Tips from Revinate’s Data Scientist: The Recipe for Email Marketing Success
Email marketing is a tough formula to crack. You don’t want to send too many emails, but you can’t get by with too little. So, I analyzed user engagement in the Revinate Marketing application (app) from the past year to see what our top-performing customers are doing. I discovered some key findings you might consider to improve your own email marketing strategy.
The results are divided into four buckets: customers who used the app 1 to 5 days a month, those who used it 5 to 10 days a month, those who used it 10 to 20 days a month, and those who used it 20 to 30 days a month.
In general, and this should come as no surprise, the more you use Revinate Marketing, the more bookings you generate. However, the good news is there are some diminishing returns. I found that customers only need to be able to dedicate 10 to 20 days a month to the app to generate the best results. This group of users saw the highest average monthly number of reservations at 56, $40k in revenue, and an impressive return on investment of 57x.
This made me curious: what are these users doing when they log into Revinate Marketing to see such impressive results? Which campaigns are they sending?
One-time campaigns were popular among all four groups and particularly the 10 to 20-day users. While there is no magic number and you’ll have some seasonal variance, groups who sent between four and six segmented one-time promotions per month saw the best ROI. The average monthly revenue generated from one-time campaigns is over $24k with an average of 31 reservations made monthly.
Top-performing properties also rely on automated campaigns like We Miss You and OTA Winback. At least 60 percent of our best revenue-generating properties have at least one automated, ‘set it and forget it’ campaign running. Last year, one in ten properties in the 10 to 20-day usage bucket used We Miss You and OTA Winback campaigns, and this year, that amount increased to five in ten properties. The average monthly revenue for both campaigns is about $1,800 with an average of four reservations per month
Managing the requests of multiple pre-arrival campaigns also increases time in the app. Properties at the 10 to 20 day level of engagement averaged one pre-arrival upsell campaign monthly. The data shows that automating just one upsell email can drive significant incremental revenue, with an average of $2,500 per hotel monthly.
Revinate’s recipe for email marketing success
Informed by all this data, I’d suggest this formula for email marketing success:
- Send four to six segmented one-time campaigns per month
- Have at least one automated campaign such as OTA Winback or We Miss You sending at all times
- Have at least one pre-arrival upsell campaign sending at all times
This may seem like a lot of work at first, but you have marketing automation on your side. As we’ve seen, in just a few hours a week, you can easily create multiple segmented campaigns to drive revenue and engage with your guests in the meaningful way they’re increasingly coming to expect. As we like to say, more direct bookings, less work!
So how can you use these insights?
If you are a marketer, for starters, Revinate Marketing should be part of your ongoing email marketing strategy and decision-making process. This budgeting season is the ideal time to evaluate all the tools you need to reach your revenue and guest service goals in 2019.
If you’re not already using Revinate to increase direct bookings with smarter email marketing, please reach out to learn more.
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