Why Owning Your Hotel Email Marketing Strategy is Key

RoomStay

Hotel Marketing

November 16, 2022

10 mins read

Own your hotel email marketing strategy and learn how to create engaging emails that drive bookings and revenue. Read our blog to find out how.

Scroll to read

Hotel owners have always known the importance of email marketing - it's the best way to connect with guests and drive value, credibility, and brand.

Hotel email marketing campaigns are an extremely powerful digital marketing strategy that can be used to develop relationships with guests, collect & own guest data, deliver valuable offers, and drive bookings & revenue.

Email marketing can be a powerful tool for driving direct bookings for hotels. By understanding how it works and what the benefits are, hotels can develop strategies that produce a great ROI.

How email marketing works

Email marketing is the one digital marketing channel where you own your guest's data outright allowing you to market to them directly & indirectly (assuming they have given you permission to do so!)

By using email campaigns that are tailored to specific activity & engagement, you can generate more subscribers & guests that will provide you with the opportunity to market your hotel's latest offers and events.

Options available to you with regards to email marketing campaigns, whether they be emails that have been manually sent or automated:

Hotel Email Marketing Examples

Whether you select hotel marketing automation or create your emails manually, there are multiple email marketing options to help you reach and connect with guests:

Welcome series - start building that relationship with your guests before they've booked

Abandon cart - reacquire potential guests who failed to complete a booking in a certain amount of time

Churn guests - reacquire those past guests & inactive subscribers who haven't booked or interacted with you for an extended period

Most valued guests - reward those guests who have booked with you time and time again

Upcoming events & offers - let your guests know what's happening at your hotel now and in the future

Reviews & feedback - this information is important to the growth of your hotel as a service provider

Big campaigns, events, sales, offers and operational updates are typically one-off campaigns created and manually scheduled on your email marketing platform. But the majority of your hotel communications should be through email marketing automation. Automating your hotel marketing allows you to create set-and-forget emails that can be customised based on customer preferences, behaviours, booking and stay dates.

Due to segmentation and personalisation, automated hotel marketing emails typically generate the highest engagement rates, providing long-term value with only minor maintenance required.

What are the benefits of email marketing for hotels?

Email marketing is the perfect way to connect with your hotel guests. Not only is it an effective way to drive leads and sales, but it's also a great way to keep them updated on the latest hotel news, offers, upgrades, and events.

Automated email sequences help you track the success of your campaigns and allow you to make necessary changes as needed to optimise bookings & revenue.

Additionally, opt-in forms allow you to collect contact information from your guests so that they can be contacted directly should they have any questions or require more information from your hotel.

By doing all of this, email marketing for hotels can help you build a stronger relationship with your guests and create lasting memories.

Provides constant communication with your guests

As we've previously mentioned, it's an excellent way to stay in touch with your guests and keep them updated on important events or offers.

By sending out strategic emails, you can personalize the messages for each individual, ensuring that they feel special and appreciated.

This ensures that they are more likely to open and read your emails, which in turn results in better conversion rates.

Allows you to personalize the experience for each guest

By emailing your guests with relevant offers and updates, you can keep them informed about your hotel in the most efficient way possible.

In addition, email marketing creates a sense of connection between you and your guest - resulting in increased loyalty. You can also target email campaigns based on their engagement & activity with your website & emails - which ensures that every subscriber gets the best experience possible.

Can help you build trust and rapport with your guests

Email marketing is a great way to connect with your target market which can lead to increased bookings & revenue either directly through them or indirectly from those who have been recommended.

Whether it's that carefully curated welcome series of emails or it's sending them offers based on their birthday, there are a number of ways you can build loyalty with your guests.

Gives you the ability to track engagement and response rates

Email marketing is one of the most engaging and effective ways to keep in touch with your guests & non-guests. By segmenting them by location, type of guest, or time of day, you can track how many people have opened your email and responded.

This way, you know exactly who is interested in what you are selling and can personalise & optimise future campaigns accordingly.

Most email marketing platforms include tracking tools that make it easy to see which channels are generating the most leads. This lets you focus your efforts on the channels that are most likely to result in sales.

Cut down on advertising costs

Email marketing allows you to improve guest experience, track the performance of campaigns, and make better business decisions when it comes to marketing your hotel; especially when you're able to own that data.

The biggest advantage here is that it drives down advertising costs because you're able to use data that you've been given permission to leverage and thus cutting back on ad spending in other channels such as social media and PPC.

By cutting down on advertising costs in this way, you are able to keep more money aside for other important things in your business such as expanding your marketing channels or specific strategies.

So email marketing isn't only an effective tool for generating leads and nurturing guest relationships - it's also a cost-effective strategy that helps boost overall business performance.

Increase guest engagement

Guest engagement is the key to building strong relationships with guests and retaining them. By using email marketing, you can connect with your target audience in a personal way and keep them updated about your hotel's activities.

You can also send special offers, discount codes, or other valuable content that will promote loyalty and encourage guest return visits. You can take this a step further and create referral programs to leverage existing guests into new guests.

Generate bookings and revenue

Email marketing is an essential marketing tool for hotel owners who want to generate bookings and revenue, but who are also interested in increasing their direct booking market share.

You can also use email campaigns to collect data on your guests' interests and needs in order to better serve them in the future. This way, both you and your guest come out ahead in a variety of ways.

Monitor marketing results in real time

Keeping your guests engaged and up-to-date with the latest news and offers is key to success in email marketing.

Automated email campaigns are one great way to do this, as they allow you to send out relevant updates without any need for extra staff or time spent on marketing overall. It's very much time, cost & resource efficient.

Making use of email marketing also allows you to track the results of your campaign in real-time, so you can make changes as needed. This way, you can ensure that all your efforts go towards achieving the greatest possible impact and results.

The Cookie-less future

With a cookie-less future on the horizon, owning your guest data through a channel such as email marketing is incredibly important.

As we’ve mentioned a number of times now, owning this data opens up so many marketing opportunities for your hotel that go beyond what OTA’s can offer.

Why not leverage that and turn it to your advantage with an efficient, and targeted, email marketing strategy for your hotel?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there anything else that I should keep in mind when planning and executing an email campaign for a hotel?

When planning and executing an email campaign for a hotel, make sure to keep the following in mind:

Make sure your sender address is clear so that recipients can easily find the email.
Use images and/or videos to engage your guests and keep them engaged. This way, they'll have a better experience understanding and filling out your campaign's forms.
Keep your email subject line short and to the point. This will help the recipients skim through the email more quickly, avoiding any confusion or frustration. But make sure it stands out from the rest of the emails they're receiving on a daily basis.
Make it easy for them to sign up to your email list
Conversely, make it easy for them to unsubscribe (but they won't want to if you're always delivering them value)
Speaking of which - always strive to offer value. This can be done through blog posts, videos and images in your emails that go beyond selling hotel rooms.

Can I automate my email marketing activities to increase engagement and conversion rates?

There are a few ways to automate your hotel email marketing activities in order to increase engagement and conversion rates:

By automating your email marketing strategy, you can save time and effort while helping to improve the response rate of your email campaigns. Automation tools within the many email marketing platforms available make it easy to create and send emails without the need for heavy resources.
Email marketing can help you stay connected with your guests and keep them updated on your latest news and events. By using email subject lines that are personal and relevant to their interests, you can increase the likelihood of them opening and engage with your email campaigns.
You can also segment your email campaigns based on guest interests in order to create more effective outreach messages. If you're running a promotion for email newsletter subscribers, make sure to include subscriber-specific subject lines in your campaigns. This will help ensure that everyone sees the promotion.
Hotel marketing automation can help you manage correspondence by automatically sending follow-up emails after subscribers open and interact with your emails. This way, you can focus on more engaging content and build stronger relationships with your guests instead.

What types of content should I be sending my guests via email?

When it comes to hotel email marketing, one of the most essential things you can do is ensure that your emails are easy for guests to digest and understand.

This way, you'll avoid potential inbox overload and ensure that your guests get the most out of their email experience. Like we said before, always think value first with the content of your emails.

Additionally, make use of strong visuals and catchy text elements to draw your guests' attention. And don't forget to target your email campaign towards a wider audience - not just those who've stayed in your hotel in the past.

By doing so, you'll increase the chances of driving non-guests towards room booking pages and ultimately bookings.

Conclusion

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with your hotel guests and own your data all at the same time.

By using hotel email marketing, you can engage and communicate with your guests in a personalised way, keeping them updated on the latest hotel news and events.

Not to mention, email marketing is cost-effective and can be tailored to the type of hotel you have or the type of guest you typically attract.

RoomStay

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

Share on LinkedIn

Click to copy

Up Next

Direct Bookings • December 4, 2022

What To Do When Your Hotel Direct Booking Strategy Isn’t Working

RoomStay