Have you ever been to Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants? If not, you’re in for a treat. Located in the heart of Cape Town, South Africa, this luxury hotel chain offers world-class service, amazing amenities, and exceptional value. Their award-winning wine lists, creative tasting menus, and overall atmosphere are what attracted me to this particular hotel in the first place. Because of their incredible location, I’ve stayed there a couple of times and always look forward to my next visit. If you have a love for Cape Town and beautiful surroundings, this hotel is a must. You’ll also feel like you’ve entered a different world when you check in with the charming staff who seem to greet you with a smile every time you visit.
As a business owner or marketer, you may be familiar with the term “loyalty program” and its applications in the travel industry. After all, establishing a loyalty program isn’t a new concept. Hotels and hospitality companies have been doing it for years. In fact, they may have started implementing these programs before you were even born! But, what exactly is a loyalty program?
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. When was the last time you stayed at a hotel and received a nice little letter welcoming you to the hotel and reminding you of the benefits of staying there? Remember those sweet, handwritten letters? That’s what a loyalty program is. It’s a marketing strategy aimed at creating long-term, brand loyalty by offering special deals, discounts, and recognition for frequent guests.
The goal of a loyalty program is to engage current and potential customers in an effort to build a long-term relationship with them. To get the most out of your email marketing campaign, you need to bear this strategy in mind. That’s why I’ve collected this valuable information for you. It might not seem obvious, but a lot goes into an effective email marketing campaign. So, let’s take a look at each part of this three-step process and how you can put it into practice.
Step one: Define your target audience.
When you set up your email marketing campaign, you’ll want to identify who you’re trying to reach. Just like with any other marketing effort, your approach should be to target the right audience with the right message. With a loyalty program, you’ll want to find out who your ideal customer is and what they want. A good place to start is by examining your analytics.
You can use tools like Google Analytics to track the behavior of your website visitors. With this information, you can determine the type of content your audience is responding to, the various platforms they’re using, and even the country they’re coming from. Being able to identify your target audience’s behavior allows you to craft an appealing message and determine the kind of offers and discounts you should provide them. For example, if you notice your target audience is primarily made up of men between the ages of 20 and 29, you may decide to focus your efforts on this demographic. You could try offering special deals to them or creating content that appeals to this audience. One important thing to keep in mind is that your audience is not a homogeneous group. You need to make sure that your offers and discounts are valuable to each member of your group. Otherwise, you may end up losing customers to your competition.
Step two: Find your triggers.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to find their triggers. These are the circumstances, events, or feelings that may encourage your audience to take action and choose your product or service.
For example, if you notice that your target audience is mostly men between the ages of 20 and 29, you may want to consider running an ad campaign encouraging this demographic to book a vacation to Cape Town. If you can persuade just one person in your audience to try your product or service, you’ve accomplished something significant.
The great thing about triggers is that you can identify several possibilities for marketing messages and offers. For example, you may want to try running an ad campaign encouraging vacationers to book a cruise ship to South Africa knowing that this country has been ravaged by pandemic during the last year. Or, you may decide to promote your spa because your target audience is mostly women and they’re probably more inclined to book a spa treatment than a cruise ship.
The list of potential triggers is endless. It could be as simple as wanting to make a special purchase for yourself or as grandiose as wanting to transform your entire life. Just keep in mind that your goal is to find the triggers that will encourage your audience to take action and do something. Once you’ve identified them, you’ll be able to tailor your strategy around this new piece of information. It can be useful to think of your triggers as keywords or search terms that you’ll use to reach customers.
Step three: Craft a compelling subject line.
The subject line of your email is almost as important as the body of the email itself. This is the line that will appear in the header of your email next to the name of the person you’re emailing. So, you’ll want to make sure that it’s compelling enough to keep your readers interested. You’ll also need to keep in mind that your email recipients are probably not your target audience. So, you’ll have to choose a tactic to get your email noticed.
One way to do this is by using a tactic known as “HIGHLY CURIOUS EXPLORATION.” This is where you use psychological research to gain a better understanding of how and why your target audience interacts with the content you create. So, let’s say that you’re trying to grow your email list for a luxury cosmetic company. Your potential customer base is mostly made up of women between the ages of 18 and 24. If you notice from your analytics, 80% of your audience is on social media. That’s where you can reach them. So, as part of your strategy, you decide to create content for your social media accounts that contains valuable information. The problem is that not all of your audience is on social media. To capture them, you need to choose a different tactic.
You may decide to utilize “Word of mouth” or “E‑A‑T” (Every other day of the week). With these strategies, you’ll want to convince your audience to trust you and, therefore, listen to what you have to say. To do this, you’re going to have to create content that is valuable and interesting to your audience and builds trust and credibility. If you want to experiment with this, try creating a blog post for free about a popular topic. Then, take a look at how your blog post performs. Does it get shared a lot? Does it have an attractive title? All of these are important. Once you’ve found the right blog post, you can use this as a launching pad for your paid promotion on social media.
Put these three steps into practice.
If you want to put into practice the steps discussed above, you’ll want to do the following: