If you are not sending out email marketing blasts, you could be missing out on a good chunk of potential revenue. Think about how often you check your own email (according to Hubspot, 99% of consumers check their email daily) and how many lists you are subscribed to. Now, imagine how many additional eyes you could send to your website with strong email marketing efforts. Sound enticing? Effective email marketing begins with a solid list of subscribers, and if you are looking to build your list, social media is an excellent place to start.
There are multiple ways you can build your email list through both organic and paid efforts on social media; for the purpose of today’s post, we are going to focus on Facebook. Why Facebook? Facebook remains the largest social media site thanks to 1.56 billion users logging onto the platform every day. By targeting ads to the exact kind of customer that your hotel attracts, you can easily encourage qualified signups to your email list. Last week, we discussed a targeted marketing campaign Blue Magnet ran across multiple channels to drive email sign-ups. This week, we are going to dive deeper into the social media component. After reading this post, you will have a better understanding of how your hotel’s email marketing list can go from zero to hero with the help of social media.
Drive Sign-ups with Paid Campaigns
You can target your ads on Facebook to the audience that best aligns with your property. Ensuring that your ads resonate with your typical clientele will get potential guests to your website, result in lower bounce rates, and (likely) drive more bookings. For example, you can target people who are fans of your hotel brand, frequent leisure or business travelers, and fans of the area that you are located in. You can also narrow down the age range to match your average guest and/ or users that live in feeder markets. Below is an example of targeting that we put in place for a client located in the heart of New Orleans.
Once you have your targeting in place, set your budget, and selected the time frame you want the ads to run during, writing the copy for the ads and selecting images for them is the next step. We recommend utilizing a mix of images of your hotel and the local area, and if you cannot decide, look to what your guests are reacting to the most on your social media channels. Our best-performing images, in this case, were of the local area in New Orleans. The copy was tied into a giveaway that the hotel ran to help further encourage email sign-ups.
How well did this work? Facebook drove 1,835 landing page views with only $300 in media spend – that is $0.16 per landing page view! Thanks to our efforts across all marketing channels, the hotel earned 838 new email subscribers in just one month! Of course, promoting the giveaway helped to encourage sign-ups and drove a lot of positive sentiment about the hotel.
Go Further with a Giveaway or Deal
A free weekend at a hotel is enticing to most people, especially when you have the added bonus of an incredible location like New Orleans. However, if you do not wish to give away a free weekend stay, you can offer an exclusive discount code for new email sign-ups (or even just to your Facebook fans if you are not yet running email marketing). Just bear in mind that if you are to run a giveaway, be very clear about the rules and regulations of it.
It is important if you are promoting a giveaway or deal on social media, to also post about it organically in addition to your paid efforts. This ensures your existing fans have a higher chance of seeing your posts since they already like your Page. It is also how to spread the word without increasing the marketing budget. If you want to test how your fans will react to a giveaway or deal and encourage email signups with a smaller budget, organic posts can achieve this goal. Just keep in mind that the campaign will be limited to people who already like your Page and their circle of friends on Facebook, should they choose to share and/ or engage your content.
How We Did It
When a Blue Magnet client needed to build their email list, Blue Magnet put together a targeted marketing campaign to promote a giveaway for a free weekend stay at the hotel. On Facebook, this campaign ran with a budget of $300. We targeted users aged 24 – 60 in the United States who are frequent travelers interested in New Orleans related Pages. Colorful images were used for our ads that gave a picture of what the guest rooms look like along with photos of the local area. Copy was simple but got the point across: “Sign up for our email list and you’ll be entered to win a FREE weekend stay at our hotel!” Users who clicked on the ad were directed to a landing page on the client’s website that our Design and Development team built.
During the month the campaign ran, we closely watched how it was performing and made optimizations for maximum ROI. Optimizing can be as simple as turning off underperforming ads as the campaign goes on. For example, while our best-performing ad within the ad set received 666 landing page views, the lowest-performing ad earned 1 landing page view, so we switched that one-off. Not every ad will perform as well as the others, so it is important to check-in and turn off those that are not doing well to make the best use of your ad spend. Below are some of the results you can check on during your campaign that are important (and exciting!) to look at.
Email Marketing and Social Media Work in Tandem
When you coordinate email marketing blasts and social media posts, you create a cohesive message that keeps your hotel at the forefront of the minds of potential guests. Social media can help to drive new subscribers to your email list via paid and organic content, regardless of your budget. But you do not have to tackle this task alone: reach out to Blue Magnet’s knowledgeable social media team, and we will show you exactly how well this marketing strategy can work for your property.
