Marketing through email is an effective way to improve customer relationships in the hotel industry. However, many marketers forget that there is light after a booking confirmation email. After all, automated emails can drastically improve your hotel marketing strategy.
For instance, hotel marketers can automatically send emails to welcome guests, emails to suggest a room upgrade, or win-back emails with an offer when customers cancel a reservation.
As a result, hotels can increase the number of digital touchpoints through the email channel. This, therefore, improves hotel sales conversions, boosts hotel loyalty programs, and the return on investment (ROI) of other campaigns across the customer journey.
Through this definitive guide, you’ll learn the 17 key email ideas every hotel should send to boost its customer relationship management (CRM), loyalty, and sales.
Why Should Hotels Prioritize Marketing Through Email?
Email marketing is one of the best marketing channels for hotels because it allows them to connect with guests on a more personal level. Additionally, marketing through email is one of the most cost-effective ways to do hotel digital marketing.
Also, with the help of software, email marketing allows hotels to send personalized messages to their guests and cultivate relationships with them. Likewise, it’s a great way to promote special offers and discounts to guests and build your hotel sales pipeline.
To learn more about marketing personalization, make sure to watch the following video now:
At the same time, hospitality companies can stay in touch with their customers and provide them with updates and information about their stay. With email, hotels can also provide customer service even with personalized videos and support in any language.
Hoteliers can also broadcast emails to anticipate customer support requests in many languages. For example, based on the location of the hotel, origin of the customers, or during events that require special attention like the Covid crisis.
As you’ll see, by using email and video, hospitality companies can improve customer relantionships across the customer journey. In return, this allows hotels to improve engagement and boost their loyalty programs.
Using marketing automation to send lifecycle email campaigns to direct booking customers at scale
Direct bookings are the lifeblood of any hospitality business. Not only do they provide a steadier stream of direct hotel revenue, but they also offer a chance to build a relationship with guests.
Marketing automation helps hotels do marketing through email to direct booking customers. Consequently, it fosters customer relationships and repeat business in the hotel industry.
Marketing automation is a process that uses software to automate marketing tasks like sending emails. A good deal of email marketing software incorporates automation features. Automation is, therefore, one of the basic features modern marketers expect to find when choosing a solution in the market.
With marketing automation software, you can segment your direct bookings email list into different groups based on factors like how often they stay at the hotel or what type of room they book.
This allows you to send targeted lifecycle email campaigns with special offers or discounts that will appeal to each group.
17 Automated Emails Ideas Hotels Need To Improve The Customer Journey
In today’s digital world, an email address is often the first door to access a hotel. There are many types of automated emails hotel marketers can use to engage with direct booking customers.
Most hotels, however, miss great customer relationship opportunities when they do marketing through email. Often, hospitality companies only send up to 3 lifecycle email campaigns to clients: Booking confirmation, pre-stay, and after-stay emails with a survey or review request.
To better understand the email ideas I’m about to share with you, it’s important to understand how to build a personalized customer journey. In the following video, I explain how to do this with an example:
Let me share 17 automated email ideas to engage with customers across the customer journey, boost customer relationships, upsells, and generate new direct bookings.
#1 Automated Welcome Emails
When you are planning your hotel’s marketing strategy, be sure to include personalized welcome transactional emails. Because of its impact in terms of engagement and upsells, this is certainly one of the best hotel digital marketing strategies.
Many booking systems and hotel marketing tools offer this by default. But many don’t personalize the content based on the guest’s buyer persona. By personalizing the welcome transactional emails, you can make a lasting impression on your guests. At the same time, you ensure they have a positive experience at your hotel.
I’ll talk in more detail about the importance of using buyer personas in your email marketing strategy later. But for now, just know that using buyer personas can help you create more targeted and effective email campaigns.
Watch this video now to learn how to create welcome emails that make customers take action using personalization:
Below, you’ll find the email I explain in the video. The image shows an example of hotel welcome email following a personalized marketing strategy.
Now, here I’ve highlighted the personalization tags:
This email idea in hospitality should be all about anticipation and engagement. These automated emails should extend a warm and friendly greeting to the guest.
As you can see, in this welcome email, we use a personalized video. In simple words, a personalized marketing video is a video that is specifically tailored to an individual viewer. This could include using their name, location, or other personal information to make the video more relevant to them.
Take a look at the following personalized video example:
Here is an example of an automated email workflow to send these emails with a tailored video when customers book a room:
Equally, these emails should provide the guest with the information they need to know for their stay. For example, check-in and check-out times, amenities, and any special instructions.
The email should also include a thank you for choosing the hotel. Marketers also use these transactional emails to invite guests to contact the hotel with any questions or concerns.
Think about this email as an initial email marketing campaign that will set the tone for other campaigns.
If you are considering personalized videos for your next hotel video marketing strategy, you’ll want to see more examples, case studies, and strategies.
Well, that’s why I wrote another whole article on personalized video marketing with hospitality marketing examples. To see many personalized video examples and strategies, you can read my article about personalized video marketing.
#2 Automated Room Upgrade Email
When hotels receive direct bookings, it’s a blessing in the sky. This is because direct contact with customers allows hotels to directly access the email lists and relevant buyer persona information. This makes it easy to send room upgrade emails.
These emails invite customers to upgrade their rooms before they even arrive at the hotel. A solid email marketing strategy can help to increase revenue for the hotel with little effort.
Hence, sending automated room upgrade emails is an easy way to generate more revenue. At the same time, by communicating directly with customers and offering them an upgraded experience, hotels can increase their chances of getting repeat business and easily build a hotel loyalty program.
When drafting a room upgrade automated email, it is important to use personalization to adapt the email subject line and body to the guest’s context. When you take this into account, you’ll increase the conversion rates of these emails.
Apart from including the guest’s name, their reservation dates, and referring to their original room type, do one important thing. Take into account what rooms previous customers with similar characteristics have booked.
Watch the following video to learn a simple segmentation hack for email marketing campaigns:
#3 Automated Custom Offer Email
Hotels should use marketing automation tools to send automated custom offer emails based on specific potential customer segments. By doing so, hotel businesses can more efficiently target potential guests with tailored content that is most relevant to them.
As a result, you’ll create a more personalized experience for the customer. This is by far more effective than just hitting send to target a generic email list. With segmentation, hotel businesses can increase bookings and positive reviews, which search engines love.
The most obvious time to send a hotel offer is when someone is searching for hotel rooms in your area. People usually start planning their vacations a few months in advance, so if you can target them early, you’re more likely to get a new reservation.
Another good time to send an offer is around major holidays. Keep reading to learn a few holiday email ideas. People are often traveling during these times, so they may be more likely to need a hotel room. You can also send offers during slow periods when you’re trying to attract more business.
By sending an offer during these times, you’re more likely to get people to come and stay at your hotel. If you have limited bandwidth, you can create these emails in advance at the beginning of the year when planning your email marketing strategy for the year. Also, you can re-use these emails every year.
#4 Automated Cancellation Email
This email idea is a must-have. When customers book a hotel room, they are generally looking for a specific type of experience. If they have to cancel their booking for any reason, it can be frustrating and disappointing for hotel sales managers. However, there are more opportunities to bring these potential customers back.
Automated cancellation emails are a type of reactivation campaign that helps to alleviate this. A reactivation email is a type of email that is sent to a subscriber who has not interacted with a brand for a while, canceled a purchase, or abandoned the booking process.
With these reactivation campaigns, hotels remind customers of the experience they were looking for in the first place. This time, based on the specific customer segment from the information they provided when they made the reservation.
Also, to help them buy again, hotel businesses should use testimonials from customers with similar characteristics. With testimonials, businesses can build trust with their potential customers and show that they are committed to providing a great hotel experience.
It is important, however, to personalize your marketing through emails. Make sure these emails are relevant to the customer’s individual context. Otherwise, the customer will likely feel as though they are receiving a generic message that is not tailored to their needs.
#5 Automated Rebooking Email
When guests’ plans are disrupted, they often need to change the reservation dates. This is not a lost customer. Consequently, hotel marketers need to go the extra mile in their customer experience strategy.
It’s important to send a rebooking email automatically. These also are a type of reactivation campaign. Guests want to enjoy the hotel experience still. Their context, hence, should be taken into account. When you send a rebooking email, hotel guests can easily reschedule their reservations.
Remember, they just need to know that your hotel is there to help even when plans change. Rebooking emails are a great opportunity to reinforce your hotel loyalty strategy.
Rebooking emails should display critical information to help customers understand what has changed. This includes the new dates of the stay, the hotel name and location, contact information for the guest experience manager, and your confirmation number.
Use these emails to add special offers if they rebook right away. Similarly, if there are any changes to the price of the room, that should be included as well.
#6 Automated Post-Stay Email
These are a common way to do marketing through email. Post-stay emails are key hotel marketing tools during the customer lifetime. Customer feedback is essential to the success of any business, and hotels are no different. By staying in touch with guests after their hotel stay, hotels can build relationships that last longer.
By sending a post-stay email automatically, hotels can collect valuable feedback from guests. Executives can use this email idea to improve the guest experience. In addition, post-stay emails give an opportunity to upsell guests on future hotel stays or other services.
More and more, hotels are using personalized videos to increase the standard click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates. By sending a post-stay email with a personalized video, hotel guests are more likely to complete a survey email or leave a review.
Watch this video to learn how to optimize email marketing campaigns to get higher CTR with video:
These videos can be automatically created with personalized video software like Pirsonal. This way, guest experience managers can save time and resources thanks to automation.
This is because customers feel that their voices are being heard and that their feedback is valuable to the hotel. Furthermore, by using personalized videos, hotels can show off their property in a more engaging way than static photos.
Ultimately, personalized videos are a great way to increase guest satisfaction and build relationships with guests. Take into account that many email clients can’t play videos.
This is why it is a great idea to use dynamic landing pages for videos. This way, regardless of the email client, the list of subscribers will click on a thumbnail, hyperlink or button to watch the video on a personalized landing page.
With Pirsonal Pages, you can automatically create a personalized landing page for each customer. After all, not only will you increase engagement but also brand recognition.
#7 Automated Engagement Email
As part of your hotel customer experience strategy, automatically sent engagement emails from the guest experience manager. These lifecycle email campaigns help increase customer loyalty, also with video interactivity. At the same time, this email idea gets customers ready to buy more before and during their hotel stay.
By establishing a rapport with guests before they even arrive, you can make them feel more valued and appreciated. As a result, these email campaigns likely lead to better overall experiences and reviews. This is a key marketing email during the customer lifecycle.
Remember, according to research by TripAdvisor, 80% of travelers will not book accommodation without reading a review first.
When marketing through email, don’t limit it to only one digital touchpoint. Use these emails throughout the customer journey. The reason why this is important is that it also helps with the email open rate of future emails. Remember that future emails may include special promotions or other sales-related emails.
Furthermore, if you can provide exclusive offers or discounts through these emails directly from the guest experience manager. This will give guests even more incentive to book with your property again in the future.
In the following video, you’ll learn a step-by-step personalized marketing plan:
#8 Automated Birthday Email
This is an easy email idea for almost any hotel! Send birthday emails automatically to guests, especially if you have a loyalty program. These emails are a great opportunity to engage with guests during the customer’s lifetime.
Similar to other engagement email ideas from the guest experience manager, birthday emails can include personal messages, discounts, and other perks. By taking advantage of this marketing tool, your hotel can show guests that they are valued and appreciated.
These types of marketing emails are also a perfect opportunity to use video personalization to greet customers. When you connect Pirsonal’s video personalization software to your marketing automation tool, you can trigger these videos automatically.
Also, with Pirsonal Pages, you can create a personalized landing page to increase engagement and brand recognition. In many cases, hotels use these emails as part of their engagement machine and not to generate hotel sales.
#9 Automated Anniversary Email
When you have couples staying at your hotel, it’s easy to send them anniversary emails. You can use the customer data from your hotel loyalty program to send tailored emails. The use of first-party data is increasing due to its effectiveness and data protection regulations.
This way, you can make sure that the couple celebrates their anniversary in a special way. To make this one of your high-performing emails, make sure to engage with this segment of subscribers in advance.
This type of marketing email requires some creativity. Especially because it is uncommon to have this information in your CRM. However, with a bit of effort and creativity, you can easily gather this information. If you need to comply with GDPR, note that it actually has many advantages for marketers in hospitality.
As a result, you’ll have one to three more digital touchpoints to do marketing through email. Similar to the birthday emails, you plan for specific hotel sales conversions or focus on engagement and brand recognition.
#10 Mother’s and Father’s Day Email
Another effective email marketing campaign hotels can send are special dates campaigns like Mother’s and Father’s Day. It is a natural lifecycle email campaign.
These campaigns are effective because they speak to a potential customer segment that is likely to be interested in booking a hotel stay with a specific reason in mind. This email idea is also effective because you can send it to your complete list of subscribers twice from different angles.
The reason for this is that we all know a mom and a dad around us. So, women can receive emails about Mother’s Day. But also can be sent emails about Father’s Day. In the same way, men can receive emails about Father’s days, and also regarding Mother’s days to make a gift to their beloved.
Make sure to send these emails taking into account the recipient’s origin when possible. The reason for this is quite obvious. Mother’s and Father’s Day dates change across the globe.
These email ideas should also include a call-to-action that encourages the recipient to book a room. If the email is sent with enough time to plan, chances are you won’t need special discounts. However, if the email is sent as a flash offer, make sure to add a profitable no-brainer offer.
#11 Automated Win-Back Email
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of scoring a great deal. But what happens when the thing you bought goes on sale shortly after you make your purchase? You might feel like you’ve been tricked.
Smart hotel marketers know this, which is why they offer win-back emails to their customers. By sending a win-back email, hotel companies attempt to re-engage customers who have recently made a purchase in the hope that they’ll come back and buy again.
These emails usually offer a discount or promotion to sweeten the pot. And while it may seem like a cheap way to keep customers coming back, it’s actually quite an effective email marketing campaign.
Also, make sure to use a strong value proposition based on their buyer persona. Additionally, it is important to use friendly and welcoming language, as if you are speaking to the guest directly. By doing this, you can increase the likelihood that the guest will accept the room upgrade.
In the following video, I analyzed to booking process of a known hotel chain. Watch this video now to learn about the customer experience and sales opportunities they missed that could lead them to x2 hotel sales and revenue.
#12 Automated Email Autoresponders
We all appreciate a fast response whenever we ask for information or help by email. Thanks to marketing automation, hotels can automatically respond to emails from customers. They can provide the reassurance that their concerns, needs, and requirements are being heard.
Make sure these emails are obvious. What I mean with this is that, even if the email is automatically sent, it should look like a human response. Or, alternatively, make sure that there is no doubt that a machine sends the message.
This helps with customer experience, helps manage customer frustration, and reduces complaint rates. If the responses are relevant, you’ll also decrease the unsubscribe rate and will avoid hitting the Spam folder.
There are many approaches you can follow to send human-like emails automatically:
- Create a set of different responses that can be used depending on the email content. You can enrich these replies with personalization. Often, using a web form to capture data helps with this, since you are able to use customer data in the email response as personalization or merge tags.
- In recent years, artificial intelligence has been used to create more realistic-sounding automatic email replies. This can be done by analyzing the email for key phrases and then creating a response that includes similar phrases.
#13 Automated Hotel Rewards Program Email
Hotel rewards programs are a great way to keep guests coming back and a smart way to do marketing through email. Automated emails are high-performing emails to keep loyalty program members engaged and active. These lifecycle email campaigns also keep customers updated on their stays.
With the right email marketing tool, these emails can be even better when they’re connected to other hotel marketing tools. This allows hotel staff to easily transfer data between the two systems, so that customers always know about their loyalty points and how to use them.
Not only does this email idea make it easier for customers to keep track of their points, but it also helps ensure that they’re using them in the most efficient way possible.
By sending out regular updates and reminders, loyalty program members are more likely to stay active and continue using their rewards. This information can also be inserted in email newsletters to increase engagement and conversion rates.
Additionally, automated emails can help promote special offers and discounts to loyalty program members, encouraging them to book again in the future. Want to increase email click-through rates and bookings? Use personalized video to help guests understand how they can use their rewards to make new reservations!
Broadcast these emails to a specific segment of subscribers to make them more effective!
#14 Black Friday Emails
To engage with your email list and drive hotel sales during the holidays, send Black Friday emails to customers. As the holidays approach, many ecommerce companies begin to ramp up their sales and marketing efforts. They do this to capitalize on the spending that takes place during this time of year.
Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year, and by sending special campaigns to the list of subscribers, hotels can increase their sales and drive more business.
Customers are expecting to receive these emails, and by providing them with special deals and discounts, hotels can encourage them to book rooms during this busy time.
Often, these emails are sent with generic content to the email list. To improve the campaign’s conversion rate, send the email campaign with a link to an interactive video with a personalized call-to-action.
With Pirsonal Player, you can easily add a personalized call-to-action to any video in a matter of minutes, no matter the size of your email list! Even if the call to action is personalized, with Pirsonal Player you won’t break the bank!
#15 Christmas Promotion Emails
Christmas emails can be a really effective email marketing tool for hotels. Use these email campaigns to promote special rates, packages, and amenities that will appeal to guests during the holiday season.
Use Christmas emails to create a sense of urgency and encourage people to book their hotel stay early. By sending out emails with special rates and deadlines, you can prompt people to take action and book their stay before it’s too late.
Christmas marketing through email can be a great way to fill up your hotel during the holiday season. It will ensure that you’re getting business from people who are looking to travel.
Also, no matter how big your email list is, you can also use interactive video marketing to increase viewer engagement and boost hotel sales with personalization.
Even better, when possible, use testimonials. This will help you increase the email click-through rate to the booking page. Also, if it doesn’t hurt your conversion rates, try asking for more details during the booking process. This will help you create tailored messages in future interactions.
To improve the effectiveness of these emails, I recommend engaging with the list of subscribers in advance. This way, you’ll increase the email list open rate and decrease the unsubscribe rate.
#16 Corporate Christmas Greeting Emails
Hotel brands can use corporate Christmas greeting emails to generate awareness and brand recognition. This way to do marketing through email increases the engagement of future campaigns, especially among business travelers.
By sending out these emails, hotel brands can reach a wider audience. At the same time, they create a more personal connection with their customers.
Additionally, corporate Christmas greeting emails help build customer loyalty and trust from the list of subscribers.
#17 Special Events And Announcement Emails
These types of emails also boost awareness. Try to make these emails look personal. This way, even if guests don’t see the email during their stay, they’ll still see them later and feel that the hotel really went the extra mile.
Often, hotel companies limit their game to social media platforms. Although social media channels are great for sharing announcements, emails allow hoteliers to track analytics.
Make sure the information you share is relevant. Otherwise, you can harm the performance of future campaigns. A simple way to do this is through a list.
In conclusion
Marketing through email with automation helps hotels to generate more hotel revenue and establish strong customer relationships that pay back. By automating email marketing tasks, hotels can save time and resources while still providing a high level of service to their guests.
Don’t underestimate the power of the email channel in your hotel’s digital marketing strategy. Use these automated email ideas as inspiration to update your digital touchpoints with customers.
Most email marketing platforms allow you to create email templates. Use these email ideas to create your own templates and re-use them every year to save time!
Since most audiences love video content, use personalized online videos to increase engagement. With Pirsonal, you can make these automated videos at scale in a cost-effective way.
Want to know how Pirsonal can help you improve the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy? Request a free consultation today!
