Email Marketing is the hotels component for their marketing and online strategy

It can create revenue in the past, present and future customers in a cost-effective way.

Why it makes sense?

• Serves as both direct-response vehicle for your brand
• Creates a personalized interactive relationship with your customers
• Targeted promotions to entice customers
• Plants seed in the mind of customers for future travel plans
• Retains customers new and old
• A less expensive form of marketing available

Now that the everyone is abiding by the  General Data Protection Regulation you will not get unsolicited emails and most of the people who want to receive from you opt-in. It is now permission-based email marketing that is more advantageous to your company.

Case Study:

Opening a Hotel

You can send weekly email campaigns to the most robust travel agencies and agents available. 

The ideal campaign gets the hotel name in front of both of the corporate and leisure travel agents allowing them to come and visit the promo hotel site. They can review the web-only specials and register.

Ways a hotel can ask permission:

• Sign up guess book
• Offer a promotion/special discount
• Refer a friend
• Follow up questionnaire
• E-survey

What steps should you make to get started?

1 You have to choose the right email marketing platform for your needs like Taximail.

You have to know the size of the database and what sort of emails you want to send out. You’ll want to familiarise yourself with your country’s laws on customer privacy and data protection, to ensure you have your guests’ permission to contact them.

Credit: http://sea.pcmag.com/e-mail/5813/guide/the-best-email-marketing-software-of-2018

Taximail is in the first category, free to medium pricing with the same features as mentioned above.

2 Importing Customer Data

The information you keep about your guests is the basis for all your future email marketing activities— you can personalize your emails email better!

For starters, you’ll need to have their email addresses stored somewhere. If you want to send out a “Your Upcoming Stay” email, you’ll also need their reservation details and time of booking.

Like Taximail there are many way imports your data into the system. There are a few ways in which you can easily import your data, and steps to import it.

It’s time for you to get creative with your customer data and work it into your campaigns. This is where email marketing basics can really be fun.

3 Designing a winning campaign

To run an effective and well-timed email marketing campaign you need to decide the best approach to your customers.

For example, you could email upcoming guests a short while before their confirmed check-in date with a chance for them to upgrade their room. This simple campaign is evidence of how powerful email marketing basics can be. Iy will make your guest excited about their stay and upsell opportunity.

Segmentation is the Key, you can, for example, filter your customer database to select those living within a certain city close to your property and send them a “Weekend Escape” email. Once you’ve designed your campaign don’t forget to test it before you hit send.

4 Track your campaigns

The success of an email marketing campaign can be measured on different metrics, depending on what you want to determine.

These are the basic benchmark for your campaign:

Open rate: the percentage of recipients opening your email. This shows if recipients are interested in receiving emails from you and how engaging your subject line is.

Click–through rate: the percentage of recipients clicking in your email. This is how you can tell if the content of your email is powerful enough to make the reader want to click through and take the action.

Bounce rate: the percentage of recipients whose mail server rejected the email. There are various reasons why your email may bounce, spam being the most.

Unsubscribe rate: the percentage of recipients who unsubscribed after receiving your