Email marketing works. I dare you to counter me… If it doesn’t work for you - let’s talk! Email marketing for travel and leisure brands is a tricky concept during the Covid-19 pandemic but it doesn’t have to be. A well considered email marketing strategy can have substantial customer nurture benefits and settle your brand in the hearts of your customers for the long term.

The email marketing opportunity

Email marketing done well is one of the most personable and successful ways for brands to communicate with a geographically spread customer base, or simply to reach them in their own home.

The tricks are to not over-sell and to be kind with the end frequency (read: maintain reasonable distance).

Seven email marketing opportunities

1. Regular newsletter

2. Nurture emails

3. Abandon cart emails

4. Transactional emails

5. Anniversary emails

6. Refer a friend

7. Follow-up sends

Let’s work through each of these opportunities:

Regular newsletters

The best way to build a list for the purposes of regular communication is to have a pop up of some description triggering on your website. Yes, use cookies to limit how frequently it appears. Yes, trigger it on all pages on your site.

Be clear about who your ideal customer is/has signed up to receive updates from you and what they want to hear and how frequently. Then stick to those measures.

Serve up a mix of brand storytelling, seasonal/topical news, relevant products for ‘now’ and pointers to some of your other content (for those who don’t want to buy now).

Clearly determine, internally, how often you will create and send these, so that both you and your audience know what to expect, when.

These are the marketing emails that travel and hospitality brands are struggling with most at the moment.

One of my favourite examples this week has been from Love Cottages - let’s call it a form of care in the community - it was a gem of a newsletter (and no I wasn’t involved in it). You can sign up for the next instalment on their website.

Nurture emails

Say you’ve implemented an email data capture mechanism on your site such as a free ‘how to’ download and as a result recipients end up on a mailing list (more on GDPR later).

The first email this person receives from you is directly related to the ‘thing’ they signed up for. From there, create an automated ‘journey’ of emails that takes them on a more detailed tour of your product/service offering. The objective here is to literally nurture them into purchasing something at some point.

The frequency of these emails will change as time goes on and they do/don’t buy something.

Abandon cart emails

This is where cookies really come into their own. You know those (only mildly annoying) emails you receive a few hours after you put a few items in an online shopping basket but then got distracted or found a better price elsewhere? Those are called ‘abandon cart’ emails.

The online version of the store you were shopping in is essentially having a puppy dog eye moment and trying to claw you back as a customer.

There won’t just be one of these, there’s usually two, or…

Transactional emails

A list might be easier here:

• thanks for shopping with <insert brand name>

• here’s your order confirmation

• your order has been picked

• your order has now been dispatched

• your order is on its way in the next <insert number> hours

• your order has been delivered

• thanks for shopping with us - please rate your product

• how are you getting on with your <insert product/service>

• how would you rate your experience using <insert brand> (spot the Net Promoter Score email)

• Won’t you tell your friends… (refer-a-friend, share on social media)

The list may well go on… But hopefully you get the picture that the opportunity with transactional emails (if you can be as un-annoying as possible), is quite lengthy.

Anniversary emails

For some marketers, anniversary emails fall firmly in the transactional email automation - just a few weeks, months, or up to a year down the track.

Anniversary emails are a gentle communication mechanism for reminding people who you are, what they bought from you, how long ago it was, and that now might be a good time re-purchase.

Refer-a-friend emails

Once upon a (pre-GDPR) time, refer-a-friend emails were all the rage: “forward this to a friend to win…”. Between GDPR and some smarter applications of the model, they have somewhat fallen from grace, but it doesn’t mean you can’t still execute them.

We’re particularly impressed by the set-up of the Home County Candle Co who made it a simple, clean and swift exercise for both the sender and the recipient. I haven’t delved deeply enough to know whether they’re using a platform to execute this on their behalf, but referral platforms like Mention Me have done well to captivate a changing marketplace.

Follow-up sends

Follow-up sends or re-sends are emails you, literally, re-send to the audience who didn’t open the first version of your newsletter. Best practice dictates that you alter the subject line of the second send, but everything else stays the same (providing it’s still time relevant).

It works an absolute treat at improving your open rate and click through rates, and ultimately bolstering your email conversion stats. I’ve seen it in action, emulated it and seen it again and again - especially when doing email marketing for travel brands.

When not to send marketing emails

In Timma’s previous post about email marketing, she touched on the annoyance factor of unnecessary nudge emails. Bearing in mind all of the above options, let’s be sensible about when it’s a good time to send an email, and when it’s completely unnecessary and downright annoying. Let’s not be the brand that gives its audience the impression they’re being watched or completely and unnecessarily bugged at the wrong time, day, or ever!

The GDPR factor

GDPR was the biggest communications farce of the 21st century for marketers, businesses and customers alike. I doubt even the ICO could debate that given how long it took them to issue guidance and then to deliver it in laymen’s terms.

Before you quibble about whether you need an opt-in or an opt-out tick box on your email sign-up form, look hard and fast at your privacy policy. The GDPR clause in your privacy policy will likely focus either on ‘consent’ or on ‘legitimate interest’.

A privacy policy based on ‘consent’ requires you to seek the permission of the user to email them - you need them to opt-in.

A privacy policy based on ‘legitimate interest’ enables you to communicate with your users and customers until or unless they opt-out. A good example of a brand doing this is Thompson & Morgan. I’ve even talked at length with them about their practice.

What to do?

In my next post, I’ll share some examples of email marketing coming from brands during the Covid-19 crisis. Some of those will be projects I’m proud to have been involved in. Others I will pluck from my inbox.

What I want businesses to understand at this time is threefold:

1. it’s ok to keep communicating even when it’s not business as usual

2. there are ways to go about it without worrying you’re offending your audience

3. email marketing doesn’t have to focus on selling

Do you remember what I said at the start of this post? Email marketing works. I dare you to counter me… If it doesn’t work for you - let’s talk. I mean this. Whether you need to get your email list in order, your audiences clear, your data sorted, or your content plan clear, we can help.

And during Covid-19 challenges, we’re going above and beyond to help brands for whom market budgets are tighter than a… [insert your own sentence ending here]. Drop Kate a line by email or give her a call on the number in the website footer.

For now, stay safe and stay sane.

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