Handy Email Acquisition Tips For Travel Companies, Part 1

Editor's Note: As we are building our SkiftEDU service for marketers and SMBs in travel, today we are launching a new initiative: our new weekly series on digital marketing tips and trick, what we're calling SkiftEDU How-Tos. These How-Tos will be a series of free in-depth weekly articles around various topics in digital marketing, such as this one below. In a world where our Facebook newsfeed is dominated by promoted content and paid media, many travel brands have stopped believing in 1-1 direct communications with customers. They shouldn’t. Email marketing still works! More and more innovative techniques in collecting client data and the opportunity to send highly personalized and relevant messages have proven to be very effective for sales as well as customer acquisition and retention. In terms of ROI, email marketing has always been a very successful strategy for the travel and hospitality industries when communicating with target markets. According to a 2015 study, the travel and hospitality industry has a newsletter open rate of 56.7%, which is the highest among the 17 industries polled and second in terms of click-through rates (15.2%). Airlines, hotels and inns send out confirmation reminders prior to a trip, using the opportunity to upsell by pre-ordering extra amenities, for example. Destinations and CVBs can inform on upcoming events or best practices for meetings, while restaurants and attractions keep their fans updated on exciting new menus or exhibits taking place. Intents will vary, but email remains at the heart of an effective relationship marketing approach. Are email campaigns already part of your overall marketing strategy? The lifecycle of an email campaign is made up of two important planning steps to ensure maximum ROI. 1. Optimize your customer database and set up means to generate new leads (pre-campaign) Understand the needs of target audiences Define and segment audience personas Customize content/offers o be displayed 2. Automate and monitor each action members of the target audience perform (during the campaign) Welcome message upon registration Validation of whether or not the email is opened Identification of the date and time the newsletter was viewed Monitor how long the newsletter was read, what links were clicked, what productions or promotions were selected, etc. Even if it remains the most high-performance marketing channel available within an integrated, ove