The results

The Redwood is a boutique motel located on California’s Redwood Coast. The motel is typical of its era; thin walled, highway ensconced, but the owners have taken this property and given it life, making it a repeat destination thanks to great guest service, amenities, a focus on local adventures and investing in nurture campaigns that build guest relationships between stays. While The Redwood team has only recently begun building out digital campaigns, their initial foray into nurturing their guest database has proven successful, driving 5X ROI on Revinate from monthly newsletters alone.

Guest Engagement Started with a Newsletter

Nurturing guests via a monthly newsletter, let alone the occasional email campaign, isn’t always the focus for roadside motels and Jeff Durham, the owner, wasn’t immediately convinced; “I didn’t even think we needed a newsletter. Most of our reservations come on the same day. I didn’t think we would have lots of repeat guests since I assumed most people were just passing through.”

What Jeff did know was that he wanted to shift away from OTAs, which were driving a significant portion of the motel’s revenue. He hired a marketing coordinator, Danielle Krey, and her first suggestion was to begin nurturing past guests via email. Little did they know that something as simple as this would drive such meaningful revenue results for the hotel and ultimately transform their approach to guest loyalty.

The Move to Revinate Marketing

Already a happy Revinate customer, Jeff used Guest Feedback to manage the hotel’s reputation and engage with guests on review sites. Knowing that Revinate also offered a solution for email marketing and hotel CRM, he signed up his hotel. Implementation was quick and easy and he began to see return almost immediately.

Revenue Right Out of the Gate

One strategy that Jeff discovered early on is to resend emails to folks that didn’t open the first one. After trying this once, they found that the second send got double the results of the first. He says, “Given how easy Revinate is to use, it’s the easiest 10 minutes of my day that can result in thousands in revenue.”

The Benefits of Revinate Marketing 

Revinate’s real time reporting dashboard allows the team to see what messages and offers are resonating with their guests. By testing different offers to different segments of guests at different times with different content, they are able to continually refine and improve their messaging. In just a few months, newsletters were driving up to $12k in direct bookings. Of the revenue, Jeff says, “To make money that easily is a big win and easily worth the time to get it right.”

Email Templates

Revinate’s professionally designed email templates have also won the team over. They’re easy to use and allow the team to develop and send emails that look great across all devices, without the knowledge of coding or design, saving thousands a year in resources.

Promotions

To drive direct bookings, the hotel provides special offers, such as excursions, packages and even waived pet fees. Jeff knows that another solid strategy is simply staying top of mind with guests and ensuring they hear from the hotel regularly with monthly promotions only available to direct bookers. The October promotion, for example, included a tour with a local cannabis grower with a one night stay. You won’t find that on an OTA!

Easy Reporting

Revinate’s dashboard allows the team to see the fruits of their labor in close to real-time. Jeff says, “I love logging in and seeing how much revenue and how many nights have been booked through our emails. It’s easy to compare campaigns to understand what’s resonating and where we might need to do more thinking. It’s so encouraging to know that we’re on the right path.”

The Future with Revinate Marketing

As Jeff contemplates the future, he’s excited about how he can leverage Revinate Marketing to continue driving direct bookings and ancillary revenue. He’s also proud to say  that as many hotels struggle to retain staff, he hasn’t faced the same issue. By supporting his team with the technology they need to do their jobs easily and more efficiently, they have felt supported and engaged rather than overwhelmed and burned out.