Email: Social Media’s Unlikely Ally

As you probably know, Revinate is the leader in CRM and email marketing for hotels. But, what you may not know is that our CRM is not only instrumental in helping hotels execute a revenue-driving email marketing program, but it also helps hotels increase the presence and effectiveness of their social media strategies. In this article, I will share how data from your CRM can be used to drive your social media program forward.

Segment CRM data for effective lookalike targeting

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and Google allow marketers to upload a list of past guests in order to target your advertising on those channels to a similar audience profile. By doing so, you can ensure that your marketing dollars are being spent effectively and your advertising is displayed in front of the right eyes.

With Revinate’s Hotel CRM, you can understand what makes a perfect prospect. In Revinate, you can easily segment your past guests by any criteria, such as top spenders, locals, positive survey responders, OTA bookers, etc. Then, upload a list of these guests to your preferred social channel and these sites will find similar profiles that will see your ads. Finally, you are in complete command of your advertising dollars!

Test your promotions on email first

Testing your promotions across social media, paid search/PPC and SEO is wasteful. In addition, the price can fluctuate based on engagement, clicks and views. Before you pay for promotions on these channels, we suggest you test them out using email, which doesn’t require an incremental budget, no matter how many emails you send.

Smart hoteliers are A/B testing their promotions via email, observing which promotions perform best and then taking those top performers to more expensive channels (Social, SEO, etc.) for distribution. Revinate Marketing provides easy-to-understand real-time analytics to understand what’s converting. Revinate customers save money by ensuring that poorly performing promotions aren’t brought to other channels.

Capture data on your site

Hotel marketers spend a lot of money driving potential new guests to their website. This is done through SEO, PPC and Social media. As I mentioned previously, these channels are very expensive. When these new guests get to your website, it’s vital that you capture their data. With Revinate’s Hotel CRM, hoteliers can easily create beautiful data capture forms to capture a guest’s email and preferences on their websites. The captured data is then pulled into Revinate Hotel CRM, allowing marketers to nurture guests through email marketing, a low-cost channel. Explained more simply, spend money to get new prospects to your site, capture their information and re-market with email, a lower-cost channel. It’s that easy!

Attract new followers with your emails

Want to get more followers on your hotel’s social media accounts? Of course, you do! What better way to do that than with the real estate at the bottom of your emails. You have thousands of guests staying at your hotel every year and with the right CRM you can place your social media icons on all of your email communications (Confirmations, Pre-Arrival and Post-Stay). Once you convert those guests to followers you now have a direct channel of communication.

Taking it one step further, in Revinate’s Hotel CRM, you can collect guest preference data throughout the entire guest journey. This data is automatically added to the guest profile, allowing you to personalize the stay experience and amenity programs. This personalized attention will create a wonderful guest experience. When you follow up the stay with a survey, that feedback can be automatically syndicated to TripAdvisor or Google, or you can also ask guests to share their experience on other social media sites.

In summary

It’s no secret that social media and email are both extremely important marketing channels for your hotel. But don’t forget the role that email marketing can play in enhancing your efforts on social media. If you would like to discuss other best practices that leading hoteliers employ to drive revenue across email and social channels, please reach out. We would love to chat.