Email marketing is just one of the many channels a hotel should use to drive revenue while at the same time nurturing existing clients, because, after all, the costs of acquiring a client is a lot higher than keeping a client.
NB: This is an article from Mews
In order to keep clients loyal, and to nurture clients from the awareness phase to the purchasing phase, it’s important to use different kinds of campaigns, which will depend on which phase of the buyer journey the people on your list are on.
Different email marketing strategies for hotels
Future guests or past guests
If they have already booked, you can use pre-arrival emails to invite guests to upgrade, remind them of your amenities and services, so they book at your restaurant or book a tour with you. This is an important part of upselling to drive ancillary revenue. Once guests stay with you, you can send a welcome email and invite them to participate in other activities. After guests check out, you can send regular communication to give them a reason to come back, with some kind of incentive.
Newsletters
Newsletters or other updates are an opportunity to send regular communications of information that will keep them engaged and encourage future bookings. You can send news and promotions as well as relevant content that helps keep your hotel at the front of their minds when it comes time to book.
Deals and promotions
When you have a lot of empty rooms or in periods of anticipated low demand, it’s a good idea to send emails with special seasonal deals or promotions. Whether it’s a mid-winter deal, which includes a visit to your spa, or a pre-summer trip, or you’re offering a special package or discount, sending an email campaign is a great way to boost revenue.
Tips for building the perfect hotel email marketing strategy
Hotels have traditionally invested little in digital marketing and, when they do, it’s often too late. Hotels too often fall into the trap of panic marketing when they see a dip in bookings in the run-up to the low season and bulk email every customer who ever stayed, disregarding if those customers had previously stayed in the low season, or whether they are leisure or business travelers, or what language they speak, and so on.
By implementing intelligent segmentation and automation in your strategy, you can drastically cut down your unsubscription rate and build a loyal customer following. Personalization is increasingly the aim of the email marketing game, and Mailchimp helps drive significant improvements in engagement over outdated ‘batch and blast’ tactics.
Sell the destination, not your hotel
In general, we encourage hotels to sell the destination rather than the hotel itself when it comes to email marketing. If you have their email address, it is likely that they have already seen your hotel before! Focus on selling the region or city itself, new attractions or hot new restaurants that have opened up in the area. After all, these are the real reasons visitors return to a specific destination
