Sending emails to hotel guests: best practices

As mentioned a few weeks earlier in an article, customer data is an incredible lever for the hotelier to increase his live bookings. Today we are going to talk about one of the main uses of this data: sending emails to hotel guests.

Segment to better customize

It is important to determine the different types of guests the hotel receives. This segmentation can be based, for example, on the nature of the journey made. In this case, it will be possible to identify the business customers of the leisure/holiday customers.

This separation into two groups is one of the most striking and clearest. However, it is possible to carry out this marketing work by aggregating more customer data. It is very interesting to study the consumption habits of its customers within the hotel. Indeed, by observing these data, we can see common behaviours among customers. This can be for example the use of the spa, the restaurant, the bar…

From these different customer segments, the hotelier will be able to customize the content of his emails to be relevant.

 

Email content

Having done this segmentation work, we now need to focus on the message we want to convey via this email. In order for this content to be both relevant and encourage the guest to return to the hotel, here are a few rules to follow:

� Subject of the email: This will be the first thing the customer will see. It must be personalised, for example with the customer’s first name, or must contain the content of the special offer that may be of interest to the customer.

� Body text: The central content of the email must be entirely centered on the subject of the email. It should make the reader want to book this proposed offer. We must be able to create a real “teasing”.

� Visual content: The addition of photos and colors allows the creation of a DNA and a brand image of the hotel to be perfectly identified. Be careful however not to overload the email. There is a risk that the customer will no longer focus on the main message of the email.

� Button ” Reserve “: The purpose of this e-mail is that although the customer is booking at the hotel, it is essential that the button allowing to reserve is perfectly visible.

Email frequency

The frequency with which emails are sent is a sensitive issue. Everybody once unsubscribed to a newsletter because of too many emails and a lack of segmentation. The customer often perceives this sending as spam.

Through the customization work done upstream, this should not be a problem. The study of consumption habits allows us to know what customers are interested in and thus to send only those e-mails that are in line with their wishes. During promotional campaigns, the hotelier will be able to analyze the returns in order to modulate the frequency of sending according to the returns. Empirics remains a very good way to optimize your marketing campaign.