One of the biggest hotel marketing errors you could make in 2015 would be to forget email marketing. The fact remains that email still has one of the highest ROIs, despite the rise in prominence of alternative marketing channels.
Email is familiar to us, it bridges devices, authors can be creative and it is currently showing no signs of slowing with a projected 5% increase of email sent every year until 2019.
201 Billion emails sent per day
It is because of this that your mailing list of past and potential guests is one of your most valuable marketing assets. In this article I will introduce a technique that will drastically improve the size and quality of your mailing list.
How many times do you see this tucked away in the corner of a website? And how many times have you personally filled them out?
Exactly.
The industry conversion rate for newsletter signup forms is close to zero. Let us explore why and ask ourselves ‘how likely am I to give away something with the full knowledge that I will receive nothing in return?’.
Answer – Not particularly likely.
The internet is full of newsletter signup forms that do not take this simple psychology into account and offer absolutely no reciprocation. Thankfully there are ways to drastically improve conversion rates by actually giving something to a visitor in return for their details. The reciprocal approach I will discuss here is called:
Whitepaper Marketing
If done well, a targeted whitepaper offering can pull in juicy qualified leads that will grow your hotel’s mailing list very quickly indeed. So how does it work? Simply put, you advertise something for free, typically a document of some kind, but for a visitor to download it they need to provide a name and email address.
The offering needs to hold real value for it to work effectively and by putting a little effort into creating an interesting, eye-catching download you will reap huge benefits in the future. So how would this work for your hotel? Ideas might be:
- Hand picked tour guide of the area
- Secrets of the kitchen/recipes/”behind the scenes” pictures
- Vouchers for use at local attractions
Now if you saw THIS on a website, you would be much more willing to part with your details. It is a transaction which, if carried out successfully, actually contributes to the trust between you and your potential guest. Now the visitor is not a cold lead and there is common ground that the sales and marketing team can capitalise on.
Sounds interesting…
Great. If you can see your hotel benefiting from this then I would be delighted to take you through how we can implement it on your website. We are currently offering consultancy sessions to help you brainstorm some white paper ideas, so don’t hesitate to get in touch!