Personalizing your emails will make them more impactful to potential guests. There are a number of ways you can segment your email list from demographics to past behavior at your bar, spa, or restaurant.
Creating more personalized emails doesn’t need to be complicated. Restaurants and spas can leverage softwares such as OpenTable, Tock, SevenRooms, and Yelp Reservations to build out the personalization for guests. For example, a focus of SevenRooms is to enable restaurants to customize every step of the customer’s journey from booking a reservation to evaluating their experience by putting in specific notes about the guests preferences.
Utilizing these softwares will often give you a guests name, company, location, and other information you can use to create email templates. It should be noted that you should be cautious when using templates. Even with this information, they often don’t appear personal–be careful how you craft it.
Other information such as birthdays and favorite orders can be pulled from platforms like SevenRoom and Tock that can enhance the guest experience at your hotel’s restaurant. Sending birthday emails or offering deals on a bottle of wine a guest has frequently ordered is a great way to build more rapport and loyalty with customers.
Build a quality email list from your restaurant/spa
Building a quality email list using your restaurant/spa will be crucial to making your emails more personable. This means doing so organically rather than purchasing emails from a database. Create an online reservation form that takes emails as a way to start collecting addresses from recent and relevant guests. Also add an informational form to your website for potential customers to fill out their email and other demographic information.
Collecting emails can also be done in-person. A form can be placed at the front counter of your spa or restaurant for customers to put down their information. This can even be incentivized with a raffle, offering prizes such as a free massage.
A list built organically will be much more receptive to your customers. Past guests will already have a connection to your spa or restaurant, and further emails will keep them engaged and remind them to come back. The content of your emails can be geared towards earning their loyalty and encouraging another visit. Those who haven’t become customers yet but filled out your website form will be much stronger leads than cold emails, and your content can be driven to make another conversion.
Interested in learning about more ways to boost your hotel's marketing campaigns? Read more at the 97 Switch Guide to Hotel Marketing.