Whatever new social platform your guests are adopting, email remains a powerful and reliable way to engage your audience from first contact right through to booking and (hopefully) return trip.
Thanks to analytics data and your own knowledge of your guests, you have a huge wealth of data at your fingertips to help personalise your email messaging, drive bookings and increase guest loyalty with only the most relevant, targeted offers.
Want to get started? Here are 3 ways you can use the data you already have to personalise your email marketing campaigns and maximize your results.
1. Segment Travellers By Demographic Data
Unless you literally only opened the doors of your hotel to guests yesterday, you already have access to tonnes of information you can put to good use in your email marketing efforts. These include:
- Sex and age
- Marital status
- Lifestyle
- The countries and regions they come from
You can also enable Google Analytics to collect demographics data, or collect this information yourself using surveys and questionnaires. However you collect the information, don’t let it go to waste. Even segmenting by something as broad as gender will help you reach out to your audience with more targeted offers. For example, your older female guests are probably more likely to appreciate and respond to discounts on your spa services then younger male guests.
2. Get To Grips With Transactional Data To Create More Relevant Offers
In addition to demographic and lifestyle data, you have access to transactional data revealing what your guests have booked and how. Did they book a room for full price or take advantage of a discount? Perhaps they booked a group of rooms through a business account? What about when they made the booking – was it during a school holiday?
Using this information in combination with your demographic data, you can begin to get even more targeted and personalised with your email segments. For example, you might discover that corporate guests are far more likely to pay full price for a room – perhaps because they are able to book using company funds. With this in mind you might choose to direct less discounts and offers at business clients, while enticing them with other perks such as free room upgrades, or gourmet in-room coffee and business journals.
3. Take Advantage of Behavioural Data To Understand and Help Your Guests
This type of data gives you valuable insights into your guests’ travel booking behaviour and preferences. Did they arrive on your hotel’s website after following a link from social media? If so, you can make sure your email messaging ties in with your social content. Do they open your emails? If not, it’s time to start experimenting with more eye-catching and targeted subject lines. Did they abandon a booking before completion? Then contact them with personalised messaging to do all you can to finalise the transaction.
Final Thoughts…
In any kind of email marketing you send out to your guests, focus on how you can help them and enhance their stay. Whether you include menus of local recommended restaurants, photos of a local winery or your latest video tour, when you put the up-sell aside for a moment and focus on providing content that is genuinely helpful, interesting and relevant to the intended audience you’ll start seeing results.
How do you use data to personalise your hotel’s email campaigns? Let us know in the comments below!
RELATED PAGES AND BLOG POSTS:
- 5 Simple Email Marketing Resolutions For 2017
- These 3 Subject Line Tips Will Boost Your Email Open Rates
- Check These 5 Things Before Hitting 'Send' On Your Hotel's Next Email Marketing Campaign
