The marketing mix is becoming more and more complex with new opportunities and tools constantly becoming available to hoteliers. Unfortunately, the days are not getting longer so automation and smarter marketing are required to keep your hotel on cutting edge of marketing. In this episode of the Fuel Hotel Marketing Podcast, we are going to dive into how you can save time and improve your ROI on email marketing.
Part 1: Personalization
It is a well-known fact that personalization improves email performance, both in the subject line and email content. Campaign Monitor released figures that on average a personalized subject line will improve open rates by 31% (18.8% for personalized content and 13.1% for generic). Personalization beyond the subject line can further move the ball toward the goal line by improving click rate by over 10%. Now the most important metric, revenue improvements, really depends on the offer so we will save that topic for another podcast.
Before you can personalize you need to collect data and depending on the stage of your relationship will depend on what you can personalize. Your goal as a marketer is to work on building the best possible customer database you can, and while that may start with an email address and name, it should quickly evolve to stay information, desired room types, home address, etc.
We’re going to look at two main types of personalization, basic and advanced. We would define basic as any personalization that is based on your in-house email or guest history database. Advanced would be when you go beyond that and start looking at dynamic content, browser activity, or 3rd party data feeds. For today’s discussion we are going to look primarily at the basic personalizations that you can put into action with your list today.
Basic Personalization
- Subject Line Personalization such as “Hi, Jack. Our Resort Has Great Deals!” or “Did You Know The Smith Family Can Stay For 30% Off?”
- Offer personalization such as 30% off your next stay in an XYZ room type
- Image and/article personalization based on guest interest or guest type. An example of this would be showing a tour group photo and group article
These types of personalization are an excellent way to get started and will absolutely improve your campaign performance and email ROI. However there is more, much more, that you can do to personalize your content. This is where we get into more advanced tactics.
Listen to the podcast and read the rest of the article at Fuel
