How to Get More Hotel Bookings Through Email Marketing
It’s so easy to overlook email marketing in a world of social media, but you’d be wise not to — it can actually be one of the most powerful weapons in your marketing artillery!
If you want to increase direct bookings for your hotel, email marketing is a great place to start. Let’s take a look at a few ways you can improve your open and clickthrough rates.
Choose a better subject line
How often do you receive emails only to bin them straight away? Probably every day.
So what makes you open some emails and discard others? Well, obviously some are important and you know you need to read them, but what about the marketing ones?
It all comes down to the subject line. Of course, some things just don’t appeal to you — you’re never going to open an email on the top 10 ways to cook steak if you’re a vegetarian — but chances are you’re losing out on potential and existing customers who are interested in what you have to say, they just don’t know it because your subject line is…well, rubbish.
Think about the length. Don’t make your subject line too long — your recipients are unlikely to spend more than a few minutes checking through their emails, so don’t waste their time with pointless words. Keep it short, keep it snappy — emails with subject lines under 10 characters tend to do best.
You also need to choose your words carefully. If you’re overstuffing your subject lines with words like “Offer”, “Deal” and “FREE!!!” you run the risk of landing right in the spam folder. Filters pick up on these kinds of trigger words, so be careful and be original.
Think about brightening up a drab subject line by using emojis. This is bound to have conflicting opinions, but emojis can make your email stand out and increase click throughs.
Try A/B testing some different subject lines to see which ones get more open rates.
Work on your content
One of the most common errors marketers make when writing email copy is filling it with too many words. When you strip down your content to its bare bones, it’s much more effective. They key is to say what you want to say with as little words as possible.
Think about your audience: Who are they? What do they want to read? Not what do you want to tell them, what do they want to read!
Think about tone of voice and write for the kind of audience you aim to attract. Tailor it to their needs. If you’re a hotel based in Camden with live music events, a bar and a burger restaurant, you’re going to use some very different vernacular to that of a 5 star hotel based in Bournemouth with a spa and a golf course.
Email marketing in general is pretty visual. No one has time to read lengthy pieces of content, so if your email is promoting news, articles or anything else wordy, make sure you include a small snippet and link to the full story online. Work instead with eye-catching designs and high-quality photos of locations and hotel rooms to get your readers itching with the travelpox.
It’s all about catering to your audience. If they like what they read, they’ll keep on reading instead of hitting the unsubscribe button.
Tell them how they’ll benefit
Your email will belong to one a few different groups: newsletter, promotional email/lead nurturing, digest, personal email, and transactional email being the key types.
Depending on which email you send, you’ll need to adapt your language and message. You’re probably thinking about lead nurturing or promotional if you’re trying to get more direct bookings.
How will the reader benefit from clicking through to your site? Will they save money? Learn something? Enter a contest? Then you need to tell them!
People aren’t going to visit your site just because; you need to lure them in by telling them what awesome things lie beyond that blue link.
Let them know exactly how they’ll benefit by booking directly with you rather than using a booking site — whether that’s getting a free breakfast, tickets to a local attraction, or saving money.
Be more targeted
The beauty of using email marketing platforms, like MailChimp for example, is that you can make your email marketing more targeted. This will help you send the right emails to the right people to get higher opening and clickthrough rates.
Some of the ways you can be more targeted include:
- Target by age. You can tailor your message to the age group you want to appeal to. For example, sending a promotional offer including suggestions of local nightclubs to people aged between 18 and 30, while sending a separate email about the treatments at your hotel spa to those aged between 30 and 60.
- Target by location. You could try offering discounted rooms to your contacts who live far away, and discounted tickets to local attractions to those who live close by.
- Target by past behaviour. Guests that have checked in as a family? Try emailing them a list of family based activities like theme parks and child-friendly attractions. Guests who have checked in as a couple? Suggest the most romantic restaurants.
You’re far more likely to get more hotel booking if you target your email marketing and tailor your content to the reader.
Email marketing is a bit of a science experiment, which is a good thing and a bad thing.
While it may take a few tries to get the perfect formula, at least you have a reliable way of tracking the results and monitoring what works and what doesn’t.
The key things to remember are to keep emails short and sweet, and think about what people want to read.
find out more
