No matter what motivates anyone to travel (whether it’s business or pleasure) hotel owners, bed and breakfasts, or self-catering accommodation are an indispensable part of travel arrangements. For the small business owner, the challenge is to get in front of those who are looking to make a booking and to build relationships with those who have visited before who could become loyal, repeat customers.
One way to market to new or existing customers and make an impression is to use email marketing. There are tools out there that make email marketing quick and easy, so you ensure that you don’t miss out on opportunities to get in front of travellers. Getting standardised templates for each of these and sending them out at appropriate times can make a difference to your marketing strategy.
Here are some examples of the types of emails that can make an impact to those who have enquired or made a booking with you.
1. Welcome emails
These are usually followed by bookings that have been made and include a thank you message so that the customer aware that their business is appreciated, but also that their booking was successful and you have confirmed the details of their arrival and stay.
But you don’t have to stop there – this is a great opportunity to highlight specials that are coming up, or to share some extra information like a map on how to find your business when coming from the airport. You can even include which transport services to use that offer the best rates. Those coming from out of town, especially from another country, would find this sort of information useful and appreciate you taking some of the stress out of travelling.
Find tips or advice for your guests that suit their reason for travelling. If it’s for business purposes those clients might find it more beneficial to be notified of nice restaurants in the area to take clients to while they are in town, and less interested in how to get to your establishment. Whatever the case, be sure to include information that is helpful in your welcome email – by doing this you go a step further for your clients and leave an impression as you address some of their other travel needs.
2.Recommendation emails
Alternatively, you can use recommendation emails to include helpful tit bits for your customers to know about the area and the city you are located in. Once someone has checked in they may be interested in finding out more about the local attractions in and around the city. This is a great time to send them an email with what they can do in the area, how they get there, the best way to book for tourist attractions, what the most popular restaurants or on-goings are, or even just highlight the services offered at your hotel or bed and breakfast. For example, if you have a pool and other amenities, or you offer a laundry service during their stay it’s a great way to make your customers aware of this on their arrival.
3.Post stay emails
Once your customers have left it’s always good to get feedback and find out how their stay was while thanking them for their business. This is an opportunity for you to learn about what areas you can improve on to ensure you have happy customers coming and going throughout the year.
4.Birthdays and anniversary emails
You can really wow your customers with this one. By wishing them a happy birthday or remembering an anniversary you can offer existing customers special deals around this time. This can encourage them to come back and makes them feel special that you remembered these small details. It makes quite an impression as a brand and shows that you care and value them as much as their business.
5.Sales emails
If you’re running winter specials to get feet through the door then make sure that you communicate this to your database. If existing customers are aware of exciting deals they are more likely to cash in because let’s be honest, everyone likes a good deal. It’s a clever way to entice them or remind them of your business as they plan their annual holidays.
If you’re looking for tools that can help you with these sorts of email campaigns, MailChimp is a great place to start. They make it easy to manage your email marketing and come with standard templates that you can customise to create visually appealing emails that can stand out. Email marketing is a smart way to reach your customers and can impact your business sales while building meaningful relationships with your client base. If you haven’t considered it, think about the missed opportunities that you can now take advantage of.
At Lulalend we know that not all marketing efforts are cheap and easy. So we ensure that we are there to help businesses capitalise on marketing efforts when they need to. We do this by providing small business funding that can help you create some room for a marketing budget when cash flow is tight. Everybody knows that if people don’t know about your business they’re not going to use your business. If you don’t have a marketing budget or need to increase your current budget to get in front of your potential clients, contact us to find out how we can help you with small business funding quickly and easily.
