If you run an accommodation-based business, chances are you’ve thought about hotel email marketing before. This is a popular marketing strategy, and for good reason, as the return on investment can be very good. The real question is, how do you launch your own email marketing campaign?
A hotel campaign is a specific branch of email marketing; it’s an umbrella term referring to many different industries and strategies. You could use emails to send newsletters, special deals, or loyalty programs. And you could do so for bars, shops, restaurants, and cafes — so how do you plan hotel marketing emails differently?
In this guide, we’ll not only show you how to plan a specialist approach for a hotel niche. By the end of this article, you’ll know why an expert, specialist approach is so important. Get ready for definitions, budgets, how-tos, benefits, and how on earth to sync this strategy with your other campaigns.
Sit down, grab a coffee, and prepare to morph into an email marketing pro for your hotel.
What Is Hotel Email Marketing?
On its most fundamental level, email marketing for hotels is emailing promotional material to boost the success of your hospitality business. It’s a simple method of sending out messages to provoke desirable customer action but it can give you a very good ROI, according to Litmus.
These messages could include all types of content, from promotional emails to feedback-requested post-stay emails. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty types of hotel emails in our next section, but it’s important to first establish that variety. Email marketing for hotels is like a pick-and-mix of different micro strategies. That could be collecting reviews to build your online reputation or selling reservations to boost profits.
While you’ll be no stranger to email marketing as a whole, it’s also worth running over the general basics. It relies on you forming an email list; a contactable database of consenting email subscribers. This is actually a legal requirement, and you might need to get savvy with customer data collection.
Popular methods of collecting these emails include loyalty programs, offering transactional emails, and using captive portals for hotel WiFi solutions. So much of a hotel email marketing campaign is about pre-marketing preparations.
With a list ready, businesses still typically invest in email marketing software, which allows them access to features like bulk sending. These software are typically available on a monthly subscription basis.
As you can see, hotel email marketing efforts can be a lot to unpack. It’s a whole campaign category with numerous different strategies and steps within it. Let’s see if we can shed some light on the different types of messages for your hotel email marketing strategy.
4 Types of Hotel Emails
Marketing messages come in all shapes and forms; keep an eye on email marketing news and trends to stay on the ball. However, some yield greater results than others, and some are particularly niche to the accommodation industry.
Here are the most effective types of emails that hotel owners can use.
1. Pre-Arrival Emails
Nothing reassures a guest like pre-arrival emails. These reduce any panicked phone calls, reinforce your brand identity and authority, and keep things smooth. A good example of this would be a confirmation email or check-in instructions.
If you wanted to upsell guests, you could also send optional upgrade information a week or so before their arrival.
2. Post-Stay Emails
Post-stay emails typically reflect on the guest experience and invite feedback. Now this is beneficial for multiple reasons: firstly, you can reuse positive feedback for your marketing. Secondly, you can redirect any negative attention away from public review spaces by providing private forms.
Either way, you get the chance to collect the right feedback to bolster your reputation. Who needs reputation management with a hotel email system like that?
3. Special Offers
Another, more general, type of hotel email is the special offer message. Special offers are good ways of enticing past customers to rebook rooms. However, they become even more effective when you pair them with birthday or seasonal marketing approaches.
For instance, emailing a Valentine’s Day discount or a hotel stay offer near a past customer’s birthday. These are more likely to land effectively at the right time.
4. Loyalty Program Content
Lastly, we’ve got loyalty programs. These point-based systems encourage customers to plan multiple visits and exchange their points for rewards. You can touch base with program subscribers via newsletters with staycation ideas and updates or even point tallying messages.
Loyalty programs are very effective for the hospitality industry, and these can be great for hotels, too. If you see frequent business travelers especially, you can get fantastic value out of a loyalty email campaign. They have reason to clock up regular stays and appreciate the extra bonuses.
3 Reasons To Use Email Marketing for Hotels and Hospitality
So, you now know all about what this marketing strategy entails. But what are the reasons for using email marketing for hotels and hospitality? Of course, it drives profit. But what does it specifically bring to the table for your company?
Here are the three main benefits of utilizing email marketing for this specific industry.
1. A Strong Open Rate
Email marketing has a strong open rate of around 39%., according to Cloudbeds. That’s a great start when it comes to marketing your hotel business.
Is it amazing like SMS marketing (which sits at around 98%)? Not quite. However, when you consider you might send an email to 1,000 recipients, that’s still 390 people reading your message.
One reason that email marketing aligns so well with hotel businesses is because the industry so quickly collects email addresses. Hotel reservations made online usually require the customer to input their email address. Therefore, combined with a good average open rate and larger email lists, hotel email marketing is a recipe for success. The odds are in your favor.
2. Larger Character Limits
One of the best reasons to use email marketing for hotel businesses is the large character limit. This allows you to send message types like newsletters.
Newsletters rely on larger word counts than you could rely on SMS or proximity marketing. It’s a prime example of why email marketing is so great for utilizing a variety of promotional content types. You don’t have to use it all, but having that flexibility is handy.
3. Use of Illustrations and Images
Emails additionally allow you to utilize tables, illustrations, and images. Booking a hotel stay is an experiential affair; a bit of visual inspiration goes very far. Therefore, the ability to attach these visual selling points and data improves the campaign’s impact by leaps and bounds.
You can show customers what room they’d experience, what view they’d overlook in the spa, and what they’d be eating.
Budgeting for Hotel Email Marketing
When budgeting for this strategy, your primary expense is email marketing software. This usually operates on a monthly subscription basis, although some offer free trials, which can reduce upfront costs even further.
How much email marketing software for hotels costs really depends on your email list size. And that varies depending on the size of your business and how much you’ve already been collecting contacts! As you can likely already see, there’s no one-size-fits-all with email marketing.
At the most basic level, $20 a month should cover an entry-level package for good-quality software. At this price, you’ll typically get around 500 emails a month. This is a good starting point for smaller businesses that are currently growing contact lists.
However, as you scale, that budget requirement will increase. For 5,000 emails, the average monthly cost is approximately $100. Any small hotels with established email lists or mid-range properties can quickly find themselves in this boat.
Larger hotels with multiple chains could easily spend hundreds a month on email marketing. Don’t even get us started on custom software, either: this can cost multiple thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, upfront.
Fancy a recap? Here’s a rough breakdown of the average monthly pricing tiers:
- Entry level: $20 for around 500 emails
- Mid-level: $80-100 for around 5,000 emails
- Expert level: $300+ for 10,000+ emails
Of course, you should also factor in additional costs, like the financial demands of customer data collection. How much does it cost to collect email addresses to build a list in the first place? Here’s some food for thought:
- WiFi marketing: An average $20 a-month subscription
- Competitions: N/A - varies depending on marketing, how you obtain the prize, etc
How Email Marketing Syncs With Other Strategies
Email marketing syncs brilliantly with other strategies. We’ve already discussed how well it combines with loyalty programs: a great strategy for customer retention. However, you could also use it to enable other, more temporary approaches like event or competition marketing promos.
Here’s a quick summary of the methods that sync with email marketing campaigns:
- Loyalty programs
- Event marketing
- Competitions
Additionally, there are marketing strategies that sync well with email marketing by providing data collection opportunities. For instance, captive portal WiFi helps by collecting contact details for future campaign use.
These are a few ideas:
- Social media marketing
- WiFi and captive portal marketing
- Competitions
Of course, you could also repurpose content that you send out through emails. This way, you can invest in other marketing campaigns while limiting workload. Take these, for instance:
- Physical banners
- Mail like letters or flyers
- SMS marketing
Beambox: Facilitating Hotel Email Marketing Through WiFi
Earlier, we mentioned using WiFi marketing to help collect contact details. What do you know about utilizing captive portals? If you aren’t already using this strategy, it might be time to look into it. So many people expect guest WiFi anyway, so why not make it work for you?
A captive portal system works simply. When a guest clicks to join your WiFi network, a web page pops up. This pop-up contains a form that business owners customize to request the details of their choice.
With email marketing in mind, you could easily request email addresses for marketing purposes. Guests comply, entering their contact details, and immediately receive internet access. Your customers are happy, and you’re happy; it’s a speedy way to quickly build a list of contacts.
At Beambox, we get it. We offer an all-in-one WiFi marketing software that specifically offers customizable captive portals to help businesses grow contact lists. It can feel overwhelming growing that email list — especially if you’re starting from zero. Investing in captive portal software relieves you of some pressure through passive collection with a proven success rate.
Are you ready to nail your hotel email campaign once and for all? Start your Beambox free trial today and create the best base for your hotel email marketing!
FAQ
Don’t disappear yet! Reviewing what you’ve learned is one of the most vital stages of consolidating your understanding of a new topic. So, what do you remember about marketing hotels using email campaigns?
These are the most frequently asked questions people raise about email marketing for hotels.
What is email marketing for hotels?
Email marketing for hotels is a specific marketing campaign targeting a niche industry. It uses strategies that specifically target hotel guests and operates within the framework of the accommodation business model. For instance, it collects email addresses for future marketing by offering confirmation messages.
Overall, it aims to drive the success of the hotel company through email-based engagement with past, current, and future customers.
What are the benefits of hotel email marketing?
The primary benefit is that it drives profit. Email marketing can encourage more people to actually book rooms, which is a clear win for accommodation providers. However, it can also improve customer retention and loyalty.
You could additionally use it to improve your reputation: blocking negative reviews by requesting feedback through private forms. Or, alternatively, just reposting positive reviews online.
What should you budget for hotel email marketing?
It’s possible to find email marketing software for as little as $20 a month on a subscription basis. This is a suitable starting point for smaller businesses, but as you grow your email list, this will increase. Midpoints sit at around $100 for 5,000 emails. At the top end, you could budget thousands, especially for custom software.
