With a good google ranking, tour operators, hotels, and airlines primarily win customers researching for specific travel destinations. While indecisive and spontaneous tourists, who decide last minute and who don’t know yet where to go, often have to be inspired and convinced. Tourism email marketing is a very good way to do so. Using this channel, you can awake the desire for a direct travel destination, a specific hotel, or travel package for short-term travelers. In addition, email marketing offers the most effective ROI with low investments. This way, providers can reach a huge target group with a single send-out.
In addition, this form of communication is widely accepted by all age groups. For these reasons, email marketing has been a very popular marketing channel in the tourism industry for years. Above all, e-mail is an excellent advertising medium for last-minute campaigns to occupy vacant hotel rooms or to fill vacant places with tour operators – in other words, to make the most of your own capacities. We explain what companies in the tourism industry should pay attention to.
Marketing Tip 1: Offer exclusive deals and fair prices in your email
What is a crucial criterion for last-minute bookers? The price of course. Therefore, many travelers can be won with discounts for a specific hotel or a specific travel destination. Campaigns submitting the user a feeling of being offered a special deal are ideal for email marketing. Whether an inclusive meal in the hotel restaurant, free drinks or free entry to the spa including massage – such offers can convince hesitant holidaymakers. Furthermore, it is possible to offer hotel guests who are looking for a medium-priced room a still available luxury room at the price of a standard room.
Even users who have previously stayed in the hotel as guests can be won to revisit through that kind of promotions – for example with a loyalty discount. As guests store their personal information at hotels, marketers can send them an email for their birthday or other occasions: “Would you like to spend this special day in our hotel? We offer you a discount to make the most of this occasion. ”
Marketing Tip 2: Use text and images to inspire your customers
Keep it simple. If a hotel or travel company wants to win resistant users as customers by email, they shouldn’t feel overwhelmed with too much content. Therefore we recommend focusing on selected points that are relevant for the guests in an advertising email: in particular travel destination, price, and performance. However, the content should not be neglected in any way, because in contrast to banner advertising, which mainly consists of images, emails are very good for describing travel destinations and explaining a last-minute offer to users.
In addition to the text, marketers should also pay attention to the quality of the selected photos, which are integrated into the email. “The right picture in a newsletter can drive up the entire conversion,” explains Daniele Sampaolesi, Managing Director Audience Serv and tourism marketing expert. So photos of the hotel, the pool, the sea, or the landscape of the travel region can persuade users to spontaneously decide to book the trip. A link can also be stored in the mail, which leads to the website of the tour operator or to the landing page, which is dedicated to the special offer.
Marketing Tip 3: Test your tourism email campaigns for different needs
Hotels, tour operators or airlines know their target groups very well. On the one hand, studies provide information about who is most interested in certain travel destinations. On the other hand, companies in the tourism sector, such as hotel chains, also have the opportunity to perform tests themselves and to set up their email marketing strategies in accordance.
Such a test can look as follows: Tourism companies send travel destinations or travel packages to different groups of german users, who are within a certain generation. The marketing experts recognize the travel preferences of certain target groups based on the opening, click, and conversion rates. Such a procedure can also be used to test which templates, images or subject lines are more successful. Those results should be taken into account when sending out the second, nationwide e-mail newsletter.
Marketing Tip 4: Use pre-segmented email lists
In order to bring last minute offers to men or women, companies in the tourism industry should not only know their target groups. The question of how they can get in touch with the addressees is just as important. Information that previous customers have left enables hotels, tour operators or airlines to set up their own databases, which they can use to send e-mail advertising to a suitable audience.
In addition, however, it is recommended to use pre-segmented lists. Hotels know, of course, from which countries the last few years have mainly come from and what age group they belonged to. “With this information, tourism companies can approach e-mail publishers who provide lists of e-mail addresses for specific target groups,” explains Daniele Sampaolesi. “A Berlin hotel, for example, whose tourists mainly come from Great Britain and Spain, can use e-mail lists to send e-mail campaigns for last-minute offers specifically to users in these two countries.” Based on those additional lists, travel companies can reach many more potential clients than using only their own database.
