While it sometimes seems that social media, influencers and AI rule the world, emails still have a vital part to play for businesses, particularly in the hospitality industry. Emails can be accurately targeted for hotel marketing initiatives, and offer personalised communication to potential and existing guests. Emails can be used to do the essential work of providing booking confirmations, but go much further in being an effective channel for special offers, news, and seasonal initiatives - all of which increase guest awareness of a hotel, and help drive bookings. Email marketing is therefore an important tool available to the modern hotelier.
Hitting the target with email marketing
In all forms of marketing it’s a basic rule that the more targeted your messaging, the better. ‘Scatter-gunning’ to a very wide demographic might pull in a few random customers, but knowing your guests and then communicating with them directly is far more efficient, and cost-effective. Why message thousands of potential customers when targeting hundreds will yield better results? The benefits of email marketing for hotels and hospitality include:
1. Email is direct and can be personalised
Your marketing initiative goes straight to the inbox of the intended recipient and there is no third party interference or screening of the message.
Rather than a ‘billboard on the highway’ shouting out a generic message to whoever passes by, email marketing addresses the individual by name. What’s more, by knowing your customer you can specifically target them with offers that you know will appeal to them. Modern Property Management Systems store a wealth of details about hotel guests which can be mined to tailor specific messages to guests, based on their interests.
2. Email marketing builds loyalty
When guests receive personalised emails which indicate that a hotel is aware of their interests and makes offers based on these, guests feel ‘seen’. This in turn encourages their loyalty to the hotel. The brand reputation and values of a hotel are among its most important assets, and guests recognise this and reward it with their business as a result of receiving direct and personalised emails.
3. Email enhances the guest journey
Hotel-keeping is far from just about supplying a bed for the night - it’s a whole range of experiences around the guest journey. Email can suggest exciting and interesting activities during the guest’s stay, whet appetites with upcoming menus, offer spa treatments, courses, or visits to local places of interest. By using email the dialogue can begin well before the guest’s arrival.
4. Email drives bookings
Keeping guests aware of special offers, seasonal initiatives, events and discounted stays helps drive direct bookings through the hotel’s own website, therefore cutting out third parties such as the OTAs, with their high commission fees.
5. Email is cost-effective
This cost-effectiveness is reflected in the cost per email, which is fractional compared to any other method of marketing or advertising. A single, well-targeted email can yield higher conversion rates through direct sales, compared to social media marketing.
Strategies for successful hotel email marketing
Now we’re not saying don’t use social media. Far from it! Social media is a vital ingredient in the digital marketing mix, along with a smoothly functioning, engaging hotel website. Be aware however that email has special properties which make it particularly suitable to target messages to a specific demographic. Let’s look at some success-generating email strategies:
- Segmentation is a key concept. There is never a ‘one size fits all’ strategy in any marketing environment because people are different with different needs. To successfully market your hotel you need to know your customer, and only then can you show them relevant offers which will encourage them to book with you. So who are your customers? Are they solo travellers, families, budget-conscious, ‘luxury’, or health-aware? Are they interested in local history, the arts, or a lively nightlife? As a hotelier you will already know your hotel’s strengths and weaknesses, and should know how that fits with your demographic.
Segmenting your likely market will greatly increase penetration and ‘stickability’ with your chosen guests. If you’re making a seasonal offer, ensure that it’s going to the right people. If you are launching discounts or vouchers, target people that tend to be budget-conscious. The more you segment and personalise, the better. - Special offers can be very appealing, and aren’t always just about price. Time-limited offers are however attractive to some guests who are at the point of deciding where to stay, with a ‘book now and receive X% discount’ deal. Think about special occasions too, such as anniversaries and birthdays. If guests have stayed with you before for some sort of celebration, then the chances are that you will have recorded this and can send a personalised email invitation to come back and celebrate again. A smoothly functioning PMS will already hold much of the data needed to make special emailed approaches to past guests.
- Seasonal initiatives are a great opportunity to let people know you’re open for business with a large number of occasions every year when you can provide themed events, menus and activities which reflect the season. People buy-in to special occasions where the hotel provides that something extra, whether it’s decoration, entertainment, or different food. Look at the calendar for the year ahead and mark each month with an initiative which you can plan, and then let your potential and past guests know through a direct email campaign.
- Sharing the workload is one of the secrets to marketing, if there are other businesses or organisations which a hotel can join forces with. For example, a local winery that could have a wine-tasting weekend, historical societies to organise walks, sports activities such as paragliding or surfing… The list of potential partners is endless, and the point is you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. Think of win-win situations where there are advantages for everyone involved, and you have great reasons to email your customer base with interesting and exciting offers.
- Doing it again and again is the smart way of all special offers, events and partnering. Once you have an initiative set up, the biggest part of the work is done, so the strategy is then to repeat at appropriate points. You don’t have to re-invent your ‘Spring Break’ offer, or ‘Zumba Dance’ weekend: Take what you already have created, and repeat, refreshing the idea when needed as you learn more about your ‘micro demographic’.
Funnelling the message
Running through all of these strategies is the ability to communicate directly with the target customer, through an email ‘funnel’. Just as you will target emails at particular demographics for particular offers, you must also judge when to send emails, and with what frequency. Guests who have already stayed at your hotel are relatively easy to reach in a targeted way, but how do you target the unknown potential guests? This is where email and social media can work together. Social media is a great tool for showing your brand values and trailing upcoming events. If this is accompanied by a teaser to invite new contacts to subscribe to your emails, then you have a direct route to harvesting new addresses for your database. Offer discounts for stays, or vouchers to give as gifts for family and friends. Do things that attract attention, and make the Call To Action, ‘Email us to take up this special offer.’
So with an enhanced email database from newly interested people, plus the email addresses of your existing customers, the email funnel can look like this:
1. Short introduction about your hotel
Initially email somewhat generic introductions about your hotel and what its brand and values are. Keep it simple and unambiguous, with short messaging, your logo, and an image. If there’s an upcoming seasonal activity or other event, invite a response.
2. Engaging with potential guests
The next phase of the funnel will be to engage more directly with anyone who gives an expression of interest. This can of course include anyone who has simply found you through a web search, or has been attracted by your website. At this point potential guests may be actively weighing up how your hotel compares to other competitor hotels.
3. Grabbing the opportunity to sell
The third part is to now respond to a guest’s interest, when they inquire about price and availability, a special offer or initiative. This is typically the moment when a time-based offer might be dangled for the guest to take up (and note that many of these processes can be easily achieved automatically within a modern Property Management System).
4. Sharing necessary (and extra) information about the upcoming trip
The booking is made, and now email - along with other messaging channels - can be used to confirm the details, providing the guest a permanent record. The data will also have been embedded in the PMS, being entered by the guest themselves if the Property Management System has a booking engine. This means that the guest is in control of every detail that is entered, ensuring accuracy.
Although the crucial moment of booking is now accomplished, email will continue to be used to provide personalised messaging to the guest in the time leading up to their arrival. Upselling opportunities can be suggested, such as room upgrades, or booking spa and wellness treatments. Additional information can also be sent - and will be appreciated - such as details of parking or local transport.
5. Keeping in touch after check-out
And after their stay, keep in touch with guests: Thank them for staying with you and wish them safe onward travel. As you build a relationship through email (and by monitoring and curating social media), there will be opportunities to get back in touch around seasonal initiatives, and reminders about special events and anniversaries. Guest follow-up works in nurturing the good relationship developed during their stay with your hotel.
Getting the subject line to ‘pop out’
Best hotel email practices begin with targeting and segmentation. Not every guest is interested in every activity or offer, so you need to be clear about what will appeal to who, and build your email subscriber list selectively. In some cases an address can appear in more than one email group as a guest may be interested in walking tours and culinary weekends, for example. Your aim is to build a list of subscribers who have agreed to receive your email messages and who are attracted by your marketing initiatives and ‘specials’. One of the most important attractors to achieve this is through compelling subject lines which create instant interest. Try and see the email through the eyes of the potential guest who receives it.
Will they even bother to open the email if the subject line doesn’t pique their attention? Be direct and as descriptive as possible with the subject, so that further reading is required: Come tango through the first weekend of January with us! Celebrate New Year in comfort and style at X hotel! Learn the secrets of our award winning cuisine with masterchef Z’.
Once your subject line has attracted interest, make the email copy brief, with just enough to get the guest interested: Date, activity, a brief description, and the Call To Action - Drop us an email for further details.
And naturally, your email will be branded with your logo, and have a single high quality image which illustrates the offer.
Making hotel email marketing easy
Now if all this sounds like a lot of work, the good news is that there are many easy email marketing tools available to automate processes. These include Maileon, Mailerlite, and Mailchimp, all offering similar facilities at different pricing levels (and even free at certain capacities) to make the creation and maintenance of a subscriber email funnel a breeze. There are also many touchpoints available across the web to see and sample best practice hotel email templates, including helloshift and Canary - which are well worth checking out for formats that cover each stage of the email funnel.
What’s more, any hotel equipped with a modern cloud-based PMS is already well ahead of the game in the ability to communicate with guests by email, because it is so rich in embedded information. It’s something we know a lot about at SabeeApp, because we’ve been operating exclusively in the hotel and hospitality industry worldwide for more than 10 years. Get in touch, and book a free no obligation demo. We’d be happy to show what SabeeApp can do for your hotel, hostel or apartment.