Most digital marketers know that email is one of the hardest digital marketing channels around but, did you know that it’s also one of the best converting? Hotel marketing solutions should be focused on areas that deliver paying guests to your hotel and that means, you need to create emails that your subscribers actually want to read. Email can be a difficult channel to get right but, with the following tips, you will find it much easier to create content that delivers traffic and conversions. Read on to find out how to improve your open and click through rates (and ultimately your email conversion rate) by making just a few simple changes to your email marketing approach.
1. Decide on a format
Regardless of how often you send out an email shot, you should have a structured, uncluttered format in mind. If you approach every email shot with a blank piece of paper, you may find that your mail shots end up being a real mix of different content types and muddled calls to action. If you’re guilty of having no clear format, and placing blog posts next to promotions, next to images, news and offers, you’re likely leaving your reader confused.
Make a point of creating a clean, concise and uncluttered format for your email marketing. You may need to create a couple of different content types – one for emails that showcase your best new content and another that’s purely for special offers for example. Having a clear focus will make it that much easier and more welcoming for readers, leaving them more likely to want to engage with your message and read what you have to say.
2. Figure out what types of content your guests and potential guests enjoy
Now that you have your templates and formats set, you can think about the kinds of content your subscribers are actively going to want to consume.
You can spend as much or as little time as you want on this but, the more effort you put in to understanding which content resonates, the more successful your emails will be. Your existing
hotel marketing solutions will provide a wealth of data:
• Which pages on site have the longest time on page?
• What kinds of social media posts generate the most likes, comments and shares?
• Which blog posts have been the most popular in the last three of six months?
• Which PPC keywords generate the best click throughs and conversions?
• Which organic search terms generate the most traffic to your site?
As you sort through all of this data, you’ll glean a wealth of insight. You’ll learn not only which keywords prompt visits – so you can include them in subject lines and content – but you’ll also see a pattern emerging of the most popular types of content you create. Simply by determining which social media posts do well will give you ideas of what to include in your emails.
Listing out the top 3 or 4 blog posts from the last month should give you plenty of subject areas to explore for your next mail shot.
3. Check you have a balance of information and promotion
All of us have subscribed for newsletters based on the promise of an exclusive offer or a discount code. Even if you use that as a call to action to build your subscriber list, you’ll quickly turn readers off if you bombard them with emails which all focus on book, book, book.
To create emails that your guests and potential hotel guests want to read, create a mix of informational or entertainment led pieces, backed up with a smaller proportion of room and rate promotions. A good rule of thumb to get started is the 80/20 rule, with 80% of your email content educational, informative and entertaining and just 20% sales orientated.
4. Experiment with subject lines
Your subject line needs to be both enticing and effective. Carry out A/B testing using a small test group to measure which subject line works best before you do a main send. This ensures you give your email newsletter the best possible chance of success – after all, you may have got the content spot on but, if the subject line doesn’t encourage the recipient to open the email, your efforts will be for nothing.
Email marketing is an excellent and potentially profitable addition to your hotel marketing solutions mix but, it does require just as much time and effort as any other channel. If your emails aren’t working as well as you’d like, get in touch with
Digital Hotelier to find out how we can help.
