2020 Campaign Performance

Every year, Revinate publishes a Hotel Marketing Benchmark Report to provide the industry with actionable and comparative insights from hotels around the world. We analyzed more than 368 million emails sent in 2020 from Revinate’s Marketing customers so that we can provide a unique review for a unique year. Below is a snapshot of the Section 3, a Campaign Performance.

You can download the full 2020 Benchmark Report for free here.

As a hotelier, you work hard to create personal connections throughout the guest journey.

From check-in to check-out, everything you do is intended to build strong relationships with guests so they will want to return again and again. But what about when they’re not on property? For hoteliers who care about driving repeat business, it is critical that you communicate with guests throughout the entire customer journey, from pre-arrival to post-stay, in a personal and meaningful way.

One of the most effective and powerful ways to connect with customers is through email marketing. Now, we know what you’re thinking: email marketing is dead! Millennials don’t like email! Social media is where the buyers are! Actually, none of these statements could be further from the truth.

Even after all these years, email marketing continues to be the most reliable, effective, and cost-efficient way to communicate with guests.

For hoteliers, email remains the best channel for building guest relationships, reducing dependency on online travel agencies (OTAs), and increasing direct bookings. Email is the dominant channel for customer acquisition and customer retention across industries, and hospitality is no exception.

Hoteliers should invest in email marketing for a variety of reasons. Primarily, it provides a cost effective solution to many hotel marketing challenges. Email marketing leverages existing data, provides a faster feedback loop, and can provide measurable, real-time results.

Email marketing is also about testing and optimization. Good marketers are equal parts creative and analytical. They focus not only on well designed and written emails, but also on reporting and making tweaks to optimize performance.

In order to continually improve, hoteliers can find value in using global benchmarks as a barometer for how their campaigns are performing. On the following slides, you will find both global and regional benchmarks for open rate, click-through rate, and conversion.

We suggest hoteliers spend some time comparing their results against other hotels. If you’re outperforming the average, congratulations!

If results are below average and you’re looking to improve, we have many resources available to you, including the Basics of Email Marketing Guide and the Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Hotels. If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can complete our Email Marketing Certification Course online for free and add it to your résumé!

And, of course, if you’re not already using Revinate Marketing and want to get an edge over your competition, book a demo with us.

Engagement Metric Definitions:

Open Rate (OR)
Unique Opens ÷ Total Number of Recipients
This metric helps you determine how many users are exposed to the content of your email, such as brand awareness campaigns, or it can provide the first step of the funnel for traffic or revenue campaigns.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Unique Clicks ÷ Total Number of Recipients
Represented by the total number of unique clicks divided by the total number of email recipients. This metric can act as the primary metric for traffic-based campaigns, or as the second step in the funnel of a revenue campaign.

Conversion Rate (CR)
Unique Reservations ÷ Total Number of Recipients
Often left out of most email analysis, users who unsubscribe are also engaging with your email, just not in the way you’d hope for. Watching unsubscribes closely can be important for deliverability and give insight into how well your messages are resonating with audiences.

Open Rate

Globally, the average open rate was 18.6%, or approximately one in five. Over the years, open rates have been in decline as email becomes more prevalent. 2020 actually saw an acceleration in this as the pandemic shifted marketing budget online. It’s no surprise, then, that both one-time and automated emails saw a decline in open rate from our 2019 marketing benchmark report.

Hoteliers should combat lower open rates through segmentation. Smaller segments improved open rates by up to 102% in 2020. Global segments with more than 50,000 recipients achieved a 12.8% open rate, whereas segments with less than 5,000 recipients outperformed with a 25.9% open rate.

Smaller segments are more easily personalized, and personalization drives higher open rates. If hotels want to send larger segments, they should utilize dynamic content to maintain campaign performance.

Open Rate by Region
View the full Benchmark for Regional stats to better benchmark your hotel.

Click-Through-Rate
Creating a message that inspires a recipient to click is not an easy feat. The average global click-through rate was 2.4% and, as you will see later, this number gets a big boost from automated campaigns, such as pre-arrival and OTA winback emails.

Just like open rates, performance improves with segmentation. Smaller segments improved open rates by up to 200%. Global segments with more than 50,000 recipients achieved 1.3% click-through rates, whereas segments less than 5,000 outperformed at 3.9%.

Click-Through-Rate by Region
View the full Benchmark for Regional stats to better benchmark your hotel.

Conversion Rate
Driving room nights is a key metric for hotels. But getting travelers to open and click an email is hard enough, let alone having them make a reservation.

The global average conversion rate is just 0.11%. Much like with open and click-through rates, segmentation plays a key role. Smaller segments improved conversion rates by up to 425%. A 425% uplift in conversion is significant and can drive some serious additional revenue.

Global segments with more than 50,000 recipients achieved just 0.04% conversion from clicks, whereas segments with less than 5,000 recipients outperformed at 0.21%.

Conversion by Region
View the full Marketing Benchmark Report today and get regional insights for hotel database size. The report also includes actionable insights you need to improve your hotel marketing and benchmark your success. We cover 9 topics including marketing campaign performance, hotel database size, trends in 2020, and amenity and room upsells.