Staying On Top of Email Marketing for Travel Agencies

Look, let’s not beat around the bush. The global pandemic left its unfortunate mark on most (if not all) industries, and travel and tourism took the brunt of the punishment. That said, the same sector that suffered heavy blows is back and better than ever before, thanks to email marketing for travel agencies.

Why?

Tourism and travel have rebounded phenomenally as an industry, with travel agencies at the forefront. Taking the lessons learned during COVID-19, digital marketing continues to drive the growth of tourism marketing. And now, travel agencies worldwide are turning to email marketing as a golden ticket to brand engagement and development.

But will standard email marketing campaigns deliver the same success they did pre-pandemic?

Well, stick around to find out how the best of the best is staying ahead with expertly created email marketing strategies.

Why Does Email Marketing Matter for the Travel Industry?

First things first, why should you even care about email marketing for travel companies and the industry? Here’s a little industry statistic – it’s estimated that 36% of travellers rated travelling as an important spending priority.

With so many people actively committing funds to tourism, they are paying for as much valuable information as possible. Potential customers appreciate input from travel agents and agencies about various things, including travel trends, deals, and safety precautions.

Of course, getting this information out to the public can take several shapes, yet despite the growing impact of social media pages, most still turn to their emails first. In fact, roughly 58% of individuals check their emails first in the morning rather than their social media or the news.

This illustrates that the power of an effective email strategy is more impactful today than ever.

The Advantages of Email Marketing for Travel Agencies

If the numbers are anything to go by, travel companies and agencies simply can’t afford the risk of skipping an investment in email marketing campaigns. They say the proof is in the pudding, so let’s break down the possible advantages of data-driven email marketing efforts.

Fun Fact: The Content Marketing Institute estimates that 87% of marketers use email campaigns to distribute valuable content.

1. Relieve Yourself From Adspace Worries

Any travel agency in the business is no stranger to the struggles of purchasing adspace. Unlike other forms of advertising, email campaigns eliminate the need to spend on it. By no means is an effective email marketing strategy free, but the entry barrier into the marketing landscape simply doesn’t exist.

2. Easily Retain Customers

Ultimately, it’s all about keeping your potential customers satisfied and returning for more. If that fails, the aim shifts to attracting new subscribers, but the tactic remains the same. These individuals eventually become loyal customers if they receive high-quality, up-to-date monthly emails.

3. Accessible Donation Collection

The close relationship between a charitable cause and a travel business has always existed, and for travel agencies, this is a great way to expand your audience reach and boost brand admiration. This is where donation emails create a personable bond between yourself, the customers, and charities.

4. Tailor Content to Your Audience

A common problem with most marketing efforts is that few methods are versatile enough to reach everyone. That said, properly executed and crafted personalised emails can achieve precisely that and be categorised according to need or query.

5. Effortlessly Keep Customers Updated

The customer journey can quickly become overcrowded with unnecessary noise. As a travel agency, your goal is a seamless and enjoyable experience from start to finish. Email marketing is an easy way to reach out, inform, and showcase your brand updates, ensuring their journey doesn’t abruptly end.

6. Level Up Brand Recognition

Big businesses have likely already crossed the “get your name out there” hurdle. However, for small businesses just starting, email marketing is an easy way to get fresh-faced travel brands on the scene.

7. Drive Traffic to Your Website at Superspeed

Keeping customers engaged is one thing; getting them to your travel agency’s website is another hurdle. Having a direct line to new customers might sound imaginary, but a well-crafted marketing email is a foot in the door you need to direct them to your site.

8. Enhanced Sales and Other Marketing Channel Promotion

Here’s the worst hidden secret ever. If you can execute your email marketing campaign correctly, your click-through rate skyrockets. There exists a fine line, though. Selling your brand through emails is good, but overselling isn’t. Instead, use emails to promote brand identity and funnel users to your other marketing channels to foster brand loyalty.

9. Survey Conducting

A carefully curated survey email is powerful and can be effectively used on existing customers. These emails can yield powerful data about your brand by reaching out to returning customers who know your company. There aren’t many better options if you’re after insights that only customers can provide.

10. It Won’t Break the Bank

In a perfect world, money wouldn’t be an issue, but whether big or small, businesses are in a cost-cutting conundrum. Luckily, email marketing, while not free, is a cost-effective way to reach a large audience with a relatively low input cost.

11. Expand Your Agency Reach

A person with an email account will likely have one or more devices linked to it. Launching an email campaign improves the likelihood of your marketing efforts reaching an individual, whether on PCs or mobile devices. The bottom line? Make marketing emails mobile-friendly.

Running Successful Email Marketing Campaigns | What Does It Take?

Now for the elephant in the room. What goes into it, and what does your travel agency need to do to run unshakable travel email marketing campaigns? Glad you asked. Let’s get to it.

The Top Email Types for Travel Email Marketing Campaigns

While it’s tempting to sprint before you run, it’s wiser to walk before that and far better to crawl first. So, let’s begin with the basics, aka your new best friends for email marketing (or the email types that’ll take your email zeros to email heroes).

Welcome Email

Nothing beats a first impression, and it’s 100% true when it comes to hooking a prospective subscriber. After encouraging subscribers to sign up, automated welcome emails are a great tactic to engage new customers, with a success rate hovering above 57%.

Top Tip: As a potent engagement method, ensure your welcome mail features a compelling subject line.

Invitation to Connect

Now it’s time for the follow-through, and with an invitation to connect, you keep the communication channel open and possibly expand it. These emails invite customers to connect with your brand’s various channels.

Confirmation Emails

Think of confirmation emails as your travel agency’s automated response when a user triggers a particular action on your site. This can vary but typically include confirming a booking, signing up for loyalty programs, or making a payment.

Promotional Email

At the end of the day, your travel agency depends on cash flow, and increasing sales takes time and effort. By leveraging promotional emails, you can quickly boost sales by promoting new services, experiences, and travel destinations. Include discount codes and coupons as an incentive to increase conversion.

Milestone Email

Milestone emails create the perfect space for your agency to interact with customers through tailored messages on specific dates, such as birthdays. These emails allow you to highlight birthday offers and special discounts specifically offered to said individual for one day only.

Add a personal touch. Milestone emails are ideal for using creative subject lines and communicating on a first-name basis, furthering your agency’s relationship and reputation.

Thank You Email

Gratitude is everything; a thank you email presents a golden chance to express it to your loyal and VIP customers. Adding incentives like discounts boosts and secures your retention rate.

Informational Emails

Decision-making when travelling is often harder than most would like, and that’s why most travellers sign up for newsletters and promotional emails. Using these types of emails, you can highlight your agency’s expertise, services, and promotions for a specific travel destination.

Re-engagement Emails

Okay, what should you do when you feel you’re losing touch with your email list? Welcome to the re-engagement email. Taken out of the digital marketing playbook, monitoring user engagement is the first insight into whether you’re losing or gaining subscribers. And, if you are losing them, a simple re-engagement email promoting the right campaign guarantees a resub.

Insider Tip: Klaviyo is a game changer for travel agents looking to expand their email marketing potential. Find out more.

How to Create an Email Marketing Strategy for Your Travel Agency

So, you’ve memorised the different email types and have an empty subject line staring you down. What now? While the enthusiasm is great, here’s a breakdown of where to start and how to nail your email marketing strategy.

1. Decide on Your Email Marketing Software

Thankfully, the Stone Age is far behind us, and the future is digital. Why would we say that? Well, modern email marketing has to run like a well-oiled machine for it to be a success, and courtesy of contemporary tech, there are dozens of software options to help you create and manage your email list and newsletters.

New subscribers will arrive each month and, from there, go on to make travel bookings, fill out subscription forms, etc. Software giant MailChimp is a must-have tool and can easily be integrated into your agency’s existing CRM solutions.

Good to know! Most software nowadays includes AI capabilities that can craft compelling subject lines autonomously and send out travel promotions.

2. Build Your Email List

Next up is the bread and butter of your email marketing plan—your email list. Collecting email addresses might sound daunting, but creative and valuable opt-ins make it a breeze. How do you get that permission, though?

• Lead Magnets — Add these to your agency’s website as pop-ups, where you share ebooks, guides, and content ideas in exchange for the individual’s email address.
• Email Sign-Up Forms — Utilise sign-up forms as pop-ups or sidebars to your site to make signing up noticeable and easy to do.
• Landing Pages — Your travel company or agency’s website says much more than you think. Direct users to a landing page that features a dedicated call-to-action (CTA) to increase conversion rates.
• Social Media Posts — Travel businesses’ social media followers present a valuable resource for email subscribers as you can effortlessly promote your email list by mentioning benefits, etc.
• Contests — Human interaction is priceless, and people love giveaways or contests. Leverage these to encourage subscribers and your target audience to use their email addresses as entry tokens.

3. Create Your Newsletter

Next up is the creative part. Sure, having a few content ideas floating around is an excellent place to start, but it takes skill to draft the right newsletter from those ideas. Convenience wins, though, and plenty of newsletter and email templates are out there.

It’s beyond important to use high-quality images of travel destinations, immersive video tours, and a personal touch here and there. As for the copy, stick to clear, concise messages based on your segmented campaigns, and remember SEO elements such as keywords, headlines, and CTA buttons.

4. Segment Your Audience

Segment what now? A massive part of digital marketing is the ability to dedicate and tailor funds, strategies, and content to certain categorised groups of individuals. This categorisation is what is referred to as segmentation.

With your audience engaged, you can collect specific data that creates a user persona. Segmentation allows you to group individuals who share the same persona. Using that knowledge, you can craft personalised emails for each category to maximise marketing strategies and conversions.

There are eight types of categories that your agency could target, namely:

• Demographic
• Geographic
• Behavioural
• Value-based
• Needs-based
• Technographic
• Psychographic
• Lifecycle stage

5. Analyse Your Metrics to Determine Email Marketing Success

Last but not least, monitor your email campaigns. This is the easiest way to find out why email marketing matters and how it affects your agency. These metrics provide insights that help you understand your strategy’s efficacy and your target audience.

These are the top email marketing metrics to keep an eye on:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Unsubscribers (It might not be pleasant, but always include an unsubscribe link so users have access should they wish to)
• Deliverability rate
• Spam complaints

Final Thoughts on Email Marketing for Travel Agencies

That’s it, everybody! Email marketing for travel agencies in a nutshell. Whether you’re just curious or considering a long-term investment, email marketing was, is, and will always be a reliable way to spread the word and engage the travellers your agency needs.

PS: DIY email marketing strategies are fun and vital, but why not let the pros help you out? It’s just a click away.