Email marketing for hotels is alive and well, generating millions of bookings for hotels across the planet each year. An email database is arguably the most valuable resource a hotel can own (apart from a backup power generator). If you’ve got a database of past or regular guests to your hotel, you can start sending out informative, value-adding newsletters and other email marketing materials – directly to their inboxes. This article takes a look at seven creative email marketing ideas for hotels to include in their hotel marketing strategy.
Special day customer emailers
Running a Mother’s Day discount? Offering your Valentine’s suite at a great rate this year? Days of interest are excellent opportunities to reach out to your databases of customers, guests and suppliers with offers, promotions, discounts and specials via media-rich email newsletters. There are also hotel-specific days of interest that can also be leveraged, like offering a free pizza with each stay booked at your hotel on International Pizza Day.
News about what’s happening
Email marketing for hotels can include news updates about the tourism sector in general, as well as news relating to happenings in the immediate vicinity of your hotel. Guests might want to know about a new café, nightclub, or sushi bar opening up in your neighbourhood that they could visit when booking at your hotel again.
Free coupons to use at the hotel
This is content marketing with value! As part of your content strategy, think about giving away free downloadable coupons, like drinks or meal vouchers, to guests who, say, register to receive your monthly newsletters. Here’s a question for you: Is someone’s email address (and possible future booking) worth the cost of a drink or two?
Leverage your email signatures
At Digitlab, we promote our recent blog content through our email signatures. This gives our content an added layer of exposure, adding another spoke to the wheel that is our content marketing strategy. Hotels utilise email correspondence way more than we do, which makes them perfect candidates for content marketing through email signatures.
How to market your business with email signatures
Loyalty programme newsletters
If your hotel runs a loyalty programme, there’s a good chance you collect email addresses of people who sign up. Those people are your hotel’s biggest fans, and might be your biggest source of word-of-mouth bookings. Look after them with exclusive, value-driven content that includes promotions only valid for loyalty membership holders.
Review, rating and testimonial requests
Raving reviews and five-star ratings are worth more than gold in the hospitality business. This is especially true today, where a single negative Google review can ruin a business completely. Reach out to your email databases with engaging content that adds value. And sincerely ask that they share their positive experiences in the form of a review or testimonial.
Guest-specific communication
Want to really make a guest of your hotel feel like the bee’s knees? Show that you ‘remember’ a guest’s stay with a customised email. It will trigger and send exactly three months, six months, or one year after their stay. You can also set up guest birthday reminders and automated, personalised emails that wish them (and promote your valuable content).
Need to tap into hotel marketing expertise?
Digitlab executes a complete email offering, through email campaigns and branded email signatures. We can promote your hotel through impressive email campaigns. These build positive, mutually beneficial relationships with your guests and other stakeholders.
