E-MAIL

The benefit of e-mail is that it is a ‘free’ service. This is also its main drawback. As everyone knows, anyone can send e-mail to anyone which makes it a breeding ground for ‘spam’! Interestingly, we seem to be moving away from spam as the main issue. There are plenty of spam filters available and most people seem to be able to delete and move on.

However it is no longer enough to have permission through an opt-in. Everyone has given out a lot of permissions so now the challenge is, as with direct mail, to get your message delivered and read. Well planned and executed e-mail campaigns can achieve a delivery rate of 90 per cent, with around 40 per cent of delivered messages opened and ten per cent clicked through. Some commentators claim that most people regularly open and read 16 permission-based e-mails. To get yours read you have to displace one of these and enter that ‘inner-circle’ of trusted senders. You have to make your message seem interesting enough to open.

Personalise

One tactic is to put the prospect’s name in the subject field. This shows up as a potential personal message and seems to have an influence on the likelihood of the message being opened. If you are opening a new restaurant, then you could put the following as the subject: ‘David, here’s your free invitation.’ On the other hand do you ever receive personal mail with your name in the subject line? As with most aspects of the internet some things work for a time and then the opposite takes effect. Just try different tactics and see what works.

Entice

Personalising is important but you still need to let your prospects know exactly what is in it for them. You need thereader to be curious and see quickly what benefits there are for them. By putting a clear benefit in the subject line you will be letting your customers know how your service will improve their lives.

But you need to be succinct. Your subject line can only be about 40 characters long both because of the limits of the subject line space and also because any longer and the e-mail stands less chance of being opened at all.

You need very quickly to convince your busy prospects that your message is worthy of attention. Subject lines should be one of the following:

• Urgent. This gives the reader a reason to act now instead of later. Include a time-limited offer such as ‘special offer if booked by tomorrow’.
• Unique. Even if readers have heard it before, say it in a unique way. ‘Why our Spa guests look radiant.’
• Ultra-specific. These can tease the reader into opening your e-mail. ‘What never to do at your wedding.’
• Useful. Needs to offer a benefit. ‘Now WiFi for your guests.’

When you have written your subject line, test how strong it is against all four ‘U’s above. Score it out of five and make sure that it rates at least a three or four in at least three ‘U’s.

Whatever you do, don’t write copy that is different to the subject line. It is probably illegal and certainly breaks trust with your customer.

Keep it short

E-mail is not the vehicle for long messages. Of course an e-zine is a different proposition, which is covered later. Long e-mails are hard to read and they are best kept to as few words as possible. If you have a longer message it is quite acceptable to provide a link to a website that can be instantly accessed for a benefit.

How often?

There is no hard and fixed rule about how often you can make contact by e-mail. So long as you have permission from the recipient, you can e-mail every day if you have something that is of use and is relevant. You can send me a voucher for a free meal or extra frequent flyer miles every day if you wish! But if you do the same to sell me printer cartridges I will unsubscribe very quickly.

Relevant

As with any direct marketing media, it is a complete waste of time if you do not reach your target. You must tailor your message to your target market. For this you need segmented mailing lists so that you can send them relevant and targeted offers. If someone has signed up for your offers they are likely to have signed up with other hotels. You need to beat the competition by ensuring that your messages are anticipated by your prospects because they know that you will give them relevant offers.

Avoiding spam filters

There is a constant battle between spammers and the developers of spam filters. Your messages will often be caught up in the crossfire. To find out if your e-mail is being caught, sign up for a Hotmail or other free account and include messages to yourself in your mailing as a test.

Don’t forget that even though you have not sent ‘spam’ the recipient can still report it as spam to their ISP. This won’t happen so long as you are known and trusted.

Most organisations develop their own unacceptable words and phrases but there are some that never get through:

• Money back
• Make money
• 100 per cent satisfied
• Cards accepted
• SPECIAL PROMOTION
• Order now!

Particularly avoid CAPITALS and excessive punctuation!!!!

Test

The joy of e-mail is that it is relatively easy to test. Split your list into manageable portions and measure the reaction to your subject lines or your offers. You can then change individual parts of your e-mail and test the results.

Be very careful with the ‘tone’ of your e-mail. Any attempt at humour or sarcasm can easily be misinterpreted.

Interesting subjects

For a hotel there are a few options that can help you get your e-mail messages through to the recipient:

• Transaction e-mails: You can attach a promotional message to confirmation e-mails that you send to corporate customers about their room or meeting reservations.
• Membership e-mails: Prospects will read e-mails from clubs of which they are members. This works well for dining clubs.
• Free e-zine: If your newsletter is valuable and published regularly, anything with your name in the ‘from’ line will be seen as coming from a trusted source.

NEWSLETTERS

Newsletters are a great way to keep in contact with customers and prospects. You can tell them about new facilities and promote future events. Unfortunately, traditional newsletters can be extremely time consuming to do, with the result that enthusiasm sometimes dies off quickly. More effective is an electronic newsletter or e-zine. They are much simpler to produce, are free to send and can generate a very quick response. As with any direct response mechanism, the list is the key to success.

Objective

Your objectives must be very clear and you need to write the content with these in mind. It is likely that you will want to:

• establish your reputation;
• keep in touch with customers and prospects;
• promote new services;
• drive traffic to your website.

Name and content

Yours will not be the only newsletter received by your contact. Your challenge is to make the newsletter interesting and useful enough to be opened each time it appears in the inbox. A catchy name helps but it is the content that works. You will probably need to consider:

• Personal message from you.
• Update on facilities, changes and developments.
• Input from the chef (articles not just recipes).
• Special offers for readers.
• Offers from complementary products (e.g. local shops and spas).
• Local news (e.g. new restaurants, tourist services etc).
• Suggestions and opinions from your customers (offer prizes for good ideas that you adopt).
• Involvement of a local charity.

Keep it relevant

The proliferation of mail, both electronic and snail, as well as the multiplicity of other images, forces us to make our messages relevant. Recipients expect messages customised to their needs. No one has the patience to search for content that is relevant to them; they expect you to do that.

So, no general e-zines to all your market segments. You might send the same e-zine to corporate buyers and meeting planners, but do something different for your weekend guests. This is easy enough so long as you collect and segment the data in the first place.

Make it readable

It is no good if you send out your e-zine and everyone deletes it as soon as it arrives! The recipients of your newsletter are automatically part of a community and it is effective to trade on this. They are the audience and you are the focus so work this to your advantage:

• Develop a personality for the e-zine. Let your personality shine through and people will warm to you.
• Make sure you ask lots of questions or raise issues that persuade people to react.
• Make the contents really useful. Give information that will help people improve their lives. Give tips and suggestions. If you are sending something to meeting planners give them tips on how to negotiate better deals with hotels.

How often?

What you don’t want to do is set yourself a target that you can’t meet. On the other hand if you send out a newsletter just when you feel like it everyone will have forgotten about you. A regular once-a-month publication is OK and probably suits most hotels. Do stick to the plan and be honest about why you missed the deadline.

It can be helpful to make an outline contents plan for the whole year. You know that there are certain special events throughout the year so develop the plan around these: Christmas/Easter/ Mother’s Day/Winter Specials etc.

What format?

You can either send the newsletter as text (plain type with no graphics or pictures) or HTML (with graphics and colour). It is easier to write a text version but there are templates that you can buy to help with an HTML version.

There can be some problems with receiving HTML e-zines, which is why most are sent as plain text. To make plain text readable, be careful with the layout. Make the lines no longer than 60 characters, split up the various sections with horizontal lines and spaces, and include great headlines and sub-headlines.

E-mail collection

You will need to be very active to generate a comprehensive mailing list. Offer something of value from your website in return for leaving an e-mail address. You can also give out a small promotional piece with all bills and invoices and have cards on the tables. The key is to demonstrate the value that people will get in return for their address.

Management systems

Ideally you will want to use an internet-based system to manage your e-mail list. You can distribute it from your desktop with the e-zine as an attachment, but hopefully as your list grows you will want to automate the process further.

Eventually you will also want to link your website to your management service so that when people visit your website and leave their e-mail they automatically receive the newsletter.

KEY POINTS

• Effective direct mail relies on keeping or acquiring good prospect lists.
• Direct mail should only be used to promote your hotel to businesses if there are too many people to talk to directly.
• E-mail is an effective channel for promoting your services but there are many pitfalls. You must only communicate things that are definitely of interest to the recipient.
• Electronic newsletters are a good way to generate a sense of belonging, particularly if you personalise the contents.