How Hotels Can Automate Their Email Marketing

Imagine building meaningful guest relationships, increasing direct bookings, and driving incremental revenue without hardly lifting a finger. Well, you no longer have to wonder because that is the exact value of automated campaigns or as we like to call them, “set and forget” campaigns. Here’s how you can automate your email marketing campaign:

Understanding one-time vs. automated

You are probably already familiar with the common one-time campaign. With a quick go-to-market time, far reach, and impressive results, these types of campaigns are reliable and serve as the foundation of most email marketing tactics. Usually, they come in the form of operational emails, event and holiday emails, flash sales, seasonal newsletters, and the like that can be recycled each year with minor updates. This type of campaign needs to be created and manually scheduled to deliver each time.

Automated campaigns, on the contrary, only need to be created once and left to run automatically in the background based on guests’ stay dates, behavior, and preferences. With segmentation, they may produce even more impressive results than one-time email campaigns. Examples of popular automated campaigns include pre-arrival upsell, on-property welcome, we miss you, OTA winback, and birthday promotions.

Why automation matters for hoteliers

We know hoteliers are busy. When you’re not juggling customer requests, you’re meeting with managers to discuss revenue goals and operational improvements. If you automate your email marketing, it can lighten the load a bit. Email marketing automation is completely changing the hotel marketing space. Since automated emails can run for months or even years without needing much maintenance beyond the occasional updates, they possess an extremely high lifetime value. With automation, hoteliers can literally set up a campaign once, forget about it, and still generate incremental revenue.

Automation results you need

Email marketing automation is an effortless way to increase your room and revenue goals. Automated emails generate some of the highest engagement rates due to their highly customized nature, so recipients are more likely to open and take action on that email.

According to our own customer results, automated emails, on average, generate 71% higher open rates than one-time campaigns because they are expertly segmented and personalized to fit the guest. For example, one of the best-performing and most popular automated emails is the pre-arrival upsell email. Revinate customers see an average 58% open rate, 21% click-through rate, and 7% upsell conversion rate on these emails.

Get started today 

If you’re interested in learning more about how to automate your email marketing, a comprehensive guide containing the best hospitality email marketing strategies is just a click away. Download our brand new, inaugural Email Marketing Strategy Guide.

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Try setting up at least one automated campaign per stage. Our recommendations include: We Miss You (Inspiration), Confirmation (Booking), Upsells (Pre-Arrival), Welcome (On-Property), and Winback (Post-Stay).

Pre-Arrival

Pre-arrival emails, sent between booking and check-in, set the tone for a memorable stay. The purpose of these emails is to leverage guest enthusiasm for the upcoming stay, drive additional revenue through upsells and upgrades, and promote on-property amenities and destination activities. Pre-arrival campaigns see among the highest engagement of any email campaign. According to Revinate customer data, pre-arrival emails get a 57% open rate and a 16% click-through rate. For best results, try sending the email three or seven days before check-in.

Helpful tip: Don’t be shy about sending multiple pre-arrival emails 3, 7, or 14 days out. The longer the booking window, the more time you have to communicate with your guests before they arrive. Try sending a pre-arrival letter first then upsell campaign just before arrival.

Eager to learn more? Download our Email Marketing Strategy Guide now.