While I did say I would not be writing another post during this month, I just can’t help myself. As a web marketing strategist, I enjoy writing about these topics, and one of my very favorites is emails.
So, I’ve changed my mind…sort of.
I won’t be going away completely. I’ll just post every other week, maybe even once a week, just to keep you informed and me writing.
Two weeks ago, I talked about that all-important subject line and the various elements you need to pay attention to. So here’s the second part of writing successful emails for your travel business, as adapted from HubSpot’s fantastic ebook, “The Anatomy of a Five-Star Email:”
• Your sender should be a real person.
When your prospects receive an email from your company, what are the chances that they’ll click on and read it?
The open rates just might improve if you have your sender be an actual human being, whether that’s a marketing manager, a lead tour guide or your owner/CEO. Having a real person who’s closely associated with your company adds nice personal touch to your communications and builds more of a trust and rapport with your audience. They will start to anticipate emails from you and want to open them.
You’ll likely want to test the sender’s names. Also try to combine names with your business name, then see which perform best.
So this example would look like: Dave McDonald, Wild River Adventures
Just like with anything in your communications, the more authentic you can be, the more confidence your audience will have in your company.
• Keep your branding consistent
With the design of your emails, the graphics will help your customers and prospects instantly recognize they’re from your company. Having your logo and similar layout, color scheme and other elements from one email to the next also demonstrates a professional, polished image. Your very own brand.
In addition, you’ll want to keep the tone and style of your email copy consistent. Make sure it matches up with your company’s website language. You also don’t want to go from being dreamily descriptive in one letter, then zany and joking in the next.
As the person in charge of your travel company’s marketing, you may be tempted to include lots of photos and videos…and you definitely should. Just make sure that the pictures are fairly low resolution and the videos don’t automatically play. These details will decrease the webpage loading times of your site and the exasperation your visitors might feel if they wait too long.
• Make it personal
You’ll hear it plenty this year in marketing – personalization. And that’s no different for your emails
Amazingly, just over two-thirds of marketers are using personalized content and greetings in their emails, even though a third of those professionals believe that it’s a highly effective strategy. But there’s no denying the power of including a name and just a few details to let your audience know what you like.
If you can categorize your mailing list into past purchases and other market preferences, you can personalize your emails even more.
Here’s an example. If you have certain customers or prospects who have gone on or have expressed an interest in hiking trips to Provence, send information about those packages to just those individuals, instead of your whole list.
On the next post and the third part of successful email marketing, I’ll explore segmentation a little further and look at your business’s value proposition.
How successfully has your company used sender and recipient personalization and company branding?