Maintaining a high click-through rate is essential if you want your hotel’s marketing campaign to do what is actually designed to: drive website traffic and generate bookings.
If you’ve been running your hotel’s email marketing campaign for a while, no doubt you’re accustomed to some inconsistency in results when it comes to CTR. So, what can be done to boost this important metric and maximise the efficacy of your email communications with guests?
These 6 tips are a great place to start.
1. Go Easy On The Text
The shorter and snappier your email copy, the better the chance that your guests will read it and find out about your offer before getting bored.
You should also consider front-loading your copy by putting the most important details, headings and keywords at the start of sentences and paragraphs to engage guests that are skim-reading. For example:
Instead of:
Enter our Facebook competition to win a special Valentine’s package, write
Win a special Valentine’s package by entering our Facebook competition
It’s a minor change that could make a major difference to your CTR.
2. Facilitate Easy Social Sharing
Research shows that emails which include at least one social sharing button consistently drive up to 30% higher click through rates than those without. Although the guest reading your email may not want to take advantage of your offer themselves, they may know a friend or family member who does.
3. Segment Your Guest Contact List
If you want to maximise the proportion of guests that click on your email CTAs, you’ve got to provide them with relevant content. By segmenting your contact list based on your guest personas, the contact’s stage in the booking funnel and other key criteria, you can reach out to your guests with the most targeted offers possible. And if your offers and promos speak directly to your audience’s needs, it’s a no-brainer that they’ll generate more clicks than generic content sent to everyone.
4. Keep it Simple
Much like landing pages, the best marketing emails are stripped back and distraction-free. That means including multiple offers within one email, or adding a header with your website navigation, is probably best avoided.
In general, email messaging works best when it has one specific goal. If your goal is to promote your hotel’s Facebook presence, that’s what you should focus your content around. Don’t let your guests get distracted by your blog posts, Twitter account or anything else.
5. Inspire a Sense of Urgency
Creating a sense of ‘limited time’ urgency around your offers may be a cliché, but as a tactic for driving clicks, it works. Don’t feel bad – if you’ve taken the time to segment your email marketing list properly, you’re still providing guests with a tempting offer tailored to their specific needs as a traveller.
6. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly
No matter your target demographic, you can bet your guests are accessing your emails primarily through their Smartphones. So, if you’re not currently optimising your hotel’s emails for mobile, it goes without saying that you’re missing out on a huge number of clicks!
What are you doing to keep your email click-through rates high? Let us know in the comments below!
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- 5 Simple Steps for Powerful Email Marketing
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- 3 Email Marketing Tips To Engage and Excite Your Subscribers
