Email marketing tips for travel
Email Marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to send a direct message to your audience - whether they be past clients or potential new ones. It is a one-on-one conversation with them and with the right set-up you're able to personalise and customise your message to specific groups and segments within your database ensuring your delivering relevant, interesting content to each member of your audience.
As well as promoting your brand or business, email can be used as a tool to inform, educate and inspire travellers. Here are four of our top email marketing tips for our travel industry clients:
1. Keep it short and sweet
We all love writing about our travel experiences and describing how beautiful a destination/accommodation/ship is. But, did you know that the average time spent reading a sales/marketing email is 9 seconds? This means you have 9 seconds to get your audience's attention and make them want to keep reading. Ensure your copy is clear and concise, and use sub-headings to break up content.
2. Include a clear call to action
You want to drive as much traffic to your website as possible from an email. The idea is not to include ALL of the details in the email, but entice a recipient to visit your site to learn more about a product, destination or offer. Don't confuse your readers with conflicting CTA's and try to avoid sending them to someone else's website. Use clearly labelled buttons, link images and ensure your contact details are easily located.
3. Create urgency
If you are sending out a "deals" or "sale" email - which we often are in travel - you want a more immediate reactiom from your audience. Use terminology to help create this urgency including "last chance to secure your place". "exclusive email offer", or "limited availability". FOMO is a real thing, especially in travel!
4. Mix up your content
Are you guilty of sending out a monthly newsletter that is just deal after deal? Include links to blog content, articles, recipes, listicles, and other interesting or inspiring content to balance out the harder sales messaging and improve engagement and interest with your audience. Keep the content on your own website so traffic is going exactly where you want it.
Generally, email engagement rates are up across all industries - including travel. So if your emails are not performing as well as you'd hope them to, there may be some small changes or updates you can make to see improvements. We are very experienced in email marketing within the travel industry on a number of platform systems and can help identify what these might be.
Start off 2024 with a clean database and fresh email templates! Contact us today if you need help with your email content calendar, email templates, content (copy and images) or database.