From time to time, I receive hotels newsletters in my email inbox that give me some updates about their brand, their hotels development or simply their latest offers.
The newsletter is usually something that us consumers choose to receive because we are keen to be informed about different topics.
Having said that, newsletters come into our inbox among a lot of other emails that we need to go through, filter, read and respond. The flow of emails in the last 10 years has been increased dramatically and therefore hoteliers and other businesses need to understand that newsletters should be different to what they uses to send when email wasn't such a problem in our daily life.
This week, I have received this newsletter from the UK hotel group English Rose Hotels. But I could have picked other groups as well who are making the same mistakes.
Have a look at it and see what's wrong with this email.
Rule #1: Try to personalize the email as much as possible. There is no greetings. This email is not addressed to me. It is totally impersonal.
Rule #2: Before you ask me to book a hotel, tell more about your product. Don't shout at me your offers in the first place. Get me hooked to the idea to spend a weekend with your hotel is an offer I can't decline.
Rule #3: Make sure your email is also available on the browser. Check all the links that they are pointing to the right URL. All links to this newsletter go to a dead URL with the message 404 Not Found. What a lost opportunity to drive traffic to your hotel website!
Rule #4: Relevancy. Relevancy. Relevancy. One of the biggest mistakes hoteliers do in their e-newsletter strategy is to send the same email to everyone. It is time that you take CRM seriously and you adapt your communication accordingly to different segmentation of your customer base. You don't send the same message to a young couple vs. a family vs. a retired couple.
Rule #5: Don't trick your customers with a smart way (not) to show your prices. I don't care about about the price per person. I want to know the price for my stay. So don't show me it is going to cost me £149 per person. Show to me it is going to cost me £298 for the weekend including dinner for one evening and breakfast for 2 days.
Rule #6: If you want to display your email address, don't send me your generic info@ email address where my comunication will be lost among other emails. Make sure you create a different email address for the campaign or send me the reservation email address like reservations@
Rule #7: E-newsletters are a great way to promote your Social Media channels like Twitter or Facebook. But they are totally a waste of my time if these actions are not linked to the websites you are referring to. Once again, make sure your links are live and working.
Great article, and very great points! I get so many newsletters from hotels and the like, and end up deleting them because they are not to the point, or there is so much text I begin to get a headache. Thanks for posting!
Posted by: Ozone Experts | Friday, September 09, 2011 at 07:26 PM
I especially liked the relevancy portion. Training the staff at the front desk to mark down whether the guests were a family of four or just a businessman would not take any training at all but the message I send a businessman would be very different than a family.
Posted by: Eilat hotels | Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 01:52 PM
a well know hotel can provide a more reliable newsletters in which a customer may satisfy .Like in Hotel Las Vegas i've been receiving newsletter from them and i really appreciate because i can see that they are into me..and value me much ..they make extra effort such giving me freebies....
Posted by: Cheryl Hollins | Sunday, August 07, 2011 at 04:27 PM
All good points Guillaume. I'd also add the importance of a very clear call to action. Some hotels get the first bits right, but then fail to tell the reader what to do next to get more information or make a booking. I know this is simialr to ensuring url's are correct, but sometimes it's not even clear that that's what to click on next... And particuarly if someone is reading this on a mobile device they may just want a phone number to call rather than trying to view a webpage.
Posted by: Caroline Cooper | Friday, August 05, 2011 at 09:43 AM
Some of the best hotels too wiling to provide hotels newsletters in email inbox that give me some updates about their brand, their hotels development or simply their latest offers.
this is news which update me lot more for time being to create some usual information.
Posted by: Flights to Bangkok | Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 05:48 PM
I'd say that sometimes you newsletters can provide too much information. The user has to be considered a busy person, with hundreds of emails in their inbox. I'd recommend just a few lines that tease the reader into clicking the link through to the hotel website. The email is cleaner, quicker to read, and also the hotel gets the reader onto the website quicker!
Short, sharp and snappy.. not too full of images and so big that you have to scroll down the page.
Posted by: Hotel Desk | Saturday, July 02, 2011 at 06:19 AM
Great article with some very good tips here will hopefully be able to put this into practice when i start putting together an e-news letter myself once again thanks for sharing.
Posted by: serviced apartments york | Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 12:35 PM
@Dominic - thank you for your input. And it is verified as my Gmail account remove the picture straight away and ask me for permission to load the picture
@John - thank you for sharing your own experience
@Luxury Hotels - great stuff. Let us know when your newsletter is up and running
@Joseph - agree but bear in mind that email with info@ could be blocked by your customer email provider. So it might be worth to open a more subtle one
Posted by: Guillaume Thevenot | Monday, June 27, 2011 at 07:26 AM
These are all good points. The only one I would take exception to is number 6, regarding generic email addresses. We are a small hotel, with only one email address that is closely monitored by the manager and assistant manager, so there is little danger that a response from a potential customer would be lost.
Posted by: Joseph Pelusi | Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 05:40 PM
These are extremely good tips. I'm a webmaster at a luxury hotel agency so all these are helpful since we're starting up our own newsletter. Thanks so much for posting this!
Posted by: luxury hotels | Friday, June 24, 2011 at 02:51 PM
Those are good points and are mistakes we have made too when we send out newsletters. In fact, we once sent out a newsletter with the wrong link to our "book now" page.
I especially liked the relevancy portion. Training the staff at the front desk to mark down whether the guests were a family of four or just a businessman would not take any training at all but the message I send a businessman would be very different than a family.
Posted by: John Conner | Friday, June 24, 2011 at 02:10 PM
Good points.
I'd also add avoid image-based emails. They're often used as a simple method of delivering a consistent design irrespective of the differences in rendering across email clients.
The image-based approach can cause issues for those who have images blocked (blank email), set off spam filters (that base their algorithms on HTML-to-text ratio) or accessibility for those visually impaired.
Posted by: Dominic | Friday, June 24, 2011 at 10:44 AM