Inspiring myself in this great post of Johana Cavalcanti about email marketing for hotels and resorts, I decided to write a series of post of the best practices of email marketing for different markets and sectors. All the business around tourism could generate great brand equity, more sales, more loyalty from existing customers and also get news customers, with a good email marketing program.
These are the few things you should know to start a successful email marketing program:
Create and build your own list:
It is very important that you build your list organically with the permission of all your prospects to send them de campaigns in order to get the best results out of your email marketing. The first step to start getting email addresses is having a clear subscriber form in every page of your website. To improve the subscription rate:
• The subscription form should not be long. Not more than 5 fields. If it takes too much time to fill out no one will submit it.
• You must clearly specify the benefits of been part of your list: better offers, special discounts, special information, etc.
• You could encourage people to sign up by offering an extra gift like a travel guide or by entering a draw to win a price like a digital camera.
The hotels deal directly with the customer, what makes easy to get email addresses offline:
• You can ask for email address during the check-in or check out
• You can leave a welcome form in the room
• You can leave a form on the table the first breakfast
• You can have forms in the Gym, Spa, Golf, etc.
The trade shows are also a great place to collect email addresses offline.
Segmentation and Schedule
Setting the right frequency for your campaigns is key for the success of your email marketing program. Too many emails will get your subscribers tired of you, unsubscribing or even worse, flagging you as Spam. Sending a newsletter once a month is the best. You should schedule as well all the events, bank holydays, concerts, etc. in your area for special campaigns. You can also send a welcome message for the customers that are coming to the hotel in the following days and a thank you message a few days after they leave the hotel.
The segmentation of your list is also one of the most important things. Every campaign is not relevant or interesting for all your subscribers, that is why you have to segment your list by age, sex, interests, geographical area, etc.
The campaign creation
The sender and the subject of the campaign will be the first thing our subscribers will read, therefore the sender must be familiar to the subscriber and the subject must refer to the content in the campaign.
The layout of the campaign should be very similar to your web page, with the same logos and colors, and should at least have the next components:
• Always send a text version of the email
• Use the “alt” tag on every image
• Always include a link to the campaign to be seen on the web
• The main content should be in the top left corner
• Always include a visible unsubscribe link
• Include a “Forward to a friend” link
The Stats
Once the campaign is sent you have to check the next stats to know what’s happened:
• Open Rate
• CTR (Click Through Rate)
• Conversion Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate
• Viral Rate
• Bounced emails
All this data allow you to know what is more interesting for each of your subscribers, who is unsubscribing, who is forwarding your message, what is the best day and time to send the campaigns and much more in order to improve the campaigns, the content and also improve the segmentation of your list.
We want to make getting their already built contacts lists into Pixelnews really easy to our users. Most of the small companies manage their lists with excel files, so we will be keeping the basic functionality to import excel, .csv and text files. However, the number of small companies managing their contacts with CRM applications grows fast every day. In order to make it as easy as possible for them, Pixelnews will be prepared to import and synchronize contacts from the most important CRM applications in the market. This way, the users wont have to manage two different lists in two different applications.
We think it is very useful for the user a feature that makes easy to create a subscription form and embed it into a web, blog or social network profiles. This way every new sign up will be directly added to the user´s Pixelnews lists.
Finally, we are adding a feature that also exports the contacts to excel, .csv and text files.
One of the best ways to get better results with your email marketing campaigns is the segmentation of the lists. Because each user follows different criteria to create the segments, Pixelnews makes easy to customize the fields for each list.
We want the user to know how the lists perform over time. Pixelnews will provide reports where the user will see the evolution of sign ups, unsubscribed and bounces.
