Current travel and tourism trends present massive opportunities for hotel chains to reconnect with past guests, entice new customers, increase bookings and capitalize on travelers who are eager to emerge from a socially-distanced world.
Personalized direct mail campaigns are one of the most effective and easiest ways for hotel chains to capitalize on the surge of travelers who have put vacations on hold due to the pandemic.
In this article, we’ll cover everything hotel marketers need to know about personalized direct mail campaigns, including:
- Top travel and tourism trends of 2022.
- How to grab travelers attention through personalization.
- Best practices for personalized direct mail campaigns.
Let’s get started with insights into the minds and motives of travelers in 2022.
Top Travel and Tourism Trends
With highly targeted messages and offers being sent out, 2022 could be one of the best years ever for hotel and resort chains. Before diving into the power of personalization, it’s important to understand the post-pandemic mindset of travelers.
More Trips, Bigger Budgets
Earlier this year, American Express Travel published their 2022 Global Travel Trends Report and found that people are eager to travel–and not afraid to open their wallets.
- 72% of respondents plan to spend more money on domestic travel and 64% plan to spend more money on international travel (compared to 2021).
- 62% of respondents plan on taking two to four trips in 2022.
Multigenerational Trips
Family vacations are nothing new, but the pandemic served as a reminder that you can’t take family time for granted. That probably explains why bookings for groups of six or more increased by 57% from 2019 to 2022.
Wellness Retreats
An increased focus on wellness and self-care is another byproduct of the pandemic. The wellness travel market is expected to grow 10% per year and reach $7 trillion by 2025.
Bucket List Trips
Expedia named 2022 the year of the GOAT, or the “greatest of all trips.” In a survey of 12,000 travelers in 12 countries, Expedia found that 68% of respondents are planning to “go big” on their next trip. Exciting, unique and extravagant vacations are all on the table after the past few years of social distancing.
Understanding the motives and mindset of travelers is a key component of your marketing strategy. An equally important part of your strategy is how to use that information to capture the attention of travelers and convince them why your property is the perfect destination.
Here’s how.
Grab Travelers Attention with the Power of Personalization
To capture the attention of travelers, hotels and resorts need to be thoughtful, intentional and hyper-targeted with their marketing strategy.
Personalization is critical here. Consumers expect brands to communicate with them on a personalized level–and respond extremely favorably to those that do so:
- 84% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from brands that treat them like a person, not a number.
- 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services.
- Consumers are more than twice as likely to view personalized offers as important.
- 52% expect offers to always be personalized.
Taking the time to personalize marketing content has a proven impact on a business’s bottom line:
- 93% of businesses increased revenue after implementing a personalized marketing strategy.
- Companies that use advanced personalization see returns of $20 per $1 spent.
- Personalization reduces customer acquisition costs by as much as 50%.
- Personalization increases marketing spend efficiency by as much as 30%.
When the power of personalization meets one of the most effective marketing channels, a.k.a. direct mail, the performance goes through the roof:
- Up to 90% of direct mail is opened (keep in mind that the average email open rate is around 20%)
- Direct mail is the preferred marketing channel of audiences–even millennials.
- In a 2021 study by USPS, 60% of millennials thought the information they received in the mail was more useful than email.
- 80% of millennials look forward to what they’ll receive in the mail each day.
- By adding just the first and last name of the recipient to a direct mail piece, response rates can increase by 135%.
The power of personalized direct mail marketing is clear. Hotel chain marketing teams can look forward to seeing 300% higher engagement rates with personalized direct mail campaigns.
The best part? It’s incredibly easy to implement a personalized marketing strategy for your next direct mail campaign.
Personalization + Direct Mail: The Winning Formula for Hotel Marketing
Hotels already have the most important ingredient for a personalized marketing strategy: customer data.
By using customer data from your CRM, hotels can create personalized messages and offers that resonate with the interests and preferences of each individual customer.
After all, you don’t have a one-size-fits-all audience, so why would your marketing efforts have generic, one-size-fits-all content?
The vacation goals of a family of five are drastically different from those of a young couple without kids. The same is true for business travelers, honeymooners, senior couples and even guests with special dietary requirements.
Additionally, since different properties have different amenities, activities and prices, you’ll want to adjust messages, images and offers for each location, as well.
This may seem complex, but it’s incredibly easy to create highly personalized and hyper-targeted direct mail campaigns, thanks to advanced digital printing technology, such as variable data printing.
Variable data printing allows you to personalize each printed piece in a single print run. In other words, you can personalize 50,000 mail pieces just as quickly as 50,000 generic, one-size-fits-all mail pieces. The best part? Practically every part of a mail piece can be personalized, including:
- Recipient name or family name.
- Colors, logos and images.
- Hotel location, pricing and images.
- Preferences and interests of guests.
- Featured amenities or accommodations.
- Special offers and taglines.
Direct mail can be personalized with a multitude of different messages, depending on who you are trying to reach. Personalized content can include:
- Historical data, such as previous properties a guest has stayed at.
- Proximity to historical sites, cultural attractions or local restaurants.
- Self-care activities and wellness classes offered at the property.
- Onsite or local adventures guests can enjoy and explore.
- Family-friendly or customized itineraries based on interests.
If your customer data isn’t as robust as you’d like, you can also source targeted mailing lists. You’ll have the option to target potential customers using a variety of demographic criteria such as location, age, household income and the number of children in the household.
Top Tips
- Add QR codes to direct mail campaigns to measure real-time performance, engagement and ROI.
- Double the touch points by adding a digital component to direct mail campaigns through Informed Delivery.
- A marketing fulfillment partner can take care of everything else you need for personalized, ready-to-launch and extremely effective direct mail campaigns.
Personalized Direct Mail Solutions with Jet Mail
With end-to-end marketing fulfillment services under one roof, including variable data printing, data management services, an in-house USPS facility, and a global distribution network, your hotel chain can reach past and prospective guests with the perfect message and offer. Since 1993, the Jet Mail team has helped hotel chains boost bookings and brand awareness through hyper-targeted, personalized and high-performance direct mail campaigns.
Contact our team of experts today to get started!
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