Achieving Greater Email Marketing

In today’s society, email marketing continues to be the most popular digital marketing channel among businesses, so it is fair  to say that when you do it, you want to be doing it right.  So what is considered to be great email marketing? Images, content, offers? Possibly. Or is it in fact the effort being put in behind the scenes that really counts.

 

Consistency

The tourism industry is always a tricky one to determine how often you should be communicating.  If you want your email marketing to be effective, it’s best to work out a schedule of how often you are going to communicate to your guests. Nobody like’s being bombarded with emails, it’s quite annoying and often just ends up in the junk mail folder. However, if they are only receiving one email every few months you may find that they will lose interest and possibly un-subscribe. The idea is  to be consistent, but within reason.

 

Personalising Emails

Within marketing, something a bit more personal than the stock standard ‘Hey Subscriber’ can go a long way. This is a functionality achieved by a simple bit of coding and one in which most of eTourism’s clients use for their email marketing. The key is to ensure you have a default message in place for those recipients that haven’t provided their first name. Something like a simple ‘Hi’ will still be much more appealing, rather than a ‘Dear Valued Guest’. First names aside, there is also much more you can do to personalise emails given the right coding. This kind of personalisation falls under the category of Targeting. 

 

Targeting your Email Marketing

Targeting, or segmenting your guest database with separate messages can often be more effective than sending out a bulk email to 5,000 subscribers with the same generic message. Depending on the type of information you are collecting from your guests, will depend on which way you can go about segmenting them and this also allows you to write content to suit. Geographically for example, if you are based in Queensland, you may want to send a ‘Escape the Winter Blues’ message to those guests from Melbourne and Sydney and a ‘Weekend Break’ message to those already within the state.

 

Measurement

Measurement is the ideal way to keep track of how well your emails have performed. From open rates, click-throughs and bounce rates to how many people have unsubscribed, it can all be measured. From these metrics you can determine what is and isn’t working and what improvements to make for the next campaign. All of eTourism’s client campaigns are tracked and measured using Google Analytics, allowing for accurate statistics not only across their email marketing, but their online marketing as a whole.

 

So, by combining some basic consistency for your emails, simple personalisation and targeting, all tracked and measured, you’re on your way to achieving greater email marketing for your hotel or resort. 

Related blog posts:
- Opening Up - Tactics to Achieve Higher Open Rates
- How to Personalise you Email Marketing Campaign
- Why List Segmentation is Crucial to Your Resort's Email Marketing Campaign