Imagine you’re having a busy day at work. At some point, you decide to take a short break. You’re going through your inbox and among the usual clutter, one email stands out: “Remember that calming ocean breeze?” It sparks your curiosity, and you open it. Suddenly, you go back to that hotel balcony where you could hear the relaxing sound of waves.

What has just happened? The email didn’t just invite you to enjoy another stay, it transferred you back to that perfect moment you had left behind.

The hospitality industry is a highly competitive one. Even the most stunning hotels work hard to attract guests and turn them into repeat customers. That’s where the power of a great hotel email steps in. With the right emails, not only do you increase bookings, but you invite subscribers to remember, explore, and dream.

In this article, we’ll talk about this kind of hotel email marketing magic. How can you inspire wanderlust and achieve repeat bookings? Let’s dive into six winning email marketing campaigns for hotels that guarantee vivid experiences and lasting connections.

1. Dispatch Helpful Pre-Arrival Emails

A stay may begin the day someone arrives at their destination, but the journey begins once they hit the ‘Book Now’ button. Therefore, sending a pre-arrival email a week or so before the actual date is critical for making guests dream about and prepare for their upcoming vacation.

Focus on delivering a preview of what customers should expect during their stay. Don’t limit your messages to information about your services. Aim to link their stay with an entire experience. Offer suggestions on activities, attractions, culinary or cultural events they might enjoy. And keep in mind that inviting customers to book a hotel room, apartment, or guest house is more about telling a story and encouraging them to envision themselves as part of it.

Besides that, you should make sure to anticipate guests’ common pain points. You can do so by answering potential questions beforehand. These may include directions to the facility, check-in and check-out times, meal hours, specific needs like extra beds or cribs, and nearby coffee shops, bars, or restaurants. Such initiatives stick with travelers because they show you care enough about making them feel at ease.

The information you share, though, shouldn’t feel generic. To truly engage with your guests, follow one of the key hotel email marketing tips: personalization. By using parameters like recipient location, culinary preferences, family status, or favorite activities, you can plan their visit and deliver unique experiences before they even get there. For instance, if a couple has asked for a child’s bed, you’ll probably want to suggest nearby playgrounds or ice cream shops instead of fancy restaurants or crowded nightclubs.

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In this pre-arrival email, Vacasa includes all the necessary information for their guest’s upcoming stay: six-day weather forecast, lockbox code to get in, driving and parking directions, even the wi-fi code. They’ve also created a short FAQ section, providing visitors with answers to common pain points regarding these topics. But what really makes this email heart-warming is its welcoming nature, showcasing that the house will be “their home away from home.”

2. Create Benefit-Oriented Promotions

For hotel owners, promotional emails are a surefire way to increase revenue. For recipients, it’s a chance to gain access to one-time, attractive deals. When you incorporate these into your hotel email campaigns, readers feel special, like they get exclusive access to benefits that others can’t enjoy.

This sense of exclusivity is a driving force for most customers, especially if you combine them with some urgency. People hate missing out on things, so ensure you mention when your deal expires. Alternatively, consider adding scarcity elements by mentioning that the offer is only destined for a limited number of guests. After this threshold is met, they’ll be left out.

Here are some effective emails to encourage potential guests to book their trip:

• Exclusive offers like limited-time discounts, upgrades, or members-only deals
• Seasonal promotions on popular holidays or occasions like Christmas, Valentine’s, or Black Friday, tailored to the festive spirit
• Early booking discounts so guests can plan their holidays in advance, and you get bookings even during low seasons

The key is to offer something valuable. In other words, think about how to entice subscribers with initiatives that entertain, educate, or relax.

Again, you should make sure you leverage personalization. For example, if past visitors showed interest in cultural activities during their stay, you might incentivize them by offering a free guided tour. Likewise, when you wish to target families, opt for promoting benefits like activities for kids or babysitting services. For business travelers, options that save time like express check-in and check-out or money like free meeting room access will sweeten the deal.

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Would you consider sending a promotional email urging subscribers to take a long weekend? The Hoxton did just that, creating a brilliant email to promote two of their hotels. Encouraging readers to take Monday off, they offer a 20% discount on their entire stay. That way, they’re likely to boost bookings even on a typically slow weekday. They also added a touch of humor to their email by suggesting what readers can tell their boss.

3. Use Automated Abandoned Booking Campaigns

If you’ve been in the hotel industry long enough, you already know how common it is for prospective guests to abandon their bookings. Thankfully, it’s a challenge you can easily address using automated abandoned booking emails.

Once a user leaves before checkout, trigger an abandoned cart email urging them to go back and seal the deal. How can you achieve this? After cart abandonment occurs, the secret ingredient for a successful booking is an exciting incentive. The most common ones include discounts, room upgrades, or extra nights. Or it could be breakfast on the house or free daily use of a hotel facility like the gym.

These little bonuses are likely to bring them back to the checkout page and convince them to convert. Abandoned booking reminders come with an additional benefit for your hotel business. You can use a short email survey to find out why visitors dropped out of the booking process. This feedback, along with any data you already have on your subscribers, allows you to create spot-on incentives and optimize the overall booking experience for your guests.

4. Send Post-Visit Feedback Request Emails

We already talked about how to make customers dream about their stay before they get there. What about after their visit comes to an end? It’s easy to stay top of mind when people haven’t moved to the fun part yet. But when it’s over, reality kicks in and they can easily forget about their experience. Unless you compel them to do otherwise.

A bulletproof method is to send a post-visit feedback request email. Your customers have an opportunity to share what they liked and where you can do better. To entice them to complete your survey or poll, consider adding an incentive like a small discount on their next booking or a free bundle of branded products.

There are several benefits when you leverage post-stay feedback emails: not only do you detect potential bottlenecks in the overall experience, but you can also use the insights collected to optimize your targeting. With this data at your disposal, you get to learn from your mistakes and create more tailored messages.

Plus, the same material might serve as social proof to attract more customers. Past visitors’ reviews, testimonials, and ratings constitute valuable marketing material since they are the most credible source in the eyes of their peers. Past guests know firsthand the quality of your offerings and will probably convince potential guests to follow their lead.

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Marriot’s feedback email is simple, using short and precise copy and a clean design with plenty of white space. More importantly, it’s focused on a single objective: gathering feedback about the stay. Completing the survey is as easy as it gets since the guests can do so without leaving the email. Plus, the brand ensured to mention how much they appreciate their clients’ opinions and that they might reach out to learn more about how to improve their services.

5. Use Email to Promote your Loyalty Program

When you’re looking to build long-lasting relationships with guests, there’s one step you should never leave out: showing appreciation. To many customers, this is the deciding factor that helps them classify your business. Is it among the ones that talk the talk or those that walk the walk? To fall into the first category, it all comes down to rewarding customer loyalty.

Therefore, recommending your loyalty program is an email practice that must be an integral part of your strategy. Such a program gives subscribers an additional reason to become repeat customers so they can claim their rewards. From spa treatments to complementary meals, earning loyalty points or rewards entices guests to choose you over your competitors.

Given that emails offer a direct line of communication with your audience, use them to spread the word about the benefits of joining your loyalty program. But to convince them to sign up, be crystal clear about it. These are the questions you should answer:

• What will they get on top of great hospitality?
• How can they register? What are the terms and conditions?
• Do they get different options to choose from?
• Are special occasions like birthdays part of your rewards system?

Once they sign up and start using it, you should keep investing in email marketing to inform them about status updates, upcoming rewards, and points expiration. Or just show up to thank them for putting their trust in your hotel business.

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Just like Hilton does in their monthly statement email to inform recipients about their activities as members of the Hilton Honors loyalty program. They deliver a well-structured email that clearly mentions the customer’s current tier, point balance, and targeted suggestions on the next destination. Hilton even takes the opportunity to promote a new point system, enticing customers to register.

6. Mix it Up with Social Media

Email marketing helps you connect on a personal level with guests. But what if there was a way to reinforce that connection while giving a push to your social media presence? Combining email with social media allows you to reach and interact with your readers on more touch points. Plus, you drive traffic to your social media channels and, hopefully, convince users to subscribe.

Social media offers you an alternative medium to have your guests talk about their stay. For example, you may encourage your customers to share their experiences on your social media through your post-stay email. To motivate them, offer small incentives in return for their posts, such as a discount on the next stay or loyalty points.

If it sounds like too much trouble for your subscribers, you can ask for a smaller commitment from them like joining your social media community. Just incorporate social media buttons to your hotel emails and invite them to follow you there. This is a simple and cost-effective way to boost your visibility and attract new audiences.

It works the other way round, too. You can incorporate the user-generated content created by your followers into your emails, making readers dream about enjoying the same experience. Does your budget allow you to throw in some influencer magic? If so, consider reaching out to famous influencers and partnering with them so they recommend your property for their followers’ next vacation. Then, repurpose their posts into your emails to gain credibility in the eyes of potential guests.

Invite Guests to a Great Experience with Email

In the hospitality sector, email marketing can turn into a great asset to create and retain a memorable brand presence. Hotel emails ensure regular engagement with existing customers and effective targeting of new audiences. In both cases, email marketing campaigns for hotels help you establish and reinforce bonds with your customers.

Of course, hotel email marketing shouldn’t be a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. Closely monitor the effectiveness of your emails to understand which tactics and email types yield the best results. The same goes for regular A/B testing. Testing two different versions of subject lines, layout, and content against each other allows for data-driven decisions and constant refinement of your emails.

With these practices in place, you go from providing accommodation to offering an unforgettable experience. Remember to keep discovering new ways to excite recipients and meeting their needs as soon as they arise. This is what will set your hotel business apart, attracting new customers and making returning ones look forward to what you’ll come up with next.

Author

Maria Fintanidou works as a copywriter for email marketing automation software Moosend, having created the Help Articles (FAQs) and overseen the platform’s translations in Greek and Spanish. She loves exploring new cultures and ways of thinking through traveling, reading, and language learning.