Hotel marketing automation provides the required competitive edge you need to connect with guests by targeting them with the right information at the right time. With marketing automation solution, you can build your campaigns, landing pages, social media profiles and more at one place, and can push relevant content across multiple online channels. Additionally, you can measure the impact of your marketing campaigns – what is working for you and what is not. With a well-planned marketing automation strategy in place, you can easily ensure an increased conversion at your property.
Importance of Marketing Automation Solution for Hotels
According to the Marketing Automation survey by Marketo, 91% of successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the success of their overall marketing effort.
And, here are few more
1) Helps you Leverage Guest Data
Guests want information that is quick, accessible and relevant. You can collect and centralize data using various tools and technologies. Once you know what guests want, it becomes easier to personalize the message.
2) Streamline Hotel Operations
Marketing automation for your hotel helps you to work smarter, faster and to take informed decisions. Technology allows you to automate tasks with precision. It helps you to retarget your online customers, and improve presence on OTAs.
3) Nurture Leads
You can run automated lead-nurturing campaigns to improve conversions.
4)Detailed Reports
Provides detailed reports to help you measure performance of emails, ROI and enough data to plan better.
5) Experiment and Create
Use a single tool to create different emails and landing pages that helps improve CTAs, lead generation, segmentation, lead nurturing/scoring, relationship marketing, cross-sell and upsell, retention and marketing ROI measurement.
Here are some important factors you need to know about using such technologies –
1) Track and analyze guest behaviour
Marketing automation lets you analyze guest behaviour. You can see how potential customers interact with your hotel and the source of your leads. You can use software to send out personalized marketing messages to build relationships. This means your guests will see messages that are tailored according to their requirements. You can also capture their activities such as – if they browse hotel options, book rooms and more. This helps to understand your customer and keep the context relevant in your communications.
2) Defining Types of Guests
Using marketing automation software, you can categorize your guests as per their segment – leisure and business. It helps you further design your marketing campaigns and offer deals accordingly. Automation helps you with accurate analytics by collecting information via purchase history, email link clicks, inputs on social media and more.
3) Automate Email Campaigns
Email marketing automation is a must as it helps you save ample amount of time. You can automate the process of sending out repeated emails. Automated communications is an inexpensive way to be in touch with your guests. Your emails must be mobile-optimized, email marketing automation make this process quite easier.
For example – pre-arrival guest emails, welcome emails, weekly newsletters, etc. can all be automated.
An automated system that sends emails to recently checked out guests prompting them to write reviews on your hotel saves time, too. Plus, this helps to build up your hotel’s online reputation.
5) Lead Nurturing
Online users may often abandon booking your hotel for various reasons. Lead nurturing helps build strong relationships to get them to book your hotel in future. You can use such campaigns to inform your prospective customers about your hotel, display your services and amenities, and build trust.
6) Build on the Guest History
Marketing automation will help you track level of engagement with your customers. You get ample data from repeat visitors to create targeted and personalized offers. For example, you can track which products or services are most relevant to a guest. This also gives insights into the spending habit of each guest.
7) Build on the Effectiveness of Social Media
Easily create triggers using your social media platforms. Combine it with your email campaigns, and add your profile buttons to emails. Use marketing automation tools to gauge the clicks and conversions. These tools provide you with metrics you can use to plan better in future.
8) Use Special Promos, Interact at the Right Time
An automated marketing process makes it easy to roll out relevant promotional offers for a specific season, or during an event. Use the automation software to re-engage with your customer and to run automated campaign during off seasons. You can set time, month and other indicators to direct the automated campaign accordingly. You should also automate the process of sending out SMS and email communication to your booking agents or guests.
The power of automation gives valuable insights into your customers’ behaviour, and helps you target them effectively at every stage of their buying cycle. It improves your business process in the long run.
Your marketing automation management platform allows you to track vital metrics that help you tweak your email campaigns and messaging. With increased conversion rates, your hotel bookings also witness a growth. A cloud-based property management system with automation software will help you leverage guest data to target them effectively. Most importantly, detailed reports in the PMS helps add value to your strategies.
This article was originally published in HotelNewsResource
