Hotels are a unique ecosystem. Aside from the fact that many of them are located in beautiful places, their guest’s expectations are often very high. When you take into consideration the amount of money that guests are willing to spend, it’s not difficult to see why hotel email marketing would be so important.
In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about effective hotel email marketing – from developing a strategy to creating a content calendar.
The Importance Of Hotel Email Marketing
Hotels have been known to have one of the most sophisticated email marketing strategies in the industry. Studies have shown that a staggering 68% of hotel guests have purchased an item or service after being contacted via email marketing.
This equates to about 1.7 million hotel guests who have purchased an item or service due to an email marketing campaign. If you’re running a hotel or looking to run a hotel, you need to understand how important a strategy email marketing is. Here are some of the key reasons why.
Attracting New Guests To Your Hotel
Hotels have always been in the business of attracting guests to their properties. However, with increasing privacy concerns and data protection regulations, they are now investing more in acquiring new guests and keeping them engaged with their brand.
According to HubSpot Blogs research, guests who have received promotional emails from a hotel are about 14% more likely to stay at that hotel compared to those who haven’t received any promotional emails.
This makes sense. After all, there’s a reason why many hotels have their email accounts connected to their websites. They want to make sure that visitors can contact the hotel about upcoming events or special offers.
Increasing Guest Engagement Levels
Hotels are becoming more intelligent about their guest’s experiences and recognizing that good engagement levels lead to increased revenue. If a hotel’s guests are not engaged with the brand, it can lead to a decline in revenue.
As part of their research, HubSpot Blogs found that guests who received promotional emails from a hotel were 16% more likely to sign up for a loyalty program and 12% more likely to stay in touch with the hotel via mobile phones.
The more you engage with your guests, the more they will engage with your brand. You can start by simply offering excellent service and providing them with valuable information. Further, you can encourage them to visit your website or social media channels to stay in touch with the latest news.
Boosting Online Visibility
Hotels are looking for ways to increase their online visibility. However, they often don’t have the budget to increase their social media presence or pay for online marketing. That’s where email marketing comes in. Hotel guests can more easily find information online, which leads to increased conversions.
According to HubSpot Blogs research, guests who have received promotional emails from hotels are about 12% more likely to look up information about the brand online and 6% more likely to make a purchase.
This makes sense too. If someone is looking for a hotel near them, they will naturally resort to the internet to find it. This is why it’s important to have a strategic, expert email marketing campaign.
Building A Profile For Future Marketing
Hotels have a treasure trove of customer data that they can use for future marketing campaigns. However, the data is scattered all over different systems and it’s difficult to get a clear picture of what’s happening. Marketing automation tools like HubSpot allow hotels to build a clear picture of their customer and engage with them on a more personal level. This makes future marketing much easier and more effective.
Hotels can use HubSpot to create automated email campaigns that send out information about upcoming events or special offers. In doing so, they can nurture their relationship with that guest and hopefully, increase retention and growth.
Raising Brand Awareness
Hotels can use email marketing to raise brand awareness. Often, guests will be unaware of a brand’s existence until they are offered a discounted rate or shown compelling content.
If someone is looking for a hotel in a specific location, they will often visit reviews to learn more about the hotel or look for its social media accounts to see what its guests are saying about the property. In doing so, they may come across your email marketing campaign and realize that the hotel they’re looking at is associated with your brand.
This is why it’s important to establish a good email relationship with your audience. Once you have their email address, you can send out information about your brand, its values, and how to best engage with it.
Cost Effective
Last but not least, we have the cost effectiveness of email marketing versus traditional marketing methods. As we mentioned above, hotels can struggle with keeping up with the increasing costs of traditional marketing. This is where email marketing comes in. The cost per acquisition, or CPA, for email marketing is dramatically lower than it is for traditional marketing.
Further, HubSpot Blogs research shows that, on average, guests who have received promotional emails from hotels have spent, on average, $1,400 less per trip than guests who haven’t received any promotional emails. This is a significant amount of money that a hotel can save if they implement email marketing as part of their strategy.
Now, you might be thinking that sending out regular emails will bore your guests. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The key is in the content that you put in those emails. Make sure that the content is relevant and interesting, and that it will make your guests want to open the email and read it. Pro-Tip: Use a tool like MailChimp to create emails with pre-made HTML content that you can simply copy and paste to send out.
Bringing It All Together
Now that you have a good understanding of what email marketing is and why it’s so important to hotels, it’s time to put it all together. Here are the steps you should follow to create an effective hotel email marketing strategy:
Step one: Set a benchmark and define the metrics you’ll use to measure your success
It’s important to set a benchmark and define the metrics you’ll use to measure your success. This will help you determine how much you should be spending on email marketing and how to track your results. Set a benchmark and decide how you’ll measure your success. For example, if you want to see an increase in repeat guests and loyalty program memberships, you might want to consider measuring these metrics.
Further, you might want to consider looking into how many people opened and read your email campaign. If your goal is simply to grow your email list, the number of people who opened your email will be a good indicator of how far you’ve come.
Step two: Identify the type of content your audience is interested in
The next step is to identify the type of content your audience is interested in. As we mentioned above, guests for hotels are often wealthy individuals who are looking for luxurious experiences. If your goal is to attract this type of guest, you will want to focus on creating content that is attractive and interesting to them.
To achieve this, you can either look at the types of content that your competitors are producing or you can use tools like Google Analytics to find out what content your audience is interacting with. For example, if you’re viewing a blog post about luxury hotels, you can go back to Google Analytics and see which ads were attached to the blog post.
Further, Google Analytics will tell you how many people were clicking on the different links included in the blog post. This will help you identify the type of content your audience is interested in.
Step three: Craft an email marketing strategy that will help you achieve your goal
In step three, you will craft an email marketing strategy that will help you achieve your goal. This will be much easier to do with a clear benchmark and metrics in place. You can also use tools like MailChimp to easily create different campaign templates that will help you reach your audience. These templates can be saved and reused for future campaigns. To finish this step, you will want to consider what type of content you should be using and when you should be sending it out.