Email Marketing For Hotels: Step-By-Step Guide [2024]

Over the past few years, the pandemic has impeded tourists from traveling due to COVID-19 restrictions, greatly impacting the hospitality industry. With things going gradually back to normal, it’s time to promote your hotel like a pro to elevate your ROI.

Considering that 4 billion people use email daily, email campaigns should be high on your priority list when trying to reach current and prospective customers. By streamlining a successful email marketing process, you can inspire your subscribers to book their next journey asap.

Read this complete guide to learn how to thrive in email marketing for hotels and reap all its benefits!

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Why Is Email Marketing Important For Hotels?

Here are the main advantages of email marketing for hoteliers:

Brand Awareness

Firstly, when sending email campaigns consistently to subscribers, you make them more familiar with your brand and products/services. Update them about your latest offers and local events, or share reviews highlighting the unique guest experience they’ll receive at your place.

However, not every email will lead to increased conversion rates rapidly. To bring consistent results, you can gradually nurture your audience with blog posts, travel vlogs, or restaurant recommendations next to your hotel.

Customer Engagement

The more engaged customers and prospects become with your brand, the more they’ll trust your hotel for their next adventure. They can also refer your business to their friends and family if you offer what you promise.

Moreover, introducing email marketing for hotels lets businesses share their loyalty program for frequent hotel guests or past customers who paid a long visit to give them more incentives to book again. As long as your email content remains relevant, timely, and creative, these people will stay by your side.

Increased ROI

Once you build great brand awareness and customer engagement levels, you’ll start seeing your ROI rising and conversions going through the roof. Plus, the more personalized your email campaigns are, the better the results.

Overall, avoid overwhelming your email subscribers with irrelevant content that looks salesy, as this can negatively affect your email performance. Make the most of this cost-effective but game-changing digital marketing technique with slow but powerful moves.

How To Set Up An Effective Hotel Email Marketing Strategy

In this section, we’ll dive into the critical elements of a successful hotel email marketing strategy that can lead your hotel business toward a new era.

1. Choose An Email Marketing Software

If you want to send consistent and relevant email campaigns that receive high open rates and convert sustainably to your customers, you can’t solely rely on planning things manually. You need a more solid solution to ensure that your old and new customers always receive relevant emails.

To promote your hotel effectively, you need an email marketing automation platform that lets you keep all processes in one place. Email service providers like Moosend or Mailchimp help you organize all aspects of your email marketing effortlessly.

Here are the main features to look for in an email marketing platform:

Here’s what an easy-to-use dashboard looks like, where all information, from editing to performance analytics, can be found in a few clicks. Sign up for a demo or a free trial to ensure that your selected platform is an excellent fit for you and your teammates.

2. Grow Your Email List

To start nurturing your customers with outstanding campaigns, you first need to collect their email addresses to get their opt-in and comply with GDPR guidelines. Firstly, you can obtain them through website signup forms, dedicated landing pages, and lead magnets.

Here is a sign-up form placed in the email footer by the Little Nell hotel in the US:

To ensure that your website visitors will finally subscribe, clarify all the benefits they’ll earn, from offers to access to loyalty programs in exchange for their email address. You can also gather their contact information at your hotel’s reception desk upon arrival.

A critical element of successful email marketing for hotels is maintaining a healthy email list by conducting email list cleaning regularly. Thus, you’ll reduce spam complaints and secure a high deliverability rate.

Are you looking for top-notch email list cleaning software? Read this comprehensive guide and find the perfect one for you.

3. Select Different Email Types

Hotel newsletters come in many shapes and sizes. Once you’ve set your main email marketing goals, choose which email types can help you achieve them. Let’s look at the basic ones that apply to hotel businesses:

• Confirmation emails
• Promotional (upsell or cross-sell)
• Welcome email
• Pre-arrival email
• Lead nurturing campaign
• Review campaign
• Post-stay email
• VIP/Loyalty email

Each email serves a different purpose for your business for all customer journey stages. That’s why it’s important to create an email marketing plan to keep track of your campaigns and determine if your goals are met.

4. Design Pitch-Perfect Campaigns

Thankfully, most email marketing tools turn the design process into a breeze. They provide users with ready-made templates or editors that let hotel marketers create customized emails in a flash.

Most editors work the drag-and-drop way, allowing users to remove, add, or adjust the sections they want to build beautiful and converting emails. Therefore, no design and HTML knowledge are needed to create amazing campaigns.

Most successful email campaigns have a structured layout to enable the reader to find all important information at first glance. Plus, the calls to action stand out from the rest of the content.

Overall, email layouts start with the company logo, while they prompt you to place your social media icons and an unsubscribe button for those who wish to opt out. This template by Moosend is an excellent example of it, and it’s easily customized:

If you want to use this customizable template to deliver an amazing campaign to subscribers, sign up for a free Moosend account and tailor it to your needs.

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5. Nail Your Email Copywriting

To deliver the right messages to your audience, it’s important to write clear and clever email copy that suits your tone of voice. It all starts from the email subject line, which should be attractive enough to motivate subscribers to open your email.

Once you win their opens, you can capture their attention in many ways. First, you need a captivating header title that reflects your email content. Overall, your email copy should appeal to your target audience to show what your brand is made of. You can also use the fear of missing out effect to make your subscribers act faster.

Finally, your CTA copywriting is important to secure high click-through rates. Add a sense of urgency, if possible, to prompt your subscribers to take the desired action.

Moosend’s customer Grecotel found the silver lining in this tactic. It’s profound from the beginning that this email is about summer offers, and it’s written in a direct and inviting style.

6. Personalize Your Messages

According to recent stats, 80% of consumers prefer brands that offer personalized experiences. This also applies to your email marketing practices; compared to other well-known marketing channels such as social media or SEO, you can easily personalize your hotel email marketing campaigns.

Using email segmentation features, you can divide your subscribers into segments based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, behavioral or psychographic data, and location.

For example, you can send different email newsletters to business travelers and people who travel for leisure to cover each one’s needs. Someone who travels for business will probably show up again and refer you to colleagues, so make sure to inform them about your special offers.

Finally, to take your email marketing for hotels to the next level, you can combine data from your CRM solution to better understand the customer journey and make the most of this tactic.

7. Track Essential Email Metrics

To ensure that your email marketing is up and running and delivers the best ROI, you should closely monitor some important email metrics. Find them below, followed by 2022 benchmark data for your industry:

• Email open rate – 20.2% on average
• Click-through rate (CTR) – 1.4% on average
• Spam complaint rate – 0.2% on average
• Click-to-open rate – 8.7% on average
• Bounce rate
• Email ROI

These essential rates will gradually show you what your subscribers prefer or dislike. This will help you build a successful email marketing strategy for your hotel, powered by meaningful trial and error phases.

You can also utilize A/B Testing to find the most converting email variables to deliver the best option to your audience without wasting a single campaign.

5 Email Marketing Campaign Examples From Top Hotels

Let’s explore some hotel email newsletters and why they work to get inspired:

1. Hyatt Regency Email Campaign For Businesses

Subject Line: Let us take some things off your mind and your bill | Hyatt Regency Phuket Resort

Why it works: If one of your primary buyer personas is B2B, displaying all the benefits they’ll receive for trusting you is very important. In this example, Hyatt Regency nails this using a ready-made template by Moosend that outlines each campaign part perfectly.

Apart from the advantages, they also added high-quality visuals of their facilities to attract more subscribers. Finally, they added contact information so customers interested in this offer can easily reach out to the correct department.

2. Renaissance Hotels Review Email

Subject Line: Reminder: SMILES DAVIS, tell us about your stay at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel

Source

Why it works: This automated email by Rennaisance Hotels is a follow-up campaign to collect post-stay feedback from recent customers. This personalized email includes the customer’s name in the subject line and intro to capture their attention faster.

Moreover, they made the review process quick, with a scale from 1 to 10, to gather as much information as possible. This question concerns referrals which is a key aspect of successful marketing. Finally, on the email footer, they added the expiration date and some useful information for the subscribers.

3. Ambassade Hotel Welcome Email

Subject Line: Welcome to the Ambassade Hotel community

Why it works: One of the most important email campaigns new subscribers expect when joining your newsletter are welcome emails, which usually receive high open rates. Here, Ambassade Hotel created a lovely campaign with excellent elements.

They started with a warm welcome, continuing with what prospects can expect from the brand. The amazing images and copywriting emphasize the style of this hotel, aiming to attract visitors who value aesthetics. They’ve also added targeted calls-to-actions to win extra points and finally convert.

4. Venetian Resort Room Upgrade Email

Subject Line: Can we interest you in a suite?

Why it works: Do you want to indulge your customers in getting a room upgrade before their next check-in? You can step in the shoes of Venetian Resort and design a dedicated email for customers and prospects highly likely to convert.

The special deal on the head title captures the attention straight away, surrounded by stunning images of the suites. Moreover, they’ve added a sense of urgency providing subscribers with the expiration date on the top of the CTA to make those interested in the offer act fast.

5. Hilton Honors Loyalty Email Campaign

Subject line: 100% Bonus Points have been extended!

Why it works: If you want to boost your customer retention rates and give incentives to loyal customers, you can follow Hilton Honors’ approach by building a clever point system.

With this campaign, they invite customers to get 80,000 points for free before a certain date. In the email footer, the subscriber can find more information about this initiative and certain limitations. Overall, loyalty programs and referrals should be on your priority email marketing list to maintain warm customer relationships.

The Takeaways

Are you ready to take your email marketing efforts to the next level? Follow this step-by-step guide and elevate your ROI by designing amazing, timely, and relevant campaigns for your target audience.

Moreover, find an email marketing tool that covers all your needs regarding design, segmentation, automation, and deliverability to start reaping the benefits immediately.

We’re proud to share that many notable hotels, such as Hyatt Regency and Grecotel, have trusted us for their email outreach and never looked back. Sign up for a Moosend account today and join our thriving community.

Email Marketing For Hotels FAQs

Are you in a hurry? Check our answers to these frequently asked questions from people in your niche.

1. What are the benefits of email marketing to the hotel industry?

The key benefits of adding email marketing to your hotel marketing strategy are increased brand awareness, customer engagement, ROI, and better personalization.

2. How do you measure the success of email marketing?

You need to track important email metrics such as conversion, open, and click-through rates and calculate your email ROI regularly to ensure that gains outnumber costs.

3. What is the best way to get your customers back to a hotel?

You can nurture them consistently with relevant, personalized email marketing campaigns, including incentives like deals, offers, guides, and other helpful resources.

4. What are the types of emails commonly received by hotels?

Hotels usually send these email types to keep their customers engaged: Confirmation, promotional, welcome, pre-arrival, lead nurturing, review, post-stay, and VIP campaigns.