Email marketing has been around for decades but the emails that hoteliers send today hardly resemble emails from even ten years ago. The days of blasting the same email to your entire customer list are long gone. With a Hotel CRM like Revinate Marketing, hoteliers can send highly personalized emails timed to coincide with key milestones in the traveler’s journey. With just a little bit of creativity and a CRM to segment your database and automate messages, anyone can become a successful email marketer. 

Email may not be the ‘buzziest’ marketing channel around but it remains the number one way to reach hotel guests for five main reasons:

First, studies show that 55% of consumers prefer to get permission-based promotional messages from hospitality brands via email, versus direct mail, text, phone or social media. Why? Email is far less invasive than other channels and it’s persistent, so offers are searchable and can be revisited at a later time. 

Second, because consumers today are tied to their smartphones, you can also be certain that if you have a valid email, your customers will see your message come through. Americans, for example, now check their phones 96 times a day – that’s once every 10 minutes for those, like me, that hate doing math. With 46% of all email being opened on a mobile device, a well-timed email can reach your prospect when they’re waking up, enjoying a coffee break or sitting down in the home office to work. In other words, unlike a social ad or a Facebook post, email is more likely to reach your prospect.

Millennials in particular, prefer email. 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email. Today, millennial travelers comprise about half of the world’s hotel guests. In addition, On average, millennials take 5.6 trips annually, compared with 4.4 per year for Gen Z, 4.0 per year for Gen X, and 3.5 per year for Baby Boomers. Connecting with this segment is critical for long-term success.

Third, email is a compelling channel for hotel marketers because it allows those with information-rich databases like a Property Management System (PMS) to leverage their own guest data in smart ways. Hotel marketers can segment their audiences and send targeted messages that are proven to get better results than generic emails. In fact, HubSpot reports that Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. 

During Covid-19, for example, hoteliers using email marketing software were able to easily segment their databases to isolate local travelers benefitted from the surge of drive-to bookings. With borders closed for international travel and domestic air travel not feeling safe, people were only traveling within a few hours from home. Mailing to guests outside the country didn’t make sense. The hoteliers that used geo targeting to isolate stay-cationers and local travelers picked up a lot of business when people got tired of sheltering in place.

Another benefit of email marketing is that it’s easy to test, measure results and improve over time. Email marketing solutions, like Revinate Marketing, allow marketers to see open and click-through rates and compare campaigns to isolate what resonates with your audience. And, if your email solution is integrated with your PMS, you can easily attribute bookings and upgrade revenue to the successful email campaign.

Finally, email continues to deliver the highest ROI of all channels. Email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding ROI, making it one of the most effective options available. For hoteliers, having an email marketing platform that is built specifically for hotels ensures that it can be easily integrated with your PMS and that it is built specifically for the needs of hotel marketers that need to automate certain emails, just as pre-stay, arrival and check out, but give you a wide array of options for promotions.

To learn more about Revinat’s email marketing solution for hotels, please visit https://www.revinate.com/solutions/revinate-marketing/ or reach out for a demo.