The travel industry is fast becoming ultra-competitive with an increasing overall valuation every season. After the pandemic brought down domestic and international travel to a standstill back in 2020, the industry is now gaining a high growth momentum.
In all this, a travel operator’s responsibility to make the business stand out stands tall. In all this, the ever expanding potency of the travel market only creates a deeper challenge to tap this wide base optimally.
Finding effective ways to reach out to new and prospective customers remains of essence in determining the overall visibility, growth and success of a travel operator. Using email marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to this widespread customer base that comprises both existing and prospective customers of the travel business.
As email is one of the most widely and pervasively used modes of communication globally, learning how to use email marketing effectively to reach out to travel leads and convert them to customers can be a gamechanger.
But before moving on to the ways in which email marketing can be useful for travel lead conversion, here’s a look at why it is important for industry players.
Top Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Crucial For Travel Businesses
Email marketing brings a strong prospect of lead conversion to customers for travel agencies through a wide and personalized exposure to travel product and service offers. A crucial global data backing this exposure suggests that email marketing from the travel industry has a high open rate of more than 20%. And of course, a majority of brands use email marketing to reach out to their leads.
One of the top reasons why email marketing has gained prominence as a preferred and one of the most useful forms of marketing in the travel industry is because it helps provide the right offers to customers in their initial stages of planning.
Some other reasons that make email marketing an indispensable part of digital marketing for travel businesses include the following.
- Bringing in new customers and retaining the existing ones
- Creation of brand loyalty
- Enabling easy and healthy competition among travel businesses across scales and sizes of operation
Now, let’s move on to understanding the actionable aspect of this marketing strategy, i.e., how to use email marketing for lead conversion of a travel business to customers.
Know How To Use Email Marketing For Travel Business Lead Conversion To Loyal Customers
Here’s a collection of some practical strategies you can utilize when implementing email marketing for turning leads to loyal customers for your travel business.
Personalize All Emails
Email personalization tops the list of ways on how to use email marketing to reach out to your travel leads for effective conversion to loyal customers. It is a pre-established fact that no matter which traveler you are approaching, each one would like personalized subscriptions that make them feel special.
As per stats, over 80% of millennials prefer personalized services in turn for brand tracking. And it is quite understandable too that personalized offers add more value to one’s travel plans than the generic ones.
When deciding how to use email marketing the best, personalization of email drafting is a crucial step to undertake. These personalizations can range across a wide spectrum, from offers to itineraries, and more to keep the emails relevant. Emails sent as per the interests and behavior of people are more likely to convert into travel bookings than otherwise.
Use Visual Aids For Better Incitation
Visual integrations to marketing emails are a better answer for how to use email marketing than non-visual text mails. It is for the simple reason that visual aids included in the emails are catchy and can hold viewer attention for longer than text emails. Combined with the right relevance, visual aids in emails receive a high click rate and lead to bookings.
The visual aids can be strategically used to bring user focus to the most crucial parts of the email, like a hot offer running, an upcoming event, a compulsive CTA, etc. Visual aids can be used in various forms, be it GIFs, pictures, animations, videos, or even illustrations.
Alternatively, emails can be designed minimalistically to focus on the critical elements only.
Use Feedback Forms
When considering an existing customer as a lead for future bookings, travel businesses can leverage the use of feedback forms. These forms can be used both as a value addition, engagement and inclusion activity as well as a platform for upcoming offer promotions.
One of the best ways on how to use email marketing, feedback forms included in emails and requested to be filled allow customers to participate and voice their opinions. In turn, it offers remarkable customer satisfaction.
A feedback form can be designed as a suggestion, compliment or a complaint feedback form, allowing users to voice their opinions. This improves their chances of repeating travel bookings with your travel company, thus earning your business customer loyalty as well.
Even with feedback forms sent to new leads, these can offer them an opportunity to express their intent related to various travel activities. Over time, this increases the chance of the lead approaching you for booking a service.
Create A Catchy Subject Line
In times where attention spans of humans have turned fractional, catchy email subject lines bear the potential to increase open rates. You can create such impact in the subject line in various ways, be it by adding appeal through travel pain point addressing, adding humor, integrating urgency markers, or getting down to business straight out.
The buzzwords of each integration can leave a quick impact on the receiver, leading them to open and check these emails for further information. And likely, this would lead them to check out the offer as well for booking. Some buzzwords for catchy email subject line creation include the likes of –
- Bucket list
- Travel checklist
- Road trip
- Adventure
- Don’t miss out
- Filling up fast
- Tour packages at flat rates (%)
The catch when integrating these buzzwords is to get the nerve of your leads, know their intentions, and identify right on what can create the best triggers.
Add A Sense Of Urgency
Many travel enthusiasts today go for impulsive bookings and actually are on the lookout for last-minute deals to save on their travel expenses. Identifying this customer segment and creating email offers that blend just right with their intent increases the chances of lead conversion to customers manifold.
Adding a sense of urgency is one of the best ways on how to use email marketing right across industries, and works quite miraculously for travel businesses. All that is needed is to add the right verbal cues in both email copy and subjects to nudge an immediate action from the viewer. Cues like ‘Last 5 hours to go’, ‘Deal expiring tonight’, and the likes can actually lead to quick conversions.
Adapt Emails As Per Lead’s Location
If you have successfully identified where your travel business leads are located, the emails can be well-adapted to provide tailored deals and offers. It can also be customized as per the aspiring travel itinerary of the travel. For instance, little tweaks to email copy like including weather information can go a long way in converting leads to loyal customers.
All a travel business needs to do is match the right locational cues to the traveler’s upcoming itinerary planned to get a quick site visit, and an improved chance of booking.
Match User Device Preference
Even though mobile phones are handy devices that people today use to make quick searches, the lead conversion rates for the travel industry are pretty low for these devices. While this trend is fast evolving, many travel enthusiasts still prefer desktop booking to mobile phone booking.
Travel operators thus have an opportunity to explore the gaps in mobile device bookings and develop an email marketing strategy that provides cross-device experience for booking finalizations. When determining how to use email marketing to its best potential for lead conversion, user device preference holds a great scope for exploration and implementations.
Share Opportunities
Email marketing for travel businesses can also be done right by sharing upcoming opportunities available with these travel agencies. Even the best combination of aesthetics and humor may not render if critical user value is not attached to it.
You may thus look forward to including upcoming opportunities with your travel company. These can include the likes of offers and discounts, last-minute cost reductions, end-to-end planning convenience, unique experiences and guides to your promotional emails.
Some other smart ways to maximize on how to use email marketing optimally include the following.
- Create email lists targeted at different customer segments
- Choose the email intent strategically, like newsletters, offers, discounts, new itineraries, etc.
- Select the email content wisely across promotions, guides, information, tips, attractions, festivals, destination reviews, polls, travel stories, quizzes, etc.
- Time your emails well and keep them sparse across durations and not crammed
- Work on an email calendar
- Always start with a welcome email to create the right connect
Conclusion
With these ways and tips on how to use email marketing right for lead conversion, a travel business can easily strategize their upcoming email marketing campaigns. Now that you know how to maintain a steady inflow of bookings from lead conversions, you can start right away with planning out your email marketing strategy and create a lead reachout plan for the next steps to follow.
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