Find out below what you will need to generate an email campaign that allows you to send your marketing results to new heights.
1. Don’t use long subject lines within your tourism email campaigns.
Aim to maintain your subject line below 40 characters including spaces.
When settling on a subject line, keep in mind that it's going to be the very first thing your customers will see in their inbox. It will also give them an idea of what to expect out of your email. An ideal subject line will aim to spark the recipient’s interest to open the email.
Try this - look at what other email marketers and rivals are doing within the tourism industry. Look at the way their subject lines encourage you to definitely open the email.
2. Don’t turn off your email recipients with lengthy paragraphs.
Minimize it to no longer than 2 or 3 short sentences.
When writing content for email marketing, readers will most certainly scan the content first and if it interests them, they might read further. To make sure your message gets through effectively, you need to make your point as concise as possible.
Try this – write the content for your email marketing campaign as you would normally do, then challenge yourself to get rid of as many words as you can in each sentence to help make your point more concise. Remember the recipients of your email campaigns must be in a position to scan your email message with relative ease.
3. Don’t expect recipients to read your emails on a regular basis if there isn't something in it for them.
A significant challenge for just about any email marketer is getting customers to read your emails regularly. Make sure the content of your emails bring value to your database.
Try this - furnish recipients with value adds or incentives, similar to free travel tips, recipes, download a whitepaper or a discount for his or her next booking.
If the recipient doesn't see any value in your email, they are unlikely to read one of your emails again.
4. Don’t attempt to accomplish an immediate sale each and every time.
Occasionally generating a lead from an email campaign can also be much more successful than going for that hard sell.
Based on what it really is you’re promoting in your email campaigns, the generation of a qualified lead - whether it is a phone enquiry, a customer downloading your travel tips or filling out an expression of interest form - can give very good results.
Try this – rather than asking the consumer to buy your service or product immediately, offer them a free trial or demonstration in order to allow you to get a qualified lead.
These qualified leads can then be transferred to your sales people to follow up. The success of your lead generation will depend heavily on you being able to portray value to the buyer in what you might be offering.
5. Track and analyse everything.
To completely realize the real success of your email marketing campaigns, you need to analyse your open rates, bounce rates and click on through rates to determine what works and what doesn't work. Your email system must have a reporting function which allows you analyse the success of your emails.
Try this – set yourself certain benchmarks you would wish to achieve. For instance, achieve an open rate of above 20%, a bounce rate of below 5% plus a click through rate of above 15%. You may even think of utilising a dedicated phone number for your emails so that you can monitor the calls generated from your email marketing.
6. Don’t send email campaigns without trying them first.
Always send yourself a test email to determine how your emails appear in various email clients, for instance, in hotmail, gmail, yahoo, outlook prior to send it to your clients.
Try this – create email accounts in hotmail, gmail and yahoo and send yourself a test so that you can see the way it appear in these email clients. Send the e-mail to a friend so that they can check and notice how the e-mail displayers in their email client. After you're assured that the e-mail views appropriately in all related email clients, you might send it with confidence. Remember the fact that an email campaign that views badly in the customer’s inbox will reflect badly on your business.
7. Don’t send untargeted emails.
Use data regarding your customers captured within your database to focus on the suitable message to the suitable customer. The more relevant the message is, your chances are high that of achieving campaign success. By analysing past campaigns you'll be able to gain knowledge about what particular customers have an interest in.
Try this – use the reporting function in your email system to look at exactly what links your customers have clicked on. Use this data to segment your customer database into what they have an interest in. Otherwise you send your customers a survey or feedback form asking them for information on their interests so that you can better furnish them with a product and service which is relevant to their needs.
8. Don’t spam your customers.
Make sure you aren't sending your email campaigns to the same customers too frequently.
Receiving a lot of emails from the same sender within a brief time period can decrease the probability of that customer opening future emails from you. You'll need to find a balance when planning the regularity of your campaigns so as to succeed in the most effective open rate and lowest unsubscribe rate.
Try this – split your database into segments whether it is by product, industry, interests or location. These segmented databases will permit you to send multiple targeted email campaigns to different customers at the same time, ensuring you aren't contacting the same customers too frequently. Maintain a log of what campaigns you've sent to which databases and rotate your campaign sends week after week. This will not just decrease the probabilities of your customers getting sick of your email campaigns, however it'll also give you with consistent marketing activity ensuring a steady flow of leads.
Remember email campaigns sent too frequently will simply be deleted, or worse, they might unsubscribe.
9. Don’t expect your database to grow miraculously by itself.
Getting potential customers to opt-in and receive your email campaigns is usually a process you ought to continually work towards.
Enabling your business to grow its email database will give you with an extremely cost-effective and efficient way to communicate with your customers. This capability to communicate with your customers will help you in building stronger relationships and positioning your business favourably in the minds of your customers.
Try this – Gather additional email addresses from your customers through integrating your accounts/invoicing with email. Offer your customers with the choice to receive their monthly invoice via email, in return, giving you an up-to-date email address list which can also be used for marketing purposes.
When employing this strategy make sure never to spam your customers with irrelevant marketing messages as this might impact your customers’ willingness to open their invoice emails. Alternative ways to collect emails include having competitions in your website and viral campaigns (eg forward this email to 5 friends to enter our draw for a vacation). Remember a growing database is an excellent sign of healthy marketing activity.
10. Don’t cut corners when designing an email campaign.
Good design and layout is the important thing to customers absorbing your marketing message.
When creating your email campaign and positioning the images (if you have any) or text, make sure to keep in mind these factors:
Position your main message, whether it's a picture or simply text, in a position which is probably going to be viewed within the recipients email preview pane.
Look to have an ideal ratio between white space and text as this will likely mean the customer is more likely to read it.
The location of pictures alongside text may also break up the layout of the e-mail and give the reader a snap shot of what they're going to read.
Remember an email campaign with the right amount of white space gives the reader the perception they may be able to what's relevant to them quickly.
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