Email:  One of the Most Neglected Marketing Tools in the Hospitality Industry–Part 2

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Hotel Marketing Dominator always focused on distinction in the marketplace. To do that the Hotel, Motel, or B&B must always be customer-focused to achieve the very best results in the local marketplace. Do not merely compete, but distinguish your facility by providing a much better experience.
Email is One of the Most Neglected Marketing Tools.

Email is one of the best ways to welcome your customers and stay in contact with them offering special packages on their return visits.

To set up email campaigns, you will likely need an email program to deliver them. There are many on the market, and some of them are rather expensive. However, a number of them have hey free version up to a certain number of subscribers and/or a certain number of emails per month.

It might be beneficial to start with one offering a free level that is very usable with the plan to subscribe to a larger version when your needs require. Of course, by that time you should be generating additional income from this additional effort.

Though there are a number available, I will focus this discussion on Mail Chimp, a popular program in wide use with good support.
Your software management program may have an email feature built-in to it. However, if you have to add one Mail Chimp is a good start.

Mail Chimp allows 2,000 names and 12,000 emails in the unpaid, free version.  This is plenty to get your email marketing program started.

This link for Mail Chimp pricing shows the free and the paid versions. It also gives a chart showing all of the features of each version.  It allows you to “tag“ your customer email names.  This is essential in identifying how you acquired the customer and any customer interests, too.  For example, if several guests to a wedding or wedding party members arrive for a particular wedding, you want to tag those names with that wedding name.  You can, then, invite them to return to visit the new family or their relatives and give them a special package if they choose to do so.
If several members of a sales team coming to town for training at a local business, you tag them with that business name and invite them to stay at your motel, giving a special package, anytime they are in town.

Mail Chimp also allows Email “automation.”  Automation is the newer term for what used to be referred to as an email “autoresponder.“  The automation allows you to set up a series of emails on a particular subject to be delivered in the future at specified times relative to the first email. This allows you to automate your email marketing in a very effective manner.  Certainly, it requires a little extra time to set up in the beginning but then it proceeds unattended for the remainder of the cycle.  Each of your email names could be put on more than one autoresponder cycle depending on the tags.

For example, you may wish to send everyone who had previously been to a local wedding an invitation to stay at your facility while they are visiting friends and family at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, and other events during the year, such as local festivals.  There are many such opportunities and you should always offer special discounts or added features during their stays.

 

Here is to your facility being the dominant, most successful, hotel business in your marketplace!

May you have a wonderfully profitable business!
Your Hotel Marketing Dominator Team
Robbie Meek and Paul Elliott