Email marketing is a powerful tool for guest relationship management. If used effectively, it can deliver one of the highest return-on-investment of any digital marketing activity.
It is one of the longest established, yet still one of the most powerful, of all e-marketing tactics. You should aim to create a unique experience which stands apart from your competitors and attracts and connects with your audience.
Emails not only inform luxury guests about your property, but they help to retain them too.
In this article we discuss several effective tips to increase your bookings and sales with email marketing.
Top content tips
If you want to get the most out of your email marketing activities, take note of the following tips:
- Write catchy subject lines in order to attract the recipient's attraction. A great subject line is short, clear and to the point.
- Target the right audience. If you're unclear about your target market, it will be difficult to convey your message effectively.
- Be innovative. Stand out from the crowd and create email marketing campaigns that are tailored for your hotel.
- Any links should be visible and easily accessible. Don't forget to check that they work correctly.
- Be visual. Use your best imagery and be careful though that no crucial information is contained within the images.
- Recipients’ email images may be turned off or blocked in which case you run the risk of them losing your message.
Technical recommendations
- From a technical point of view, the efficiency of an email marketing campaign depends on the code. A common misconception about the HTML emails is that they can deliver everything that an HTML website can do.
- Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are lots of different ways to view an HTML email (Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, and so on) and none of them will read your HTML email exactly the same way. The more complicated the code, the more chances for error.
Practices to avoid
What you should never do:
- Purchase or rent email lists. You can legally rent or buy lists of guests who have agreed to email communications, but it's never a good idea. This tactic won't bring you clickthrough rate and conversion.
- Don't use caps. Using all caps in your subject line might get the luxury guests' attraction, but in the main rubs people up the wrong way. Try personalising your email using catchy and clever language.
- Don't use exclamation points! Exclamation points make your subject line and email look unprofessional, especially a whole bunch of them in a row. Unnecessary punctuation dilutes your message and the email is more likely to be reported as spam.
- Don't use video, flash or forms within your email. By default, most email clients don't allow rich media like flash or video. As an alternative, use an image of a video player with a play button and link your video to it.
- Don't use JavaScript within your email. Don't use Java, JavaScript, frames, ActiveX, ASP, PHP, dynamic HTML and other dynamic scripts. Most email clients won't allow these scripts to function.
- Don't include attachments in your email. If you want to send your subscribers a PDF or a document, don't attach it to the email. A much better way is to upload the attachment to your website and link to it in your email using an effective call to action button.