Mailbox providers (MBP) such as Google, Yahoo, and others are retiring inactive accounts, a move that benefits them by reducing storage costs and freeing up desirable accounts and email addresses. Google recently made headlines with its announcement that accounts inactive for 2 years will be retired.
Email marketing is a powerful tool for all-sized properties including motels, hotels and vacation rentals, etc to connect with their guests and drive bookings.
With brands around the globe competing for attention – especially around Black Friday and Cyber Monday – you need to make sure you are not only following email design best practices, but also thoughtfully crafting the right subject lines, content, and CTAs to stand out in a crowded inbox.
With recent shifts in data privacy already in the spotlight, everyone is a taking a closer look at email marketing and the future of tracking metrics. The newest concern to enter the arena focuses on how Google displays images in Gmail and its effect on open rates. While Google has been using prefetching in some form since 2013, SparkPost released an article in Q1 that claimed Gmail’s image prefetching can potentially cause 'marginally inflated open rates for emails.'
Strategies that connect hotels with their guests
When you think of digital marketing techniques, what comes to mind first? PPC ads? Social media? Guest blogging? Those are important elements, certainly. However, hotel email marketing should be at the top of the list. Why does such an old marketing method deserve such a place of honor? Simply put, it is perhaps the single most effective weapon in your hotel marketing arsenal. It gets your message right to your prospect’s inbox.
Is your hotel leveraging one of the most valuable assets to increase profitability? Your email database could be the key to increasing revenue as the travel industry continues to recover. Take advantage of an opportunity to solidify relationships with your audience and keep loyal guests engaged with updates from the property and exclusive offers.
What’s next for email marketing following Apple’s Privacy update?
Hoteliers love to brag about the size of their email database and often attribute near-magical powers to the ability to send a message to tens, or hundreds, of thousands of potential customers. However, just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should. In fact, we would suggest, that as a rule, you shouldn’t. Spamming (and we do mean spamming) your entire database in an effort to drive occupancy is not only poor marketing, it’s causing you to alienate your potential guests and push them to unsubscribe from your emails.
Email is no doubt one of the most effective marketing tools for hotels to connect with past, present, and future guests. We’ve seen that even during a global pandemic, email shines through as one of the strongest, most reliable forms of communication. With recent privacy changes affecting targeted ads, the importance of email marketing is poised to increase even further. More than ever, hoteliers must maximize the use of this channel to ensure they stay consistent with their brand and share relevant, personalized information with their database.