It’s time to shatter your fears and hang-ups of email marketing and take advantage of the revenue-generating possibilities. Q4Launch, a Charleston, SC based hospitality marketing partner, understands how travel brands can implement tested marketing practices in order to make the most of this marketing tool to drive sales.
As a digital marketer, Nancy Connolly leads marketing initiatives for Q4Launch, focusing
on creating and executing data-driven strategies for inns, B&Bs, boutique hotels, vacation rentals and more. She shared her experience and expertise at March’s meetup of Charleston Travel and Hospitality Marketing Professionals at Q4’s headquarters in Mount Pleasant.
Five Tips for Powerful Email Marketing Charleston SC
1. Have a Game Plan
Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” applies directly to email marketing. Starting with a plan invites accountability and lets you be consistent with your efforts. Because consistent marketing is effective marketing, it’s imperative that you plan ahead and then stick with your strategy.
A complete email marketing plan includes clear steps to move forward and measurable goals. This means that you will be able to tell what is working and what areas might need improvement as you move forward. Plus, clear expectations are an effective way to push yourself forward because it eliminates the time it takes to be perfect. Connolly recommends sending emails to your client list at least every other week.
Another important characteristic of an effective email marketing plan is that it ties directly with current events. Take holidays, breaking news and local happenings into account. These touches feel personal and instantly connect the reader to your business.
2. Know Your Email Best Practices
Understanding what makes an effective email is essential to running a successful campaign. Best practices include clear and easy to understand copy, strong offers, catchy subject lines, button links throughout. Don’t try to over complicate the copy with detailed terms and conditions, instead grab your reader’s attention and encourage them to click through to learn more details.
The most important rule of email best practices is to know your audience. By recognizing what will resonate and adding personalized touches, a company can translate inbox reads into sales. It’s also important not to hyper focus on a single audience, or segment your audience too much. Smaller sample sizes can return unreliable data. Instead, using mindful segmentation to target a specific demographic will allow you to further personalize your message.
3. Strategically Curate Content in Emails
While selling is essential to your business, it’s also important to focus on brand building and storytelling. Emails that strike a balance between these two are more effective because they provide essential information to clients in addition to the opportunity to buy.
Connolly encouraged marketers who want to drive revenue to a travel brand should start focusing on emails that first tap into emotion, then the wallet and then urgency. Remember, though, that not everyone will open and reach each email, so it is important to repeat yourself to make your point. One email will typically not be enough to reach all your potential customers for any offer.
5. Utilize Marketing Automation to Drive Revenue
There’s no reason to feel like you have to do it all yourself every time. Automation tools are essential for building consistency and following through. These tools allow your emails to be behavior driven and targeted according to your collected data. This makes messages personalized and specific. It also ensures that the right clients get the right message at the right time.
Travel and hospitality marketers should consider one of these automated campaign approaches.
- Pre-Booking – This includes what to do, when is the best time to visit, where you could stay, and any special offers for a visit.
- Pre-Stay – After a visit is booked, this campaign may include the opportunity to extend your stay, add on or enhance your stay or upgrade your accommodations
- On-Property – During a visit, use an email campaign to check how a visit is going, extend a stay or enhance time with extra offers.
- Post-Stay – This email could be used to book another visit, write a review, or celebrate booking anniversaries, birthdays and more.
Review, Redirect and Repeat
Once you’ve built and implemented your campaign, tracking and analyzing data and performance helps you understand what is successful and not successful with clients. Google Analytics is an essential tool when it comes to synthesizing and understanding the data.
Tracking and reviewing your results also lets you make changes when and if they are needed. This kind of attention to data allows for the flexibility to address problems before they become overpowering and dangerous to your brand. It also gives you the ability to make small and important changes that will make you more successful in the long term.
Email marketing is an effective and essential tool to reaching travel clients and generating revenue. It’s important that hospitality marketers and influencers understand how to develop and implement email marketing campaigns Charleston SC in order to reach clients and convert their interest to reservations. Q4Launch’s expertise in travel marketing makes them invaluable in email marketing campaigns that help create consistent revenue for clients in the Lowcountry and beyond.
For information about the Charleston Travel and Hospitality Marketing Professionals Meetup, contact Galileo COO Erin Miller erin.miller@galileotechmedia.com. Galileo Tech Media is dedicated to organizing travel marketing networking and learning opportunities for the Charleston area.
