Traveling is one of the most universal interests around the globe. And the digital world has made it easy for everyone to post about their adventures and wanderlust stories on social media. With all the potential buyers, the travel industry should be a paradise for marketers worldwide, right? Not quite. The reality remains that many factors contribute to converting a passionate traveler to a customer.
Travel and tourism in the digital world
Now more than ever, prospective travelers are doing their research on the internet. This includes finding their next destination, the best prices, and deals that are just only hard to ignore, so the competition is becoming more challenging.
With all that in mind, it is essential to offer a lot of value to your potential customers and, more specifically, to make that value available online where you will find customers first. That’s where email marketing comes in.
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing where you send emails to consumers regarding newsletters, promotions, or company news, or anything else in order to improve the relationship with existing and potential customers.
Why is email marketing essential for the travel industry?
Email marketing is a great way to get in touch with your customers. Here are some of the reasons why:
- 89% of marketers(opens in a new tab) support that email is the number one way in which they generate leads.
- It allows your tour business to instantaneously provide customers with useful information such as tour details and updates tour availability, as well as presenting new tours.
- It’s a direct path to potential and past customers rather than them getting overwhelmed or lost in all the options available online.
- For those who engage in B2B marketing, 79% find email to be the most successful channel for content distribution(opens in a new tab).
- It brings a high return on investment at an accessible price — up to $42 for every $1 spent.(opens in a new tab)
- Consumers check personal email for an average of 2.5 hours each weekday while at work.
- On the whole, email marketing is still considered to have a valuable conversion rate(opens in a new tab).
5 steps to create a strong email marketing strategy for the travel industry
1. Determine Your Goals
When you start a new campaign, it’s essential to have clear goals and objectives in mind. This is crucial when you try to compose an email marketing strategy. Have a good foundation and build your plan based on a solid structure.
Goals are also important so that you can keep track of your progress throughout the campaign.
There are many different goals with email marketing, like building a relationship with new clients, boosting engagement on a product or service, or even trying to win new clients that are not generally engaged with your brand.
2. Build a Successful Landing Page
Your landing page(opens in a new tab) is one of the most significant elements in this process and can be used as a lead magnet for your whole campaign. Having a poor landing page design may lead to a mediocre email marketing campaign.
Nowadays, there are plenty of tools that can transform your landing page into an aesthetically pleasing sign up form for your customers to opt-in.
The most effective templates are the ones with a simple design(opens in a new tab) and a strong call to action. Use your landing page to create your first email list in no time.
3. Build and Segment Your Email List
Email lists(opens in a new tab) are valuable in today’s world. When building an email list, you should always look at your demographics(opens in a new tab), including gender, average age, background, and clients’ location. In general, all this information can help you better understand your audience.
This is a huge first step to every successful campaign.
Once you have collected all the necessary data, and have a list at your disposal, try to segment it into smaller subgroups based on specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This will allow you to send targeted marketing so that each of your customers(opens in a new tab) can get the most value out of your brand.
4. Create the Campaign
The next step is to create our first campaign. For that, it is essential to understand what your customers need(opens in a new tab).
What are their pain points (the specific problem that the customer is experiencing), and why did they sign up in the first place?
Your goal is to offer as much value with these emails as possible to transform potential customers into long term fans for your brand.
Sharing discounts, industry news, or even guides about the places they are eager to visit just might do the trick.
5. Test and Track
We can spend all day talking about what potential customers want to find in their inboxes, but it is all about experimentation. It takes time, and you have to be patient to achieve great results.
The list is unique to your business, and each list has different consumer characteristics and desires.
Every campaign is a test, and as a result, you need to be ready to pivot every time one of your strategies doesn’t work. This will allow you to build value as you go and improve future emails.
There are two significant elements that you should take into account as part of every campaign: the open rates and click-throughs rates.
Compare them against past campaigns you’ve sent to see whether you are on the right track. These results, and any patterns you may discern in your readers’ behavior, will help you craft even more effective campaigns in the future.
An outline for email marketing campaigns for tourism
Welcome Emails
A welcome series allows you to greet your new customers, providing them with more information on your brand’s products and services.
It is also a great way to start your first segmentation by offering them the chance to choose the different communication options to get more targeted content.
Feedback and Review Emails
Living in an era where reviews play a huge role in customers’ behavior, a brand needs to have testimonials. You can achieve all this by asking your email lists to give you feedback or reviewing your products and services and sharing links for them to do so.
In this way, you have a new communication method, but you also can convert our list to more loyal customers.
Abandoned Reservation Emails
The internet is a distraction-filled place, and there is nothing you can do about that.
Or can you?
Many customers are close to buying from and abandon their reservation sign up form or virtual cart.
Argh, you were so close.
Oh wait, you can send them an email with their reservation form to complete. This is precisely how this kind of email works, and trust me, it works wonders.
Fun fact:
Users abandon a staggering average of 69% of online carts
45% of cart abandonment emails are opened(opens in a new tab); 21% of all are clicked on, while 50% click purchase.
Newsletters Sharing Industry News and Travel Tips
Writing a sales-y newsletter is probably the reason why you are losing subscribers from your list(opens in a new tab).
Instead, look to create interesting content about your top destinations or underrated must-see places.
Make people want to travel by emailing them travel insights, tips, and articles.
In this way, when they are ready to book their next adventure, the first name that comes to their mind will probably be yours.
Thank-You Email
Once a user completes their trip, it is a great time to send a thank you email asking for feedback, encouraging them to share their photos, videos, and experience on social media and tag your business, and even ask them to send you some of the content they created from the trip.
User-generated content can be the best kind of promotion for your brand — don’t underestimate it!
The Takeaway
We live in an unpredictable world. It is essential to adapt our strategies and tools to create the best possible user experience.
Email marketing is an excellent and reliable tool that can help build a loyal customer base and increase investment return.
It is essential to understand that what works for one business might not work for another, so finding the right email marketing strategy for your company will require experimentation.
Get creative, discover new ideas for promoting your content, and compare the results to find what gives your company the most significant uplift.
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