKETING DECISIONS WITH IN-DEPTH REPORTING
How do you know whether your text/SMS efforts are successful?
As mentioned earlier, you can dive into your analytics data to determine what’s working and what could be improved.
Or, you can use our Guest Messaging Solution’s in-depth reporting suite that tracks campaign performance in real time. Reporting can be pulled via a pre-installed report or you can build completely customized reports that measure open rate, clicks, and more.
DON’T BLANKET MESSAGE YOUR GUESTS
Text messaging is a very personal channel of communication. When you reach guests on the go, sending the same generic message to all of your opt-ins isn’t going to have a similar impact that a personalized message would have.
All-in-all, hotels need to ditch the spray and pray approach for digital marketing. Instead, by taking the do’s and don’ts from above into consideration, hotels need to build better, personalized hotel-to-guest mobile messaging campaigns.
If a guest is only days away from arrival, send them a text with the opportunity to upgrade their room. If the guest is checking out, a text that thanks them and nudges them to leave a review would suffice. You’ll just need to make sure the messaging is memorable and not spammy.
