In lesson twelve of Revinate’s email certification course, Kristina Haga, Senior Hospitality Marketing Strategist shares how hoteliers should be measuring the results of their email marketing campaigns. As hoteliers look to drive more profitable direct bookings, these results will help you optimize your email marketing strategy by seeing what works and where there’s room for improvement.

A/B Testing

An important technique that email marketers can use to improve email engagement is A/B testing. With A/B testing, you can test subject lines, headlines, images or other aspects of content to see which performs best. Subject lines often determine whether someone opens your email, so it needs to be spot on. (We cover subject lines in detail in lesson seven.) By A/B testing your subject line, you can drive higher open rates.

Some best practices of A/B testing include only changing one element for each test and ensuring that your sample size is at least 1000 recipients. Many modern email marketing platforms, like Revinate Marketing, will automatically send the email to the rest of the list once the winner is determined.

Click Tracking

Click tracking is another metric that can help you understand what links in your emails are driving traffic. Looking closely at heat maps and campaign statistics can provide insights around what your audience is most interested in and what makes them want to take action. Make sure your email marketing solution has click tracking so you can study your guests’ clicking behavior.

Revenue Generation

Are your guests responding the most to special promotions, new offerings or seasonal messaging? Revenue generation reports allow you to calculate ROI and prove your worth as an email marketer.

Upsell Report

The upsell report is great for understanding what upsell offers perform the best and whether it’s time to replace an amenity offering that isn’t driving revenue with a new amenity that will perform better. Your gut instinct might be strong, but you need data to prove what’s working.

Benchmarking

To see a campaign’s results against past campaigns, you need a benchmarking report. This report allows you to understand a campaign’s relative performance and set goals for your future campaigns. 

The goal for email marketing should be continual improvement. To do that well, you need data, analytics and reporting. If you’re not getting that with your current email marketing solution, check out Revinate Marketing.

If you’re ready to get Certified in email marketing, visit our education center and take the test. Certification can allow you to take on more responsibility at work or can help make your resume stand out. And, best of all, certification is free and open to anyone. Get started today.