Email marketing for hotels

One of the most practical and economical ways for your hotel to reach guests and increase direct reservations is through email marketing.

While there are multiple email marketing channels that you can use to market your hotel, email marketing is a cost-effective, easy approach to marketing that still produces excellent results.

Learn how to succeed in hotel email marketing and enjoy all of its great benefits by reading this comprehensive guide!

Why do you need email marketing for hotels?

The following are some of email marketing's primary benefits for hoteliers:

1. Engagement with customers

Customers and potential customers are more likely to trust your hotel for their next experience as they become more engaged with your brand. If you deliver on your promises, they may also recommend your company to their friends and relatives.

2. Brand recognition

By regularly delivering email campaigns to subscribers, you increase their familiarity with your brand. Inform them of your most recent promotions or post testimonials showcasing the special guest experience they'll have at your hotel.

3. Increased ROI

You’ll definitely love this one! You'll start to see your ROI increasing and conversions skyrocketing as you establish strong brand awareness and consumer engagement levels through email marketing.

Hotel email marketing best practices

Here is a useful list of best practices to keep in mind while crafting your hotel emails so that you don't make common errors or forget to do anything.

Best practice #1: Use concise and clear subject lines

Your subject line has the potential to make or break your emails. In order to entice readers to open and read your emails, clearly state your message in the subject line.

Best practice #2: Try to attract returning guests

Don't miss the chance to email returning visitors frequently with discounts and promotions since it's always easier to get bookings from customers you already know and have a relationship with.

Best practice #3: Collect and use customer data

Every hotel guest who makes an online reservation is aware that they must be willing to share their email address (in order to receive their confirmation email and other important information from the hotel). Always get this information at the time of check-in or booking and use it to quickly get back in contact with your customers.

Best practice #4: Include call-to-actions at all times

A clear call-to-action (CTA) has the potential to encourage click-throughs and responses.

Best practice #5: Optimise send times

Send personalised emails that speak to the needs of your guests. Keep in mind their time zone and send emails when they are most likely to be available to read them.

Best practice #6: Continue to segment your list

In order to better personalise the emails you send to each guest, you can optimise segmenting as you gather more information about your guests and their behaviour, taking into account things like room types, shopping patterns, stay dates, etc.

Best practice #7: Choose an email marketing software

You can't just rely on manual planning if you want to send regular, relevant email messages to your subscribers that have high open rates and convert over time. To make sure that both your current and potential customers receive emails that are relevant, you need a more reliable solution.

You need an email marketing automation software that enables you to centralise all of your procedures in order to effectively market your hotel. You can easily organise all your email marketing campaigns with the help of email service providers like Mail Blaze.

Best practice #8: Write great email copy

Writing concise, creative email copy that matches your tone of voice is crucial if you want to effectively communicate with your audience. Everything begins with the subject line of your email, which ought to be enticing enough to encourage recipients to open it.

Email campaign ideas for hotels

Now that you know some hotel email marketing best practices, it’s time to see what content you can email to your valued customers.

You'll realise that there are many options and room for creativity when you start considering the content you could use for your email campaigns.

You could try the following ideas:

1. Holiday promos

Give guests every reason to stay at your hotel during their vacations so that they can go exploring and spend time with their loved one(s).

2. Seasonal emails

Send intriguing seasonal emails to your target audience all year to persuade them to take a winter vacation, a summer vacation, or a spring getaway to make great memories.

3. News and updates

Informing your database of any noteworthy events involving your hotel could be the push some potential guests need to finally make a reservation or make another trip back. So, take time to send out relevant updates that they’ll appreciate.

4. Discount emails

Send an email to travellers providing a temporary discount if you need to raise occupancy for a weekend quickly.

5. Blog posts

With the versatility that blogs provide, you can inform, educate, and promote to subscribers while going into greater detail on why your hotel is fantastic for guests.

Time to thrive

Hotel email marketing campaigns continue to be one of the finest ways to entice returning customers, encourage participation and even advertise room upgrades to guests. The fact that hotels don't have to invest much money to send emails makes them one of the best ROI marketing channels. Any hotel should give this high ROI marketing channel top priority, ​​whether it's promoting certain profitable rooms or increasing hotel website traffic.

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