How to Get Guest Emails to Drive More Direct Bookings

Sarah Orchard: 00:00:23

You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard. Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket. Hello and welcome. You're listening to the Get Fully Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah Orchard and today it's just little old me with a solo episode. I'm covering off a massive marketing challenge today.

In this episode, for anyone who's using an OTA like Airbnb or booking.com they never let you get the guest's email address. And why is that? Because they know exactly how valuable it is. So how do you get guest emails for your own marketing?

In my weekly Marketing Helpdesk with my Club members, we've brainstormed so many ideas to combat this particular issue and I thought it would be great to share just a few of those ideas with you today.

Well, I can't wait to get started and share these with you, so let's dive straight in.

So I have been creating successful email campaigns for my hospitality business clients and the organisations that I've worked in in the past, like Avis car rental for over 20 years. Yes, I really have been doing it for that long! So I know exactly what works. However, I hear all the time. "But email marketing doesn't work anymore".

You know, our inboxes are indeed incredibly busy. However, there's been loads and loads of studies about the effectiveness of email marketing versus social media.

Because I tend to find that every host I work with, whether they're running a short term rental, holiday cottage, glamping business, everyone gravitates to social media. That's their first port of call with any marketing that they do.

However, you actually get a much better return on your investment on email marketing than social media. And if you think about how much time you spend on social media, this is a really important thing to think about. So they have calculated - there's some boffins out there that have done loads and loads of studies. Not me, I hasten to add - but you get an average of $36 ROI for every dollar that you spend when you're doing email marketing.

But when you compare that to social media, it's only $2.80 return for every dollar that you spend. So actually you're spending a lot more time and getting a lot less return from social media.

So if you think about your posts that you're doing, whether you're doing posts, whether you're doing reels stories on across all of the different social media platforms, on average between 3 and 10%. And you know, the middle mark is about 6% of people will actually see your posts and the actual click through rate and that's the bit we're really interested in.

So when they've seen your post or they've seen your reel, the actual click through rate to your website, to the area of your marketing that you actually own can be as low as 0.07%. And what I often see is that also then the bounce rate. So that's the people that then exit your website, they don't go any further than the page that they've landed on. They tend to then go back to where they've come from which is going to be. Social media can be really, really high. It's often in the region of 70 to 80%. So obviously that means that as I said, you're spending a lot of time and energy on the social platforms and getting very little return.

So the other key thing about people who've signed up to our email marketing and often we've put our past guests on there, they are our brand fans. They've either stayed with us, they've been a guest or they've come to our website. They like the look of us and they've signed up to be on our email list. So we've got an element of consent there. We've got an element of proactive interest in our business.

So they either know your business because they've stayed with you and they love what you do, or they've indicated that they're a fan. So therefore they're much more receptive, I think to potentially being converted into a booking.

So let's start with that thorny topic of techniques to capture guest emails from a stay.

I really find it's useful to think about your guest journey. So all of those different touch points that you have with your guest. So from the moment that they're doing their research to making the booking on your website, to actually arriving during the stay, post stay obviously departure and post stay, there's lots of different touch points along the customer journey that you can think about ways of capturing their email addresses. And it isn't just about having a sign-up form on your website. So everyone tends to focus just on that email

sign-up form on their website.

And it's normally a little bit lame. It's again one of my pet hates. It'll say something like sign up to our newsletter.

Now, I don't know about you, I don't really want to sign up to any more newsletters. I don't want your news. I want to know exactly what you're going to send me, probably how often. Because if you're going to send me something daily, I'm going to be unsubscribing quite quickly. I have signed up to a few email lists where they've done that and I have exited quite quickly. But I do want to know what's in it for me?

You know, I don't want to just have your news sent to me. So I think the key thing about email marketing, and as I said, it is a massive topic. I'm not going to cover everything off in this episode, but think about what you're going to send them and making that sign-up form super sexy and appealing so that they actually, want to sign up. Because, we have so many people coming to our websites.

The Hudnalls Hideout, which is our business, we have in the region of 60-80,000 visits a year to our website. Imagine if you had that many people coming into a shop, you'd be delighted. But often we, with websites, we have all this traffic coming, we have all these people visiting. And I always use the analogy that it's like having someone basically walk into your retail shop. So if you had a bricks and mortar shop, we let them walk in, they walk around, they have a little look at everything, and then they walk out the door. We don't say hello to them. We know nothing about them. We don't know who they are, what they were really interested in, why they left.

We know nothing about them.

So obviously getting them onto your email list when they visit your website is a key touch point and it's a really important aspect of your marketing. I would encourage you to think about how you incentivise people to sign up.

And you definitely won't get people signing up if you actually just say sign up to our newsletter, because that's quite lame and most people won't do that. So definitely have a think about that.

Let's think about maybe other options that we've got in terms of getting those email addresses.

So we can be really cheeky straight out of the gate.

We can decide to send them a WhatsApp when they book and we can say, actually, I've got some really fantastic guest information about your stay and things to do in the area. Can I have your email address, and bingo, they're probably going to respond and give you the email address so that you can send them that super sexy guide, whether it's a PDF, a link to your digital guest guide, an email with that information. Maybe you've got a hidden page on your website with that stuff on and you're going to send them a link to it. Super easy.

It's a great way, very effective at getting the email address.

One other thing I failed to mention, and actually going back a step, is when people are of following you on social media, we often forget to tell people about the fact we have email campaigns going out. And I think the key thing is you've got to treat the people on your email list differently.

tes. When they go on sale for: 2025

So think about treating people on your email list differently and you can use then social media to get people to sign up, whether you run a competition, whether you just remind them about the incentive that you've got, maybe it's money, a few dollars off or pounds off at their first booking or some sort of added value extra when they, when they book for the first time, you know, you basically can encourage them through social media to sign up to your, to your emails.

But as I said, you can be, when they've actually made the booking, you can be really cheeky straight out of the gate and ask them for their email address in exchange for some information. So I think that works really, really well.

If you have group bookings or very large party sizes, this can be a major frustration in terms of you might only get like the lead booker's email address. So this can be super frustrating. And one of the ways that you can capture all of the party's email addresses is using what we call gated Wi-Fi.

So this can be really, really good. There's a few options. I'm not aligned with any of these companies, but they're ones that I know about. There's StayFi or BeamBox.

I'll put some links in the show notes for you. But basically they're great. You've probably been in hotels or you've signed onto Wi-Fi in a cafe or a restaurant and you get asked to fill in some details to be able to access the free Wi-Fi. I don't think that's a major thing. They're letting you suck out their Wi-Fi juice and basically use their Wi-Fi while you're in their business. And that's obviously not their core business. So they ask you to sign up and that's gated Wi-Fi.

So that can be super useful when you've got large party sizes because you can guarantee that everyone that stays in your accommodation is going to use the Wi-FI and therefore you can capture everyone's details. So if you've got 20 people staying in your accommodation, you've then got 20 emails on your list, not just the one. The lead booker may not come back and stay again, may not come back with that party, but you've then got another 19 people who've experienced how fantastic your accommodation is and will probably want to come and stay with you again at some point in the future. So they're really valuable to get onto your email list.

You could also use a QR code. So one of the ideas that we've, we've talked about a lot in my marketing club is we've talked about creating a QR code. You could either use a QR code which maybe is linked to a competition or an incentive. So they scan the QR code and that takes them to, Mailchimp does a good job with this, where you can do a landing page sign-up, where people can sign up. So it's like a unique page where you can have that incentive and people can sign up.

You could have a little QR code, you could frame it nicely on the wall so that people can scan it. You know, like, you can make it fun, like scan me to win, scan me to get a special treat or reward.

People will scan it, sign up, you've then got their email address.

You can go old fashioned, you can print postcards, maybe you can combine that with a welcome message or a greeting from yourself personally. That can be quite nice. People still like bits of paper. So that could be a really good way to potentially get their email address when they're staying in your property.

What about things like beer mats or coasters with your branding on that, say, like scan me again for a reward. That can be a really, really good way of getting people's email addresses.

So there are just a few ideas of ways that you can capture email addresses. If the lovely OTA (online agent) has prohibited you from having your guests' email address. Never just accept that - they've come to your business. Why should you accept that the relationship is owned completely by Airbnb or booking.com or anyone else for that matter? They're with you. They are your customer at that point in time. So it's really important to get that information from them so that you can own that relationship and build that relationship going forward. You're building your marketing capability, what I call your "marketing machine", so that you're able to move away from your reliance on the online travel agents.

Did you know that the average hospitality business open rate on emails is still around 30 to 40%?

And if you remember, I said that the average typical visibility of a social media post is only about 6%.

So actually, if I had 2,000 email subscribers and I had 2,000 followers on social media, I know which one I'm going to favor, and that's my email list. Because I know that between 30 and 40% of people are going to see that. They're going to open it, see my content, see my messaging, see my offers, and I own it. I own the relationship. It's not going to cost me anything, potentially to contact them.

So compared to having to obviously pay on social media to get visibility, it is much better to have that email list.

I just wanted to, before we wrap up on today's episode, think a little bit about campaigns to win back guests as well.

They've stayed with you. You've managed to eek that email address out of them before they left. So that you're not reliant on Airbnb. or others.

Campaigns to win back guests: how can you get them to come back and stay with you again?

Well, first and foremost, you need to actually send your email campaigns.

Now, don't laugh.

You'll be surprised the number of people that I talk to who actually say that they probably only send their campaigns every six months. Maybe they haven't done one in the last year. Now that's not frequent enough. We need to send our campaigns out monthly. We never know when someone is actually planning a trip.

Maybe they've had a tough time at work or in their personal life, and they're thinking, right, we just need to get away for a weekend away or a couple of nights away.

Maybe the kids have been driving them mad and they need to get away for a few nights and the grandparents have said they're going to take them, so they're going to make the most of it.

Maybe the weather's bucked up and, and they're thinking, actually the weather's looking great, let's get away.

If you only send your campaign twice a year or once a year, you're not going to be front of mind for them. So marketing's job is always just to be front of mind. So sending those campaigns on a monthly basis, that's the job.

It's just to get you in front of them when they are thinking about going and planning a trip. Campaigns around payday work seem to be working extremely well at the moment.

Obviously we've got a little bit of a cost of living crisis going on around the world. People are finding things a little bit tougher in terms of financially. So campaigns around payday can be super, super effective.

I've just actually scheduled one to go out for the Hudnalls hideout.

Another technique is give people a deadline to act.

So if you send emails out and they've got no sense of urgency, no FOMO effect, so the fear of missing out, that there's an offer, there's a deal, there's some cutoff that makes them take action. Your emails are unlikely to be very effective in terms of winning people back to become guests and to book.

You want to think about giving them that sense of urgency. We call them "calls to action". In marketing, it's making people take action. You need to tell them what you want them to do and you need to tell them when you want them to do it by so that they actually take action and make that booking. Don't always think that, winning guests back is about discounting. That for me is always like the last thing that I would go to.

Sometimes it can be good and sometimes you feel like you need to do it. But actually there's lots of other ways that you can incentivise people.

You can change the terms of your bookings so that you do early bird offers where they get some sort of reduced deposit. If they book further in advance or they take action by a certain date, you can add value as well. It could be that something that you normally charge for on your stay. So whether it's a breakfast pack or a bag of charcoal or anything really that you, a hot tub heat that you would normally charge for you could throw that in as a value add to get people and again with a deadline to get people to take action.

Email marketing is such a powerful tool and it is a huge topic. I could drone on about email marketing. As I said, I have been doing it for 20 years so I've got a lot of experience and I can drone on about it a lot. But I did promise to keep my episodes on the podcast short and sweet. They are bite sized for you to listen to while you're doing other things.

Maybe you're doing a changeover, you're doing some business admin, or maybe you're even doing the ironing while you're listening in to me today.

So I will keep these as bite sized chunks that will just give you some tips and some actionable things that you can think about each day, each week, each month in your business in terms of getting more bookings, getting fully booked and getting more direct bookings. If you know that email marketing is something that you need to tackle and you're feeling like you don't really know where to start.

I do have a four part online training course called Get Going with Email Marketing and it's all about how to use Mailchimp for your email marketing and that will give you a fast track to getting started. So if you're interested in that, do check it out on my website. It's on my Everything page or drop me a DM.

I'd love to know what email marketing you've been doing, what's working for you, what's not working, and if any of those tips today have been helpful for you.

Once again, thanks for listening.

I will be back next week with a guest episode talking to an independent hotel owner who has busted one of my marketing mantras and rules about having just one ideal guest. She actually has eight and she'll be sharing what she does to fill her calendar year round with these eight very different ideal guest profiles. But it'll be packed full of actionable marketing tips. So do tune in for that episode or check it out if you've missed it.

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could leave me a review. You know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

I'll see you next week.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap Quiz, Head to my website, get-fully-booked.com/quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket!

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