Stay in Touch with Your Guests at No Cost – Simple Email Marketing Technique for Hotels in Sri Lanka

Our post on “How to use Tripadvisor for Hotels in Sri Lanka” has got a very positive response from many hotels in Sri Lanka and this made us to continuously disseminate the benefits of using Internet Marketing for Hotels in Sri Lanka.  As a result this post is being published and if you find it useful just let us know about it. That will definitely encourage our hotel Marketing team to come up more useful articles for hoteliers.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Are you aware of the 80:20 rule in marketing?

20% of the business comes through 80% of new customers and 80% of the business comes through 20% of existing customers.

Most of the hotels in Sri Lanka spend their time and money in acquiring new guests while giving less importance to the existing guests. There is a perfect way to answer a frequently asked question “how to increase my hotel bookings at a low cost”. The answer is through a well strategized retention strategy. Getting leads from your existing customers is always easier than convincing unknown new guests. Their repetitive visits may not cost you much as a new guest’s visit costs.

In simple terms the ultimate objective of any hotel is to sustain a great occupancy rate to remain profitable in the business. It is evident that most of the hotels and resorts in Sri Lanka try to get guests through online bookings, heavy adverting, online travel agents, networking and personal contacts. All these are costly and sometimes the return on investment (ROI) would be lower compared to the return.

Now we shall move into discovering a retention tool which will be helpful to get more leads from your existing guests and allow you to keep in touch with them.

First and foremost you should develop a database of your guests. Having a proper database of your guests is very important for future marketing purpose. Whenever guests check in or check out make sure you have all their details such as name, email addresses, date of birth, anniversary date etc. If you have this information the below stated is a simple process for you to manage and start reaching your existing guests.  This article will elaborate on how you can maintain a database and practice email marketing techniques effectively.

Step 1

First make sure you have created a base of your existing guests / guests who have inquired about your hotel. The important data to be extracted for this purpose are their names and the email addresses. You can establish a database in an MS Excel file with 2 columns for names and email addresses.

Step 2

Once you have completed this simple guest database visit the link below;

https://login.mailchimp.com/signup/

Mail Chimp is a free email marketing tool available which can be used free of charge up to a certain number of emails. This tool is really effective and productive for businesses. Once we explain further you will get an idea to what extent this email platform is useful for your business.

By using an official email ID (for example info@yourhotel.com) create a free account in Mail Chimp.  Once you signup, check your inbox for an email for a confirmation from Mailchimp, click on the link given and activate your account. Once you activate fill out the basic information to get started.

 

Step 3

Creating a Mail List

In order to use Mailchimp effectively first you have to create the mailing list of your own. Click on the create list button and fill the details in the set up the new list page.

In the “Last Name”, mention your desired name, and mention your hotel name as “Default From Name”. Then mention a “Default Reply to Email” and a subject line. The important thing is the clause that you are going to give under “Remind People How They Got On Your List”. You have to tell the receivers how you got the email addresses. For example the clause could be “You are receiving this mail because you recently made a booking with us / inquired about a stay in our hotel”. Also make sure whenever you give out the detailed form to be filed during check in / checkout / inquiry / feedback etc. request for permission to send out mails to them.

Step 4

Once you have created the list, it is time to upload the database file. Use your guests’ database in the Excel file and save it as a .csv file. Then click on import contacts in the below shown screen.

After uploading, select appropriate columns for the mailing list. With this step you have successfully created your own mailing list.

Step 5

Creating a Campaign

In order to start your first campaign, go to the top navigation menu, and click on campaign. In the screen click on the red button named “Create Campaign”.  In the drop down menu select “Create Regular Campaign – option one”. Once you click on it, it will guide you step by step towards the campaign set up. From the next screen select the suitable list you want to send the campaign to and then accordingly select the next step.

After filling the above you could click next and once you click on next step it will prompt you to the next screen, as shown below.

You could select any of these options to send out your emails. It is advisable to go for pre designed template during your first campaign which will reduce the hassle of creating new templates for your hotel. Editing a template is rather easy in Mailchimp. Once you click on Predesigned option it will navigate you to the pre designed template page. You could select one template and click select. Then it will take you to the editing screen. You can change the template as per your requirements.

The content of your campaign could be about your hotel, latest promotions, promoting a special feature of your hotel, latest news in Sri Lanka, anniversary of your hotel, invitation for a festival celebration at your hotel, and much more.

Remember to include your social media profiles icon linked to the email so that there are chances that the guests may visit them and be engaged with you. Once you choose the template you can edit it. From the colour theme menu you could change the colour, edit text accordingly. Ensure that you include the logo of the hotel as well with prominence. Once you are done with the design click next to continue to insert and click confirm. With that you will be done with setting up the campaign. But before you send the campaign out please click on the link shown below in the confirmation screen to send a test mail. Always make sure you send a test mail before you confirm the campaign. Click on send test mail option and give your email ID and check whether the mail is displaying correctly. Once you are satisfied with the display and other relevant designs, error free content then confirm the campaign.

Step 6

Tracking the Performance

After sending the campaign out you can easily track the performance of your campaign such as the number of guests that opened your email, who they are, how many times, from which country, which URL they have clicked etc. to view the reports click on campaign, and next to the relevant campaign click view report.

These are the simple steps to follow to send a campaign using Mailchimp. Further help can be taken from Mailchimp tutorials as well. Monitoring each campaign’s performance is important to make further decisions about the email campaigns.

If you have implemented Google analytics, you could track the performance of your campaign in depth.

Last but not least, the most important thing that you have to keep in mind is the strategy that you are going to design to get the fullest benefit out of this campaign. Simply and randomly sending promotions and flyers will not bring you the expected outcome. Though it’s a free tool, you should have a proper content management system to communicate with your guests. It is ideal to have a mixture of inbound content about your hotel, promotions etc, then some general information about the country and other attractions for them to make better travel decisions, more personalized flyers as per their interests (Mailchimp also gives great personalization avenues) etc.

The above discussed steps are only for the beginners and there are numerous advanced features that could bring more benefits to your hotel. If you need further clarification on sending out a campaign and to make it more customized please feel free to contact us.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ