Chances are your Hotel already employs email marketing. After all, it is one of the most cost-effective forms of digital marketing, and the use of email is still very much in vogue. In fact, it’s poised for even more growth, with some projecting that the total number of users worldwide will increase to 4.2 billion by 2022.
But the thing is that digital marketing trends are changing. Emerging technologies affect the way that users and marketers alike interact with the internet and its many platforms. Adapting to the changing scenery is key to continued success across all digital marketing fields, including email.
Successful adaptation is contingent on two fundamental principles. First is a solid understanding of the processes and metrics behind a healthy email campaign. The second is effectively analyzing and converting data-driven results into actionable steps to optimize – or even completely revamp – campaign strategies. The curated list of best practices below will help you build on these principles.
Email Marketing Fundamentals
Master your KPIs.
Performance is data-driven. How do you know what you’re doing well and where you can improve if you don’t have a baseline? In email marketing, you set that baseline by using your KPIs (key performance indicators). It’s a given, but typically the problem is that people either don’t use them or confront an information overload due to so many KPIs in place. Once you understand how each KPI is calculated and what each one measures, the key is to define which ones matter the most to your campaign goals.
Here are examples of which KPIs you might use to analyze specific goals of your campaigns:
Baseline: open rate, inbox rate, bounce rate, spam complaint rate.
Growth: list growth rate, new subscribers, unsubscribers.
Engagement: click-through rates, click-to-open-rate, conversion rate.
Campaign Success: revenue per email, revenue per subscriber, actual ROI.
Upkeep your subscriber lists.
Keeping track of your total subscribers over time is one of the simplest ways to gauge if your email content and your on-site sign-up are hitting their marks. This also means, however, that continually weeding out invalid email addresses is a must.
Is your pool of subscribers stagnant? Maybe you need to make opting in more attractive on your site. Is your subscriber list shrinking? People could be unsubscribing due to irrelevant or low-quality content – or it could be that you’re sending too many emails.
Make sure your emails are getting to subscribers.
Great content is moot if your emails are landing in spam folders, or worse, bouncing back entirely. There could be several reasons why your messages aren’t making it to their intended recipients. Your messages could be bouncing because the recipient email address simply doesn’t exist or if your account is blocked due to a high spam complaint rate.
KPIs such as your open rate and inbox rate is useful in this scenario since they can help in figuring out if your content is triggering a spam filter or if disinterested subscribers are marking emails as spam without looking at what’s inside.
Optimize your content to your audience.
It goes without saying that you must create quality content. There’s much more to this particular topic though. If you find that your inbox rate is high, but your campaign results are still lackluster, your high-quality content may not be resonating well with your audience.
If you have decent open rates, but a low number of clicks and your emails are not generating traffic or conversions, you may need to make changes to your layout. Such changes could include making links more visible or tweaking your anchor texts and call-to-actions (CTAs) so they’re more persuasive.
It could also be that a majority of your subscribers open emails on their phone or tablet. If your content isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it could show up as a jumbled mess so they just give up (You’ll want to check your opens-by-device to figure this one out.)
A Few Final Thoughts
There are many other KPIs and methods you can employ, but the ones we’ve discussed are fundamental to supporting further growth. Once you’ve got these nailed, there are several other ways you can further leverage email campaigns. For starters, you can embed and measure the use of “share” buttons for social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in your emails.
As with everything else in marketing, test/evaluate your data and tweak your approach as you go. Whether you use A/B testing or heuristic evaluations, the point is that your campaigns serve to grow your bottom line – and you need to know if they’re succeeding in doing just that. This brings us to the next point: measuring your return on investment (ROI).
This can be a pain to do as it’ll require you to look for data on platforms outside of your email provider. To calculate revenue, you’ll need to look at the bookings on your website and figure out which were generated by your email campaigns, for example. Take the time and be thorough because, in the end, your ROI is the true measure of any marketing campaign’s worth to your business.
7 Trends You Must Know For A Successful Digital Marketing Campaign [Infographic]
One last thing: remember that success in marketing campaigns of any kind does not simply occur overnight. Be patient. Show diligence in gathering and analyzing data. Closely adhere to the Hotel industry’s best practices and standards. Every detail is done well – no matter how minuscule – compounds and secures future successes.
Implementing your Hotels Email Marketing in context with channel marketing ensure value innovation that offers your customer alternative options to connect and take proper actions.
We are in this together!
I need to let you all know that we are in on this together. If you need to vent, talk, cry, or just have some to talk with then I am here listening. Since I am working part-time at the local Kroger, I will to the best of my ability to work it out around my schedule.
But you can reach me here:
Email: hotelblogger@aremorch.com
Also, join us at our Facebook Group – Hotel Social Media Community
We will get through this unprecedented event together! #hotelstrong #hospitalitystrong
For any specific information on COVID-19, I recommend go to CDC, WHO, AHLA, AAHOA, and HSMAI. Also, follow information from your local authorities.
NOTE
We are starting to reopen some hotels again (Yay!!!). Make sure you follow their guidelines and say THANK YOU to those that now show a unique spirit to serve, and helps us all get through this!! #hotelstrong #hospitalitystrong
Credit
Thanks to Josh Wardini with Serpwatch – The Best Rank Tracker for the Modern SEO Professionals.
About Are Morch
Hi, I am Are Morch. Your Digital Marketing Coach and Customer Experience Expert specializes in creating effective digital customer experience offer for hotels while growing and scale customer acquisition and revenue.
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