5 Steps To Creating A Monthly Email Newsletter
Staying in touch with current and prospective guests is a good business practice.
In our previous article, we talked about how to get more email subscribers for your list. Now that you’ve started building your list, it’s time to discuss how to create your monthly email newsletter.
Staying in contact with your subscribers through an email newsletter is a great way to nurture your leads and build relationships. (tweet this)
You want to create content that your subscribers actually want to read – this is called content marketing. When you set your email newsletter goals towards providing relevant, interesting content to your subscribers, you’ll go a long way towards building loyalty with your list.
How do you create a newsletter that is content-rich? You can stick to either the 90/10 or 80/20 rule. This means providing your subscribers with content that is educational, intriguing and valuable 80-90% of the time and self-promotion just 10-20% of the time.
Let’s look at 5 steps to creating a monthly email newsletter that fits in perfectly with your hotel’s marketing strategy.
Step 1: Choose Your Focus
When crafting your monthly email newsletter, it’s a good idea to have a focus. Even better is to lay out a year-long plan for your email marketing. Pick your newsletter topics well in advance.
This will help you craft email newsletters that aren’t cluttered and unfocused. You’ll be better organized to create email newsletters with a common thread. For example, you might send one whole newsletter on how to plan a vacation.
Topic-based newsletters are great for keeping your articles customer-focused and on-target. This in turn provides you with more email engagement and potentially more clicks.
Again, remember that your monthly email newsletter shouldn’t be all about you. Take your sales hat off for a bit, and instead put yourself in the mind of your current or potential customers:
- What are their needs this month – for example – do they need to set a vacation budget?
- Might they have a problem, travel schedules, transportation or traveling with children?
- How can you help?
- Are there other tips that can make their vacation planning easier this month?
Stick to your topic, be relevant and helpful, and watch your engagement rise. Now, does this mean you can’t include a special offer? No. You certainly can include an offer, just make sure to turn it around and show how it benefits your customer.
Step 2: Make It Easy to Read
With more than 55% of email opens occurring on mobile phones, your email must be scan-able.
What’s more, people don’t have a lot of time to read your email, and they’ll only give your email a few quick glances to decide if it’s worthy to read, so you’ve got to grab them quickly. Here are a few tips for making your email newsletter easy to read:
- Use bold headlines.
- Separate your articles into easily detectable sections. Color blocks can help.
- Use bullet points.
- When it comes to links, you want them to be thumb-friendly. Use big buttons so they are easily noticeable, and your readers can click with ease.
- If you’re using text links, don’t put a bunch of them in close proximity as this is frustrating for mobile users.
- Don’t include long articles. Use a teaser and link to your website.
- Gmail will often only load part of your email, so pay attention to length.
This next point is so important, we are giving it its own paragraph. You must use responsive design when creating your emails. You probably already know how important mobile-friendly design is to your website, and that is just the same with your email newsletters.
Your mobile-friendly, responsive emails will get read more often than those that don’t adapt to screen size.
Grab your subscribers quickly with a creative subject line.
Step 3: Include Strong Calls to Action
You want your customers to engage, right? So, you want to make it easy for them to do so. Don’t make them guess at the action you want them to take. Here are some suggestions for the purpose of your clickable buttons:
- Share on social media.
- Forward to a friend.
- Purchase something.
- Download a free whitepaper.
- Read your blog.
- Get the coupon.
One last word of caution – don’t wait until the end of your newsletter to include a call to action – many people won’t make it through your whole email. Include your call to action several times, so it’s easy for them to click.
Step 4: Craft the Perfect Subject Line
Your subject line can make or break your email. (tweet this) If your subject line is boring, odds are your subscribers will pass right over your email. So, it doesn’t matter how great your content is, if you can’t get them to open your email, you’ve landed a big marketing-miss.
A good email subject line is creative, yet to the point. It should tell your reader what they’ll find inside, so it should be truthful. But, you can also include a hook that you think will encourage people to open.
Many email service providers allow you to test several email subject lines for the same email content. For example, you could send the same email with two different subject lines to 25% of your list. After a specified period of time, your email service provider will send your email to the rest of your list using the best subject line.
Step 5: Respond in a Timely Fashion
When it comes to responding to your email subscribers, there are two things to keep in mind.
First, you actually want to respond when they reach out to you. Don’t use a “do not reply” email address when sending out your newsletter. This makes the customers work to ask you a question by having to visit your site and find a contact email.
Let them respond directly by replying to your email.
Second, let your subscribers opt-out easily. While this isn’t ideal, you want to let them leave easily. Make it too hard, and they might mark your email as spam.
Final Thoughts
Not only is your monthly email newsletter a centerpiece of your marketing plan, it’s a great way to connect with your current and potential customers.
If you stick to educational, intriguing and engaging content in our monthly email newsletter, you’ll show your customers that you understand their needs. Your newsletter becomes something they look forward to each month because you are providing helpful tips and resources.
For example, if your hotel is located in sunny Florida, you can pepper your email newsletter with helpful vacation tips, ways to overcome any problems during their stay and the sights they should take in during their visit (especially the ones off the beaten path – think “local’s favorite restaurant”).
When you provide this type of monthly email newsletter, you’ll find your email engagement and responsiveness increase. You will also see their emotional attachment to your brand grow and spread as they share your content through email and social media.
Writing your newsletter gets easier when you concentrate on your subscriber and their needs.
One of the best things about email newsletters is that you can use the email to direct subscribers to your website. But, what if you don’t have a website, it’s outdated, or it isn’t mobile friendly?
We can help. At Hotel Propeller, we build beautiful websites. You’ll find everything you need to attract guests to your website through your email marketing. Take a look at our showcase and contact us today.
Images: Dai KE and Francesca Saraco
Free Hotel Website Checklist
5 Essential tips for using your website to book more guests! Plus, a Free email course, Winning Web Strategies For Innkeepers.