Hospitality Marketing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Hospitality Marketing: What Is It and How to Boost Its Results Using Direct Mail?

Companies in the hospitality industry always look to treat their guests the best and get positive ratings.

Whether you run a chain of motels or a global conglomerate of luxury suites, hospitality marketing helps you advertise their services. It sets businesses apart and lets more people learn about their brand, improving sales and revenue!

But which hospitality marketing channels produce the highest results? Should they opt for online or offline advertising?

We always get mixed comments on these topics. Thus, this blog discusses the best ideas, tips, and trends to drive your business forward. It can help you learn about your top-performing choices and choose what best suits your needs!

Let’s dig in!

What Is Hospitality Marketing?

As a result of hospitality marketing, restaurants, hotels, amusement parks, and other businesses can increase their revenue.

It helps them spread the word about their products or services among their target audience. 

The hospitality sector is vast, with new players entering the industry daily! Hence, it is essential that brands put their best foot forward to remain in the spotlight.  Their hospitality advertising efforts allow them to achieve this goal, get leads, and convert prospects steadily. 

A hospitality marketing strategy can include different campaigns, combining offline printed collateral with digital content. Integrated promotions allow businesses to connect with relevant customers and push them ahead of the sales funnel. 

For example, restaurants can run online loyalty programs for existing customers, motivating them to visit their brick-and-mortar locations. It is a common practice to entice people and keep them from switching to other brands!

Remember that hospitality marketing focuses on selling experiences. All advertising programs must prioritize discussing how your brand helps people create memories for a lifetime! 

Convert your customers into brand ambassadors by making their stay or visit special. It allows you to spread word-of-mouth publicity and outshine the competition. Other benefits of conducting thoughtful hospitality and marketing campaigns are:

• Reach out to new customers. 
• Improve your brand’s reputation. 
• Create trustworthy customer relationships. 
• Broaden targeted markets. 

Challenges Hospitality Brands Face When Marketing Their Services

Slowdowns, low revenue, and improper targeting are problems that hospitality brands experience.  Here are the most common challenges:

Uncertainty in Customer Demand

In the first quarter of 2021, Canadians took at least 46.5 million trips domestically and globally. Predicting such customer demand surges is hard!

Moreover, many people book visits last-minute, making converting them into customers more challenging. Thus, one of the primary issues hospitality marketing must address is uncertainty.

Your brand can use hospitality marketing to stay prepared to connect with customers with short and long lead times. Once you contact them and learn about their plans, sending personalized discounts and offers can be easy.

Luckily, PostGrid’s direct mail services enable you to send personalized mailings quickly to fulfill your goals. You can curate well-thought offers and messages by segmenting your lists based on geo-demographics. And we offer variable data printing to prepare and ship these items to the correct addresses.

Reaching Out to Mobile-First Customers

More customers are using their smartphones to plan trips, look for things to do, or find restaurants and cafes. Making your websites mobile-friendly and staying connected with mobile-first customers can help you boost visibility.

The hospitality marketing segment must consider how to make it simpler for customers to make bookings via phone.

Here is an example:

One of our clients wanted to redirect prospects to their ‘Offers’ page on their website. They aimed to promote their summer offers and get more people to sign up.

We suggested they print custom QR codes on their direct mailers to improve customers’ experience. They only had to scan the code with their phones and get the offers on their screens.

This hospitality marketing campaign gained massive publicity because it prioritized customers’ convenience!

PostGrid allowed the client to get detailed reports of every recipient who scanned the code. This hospitality and marketing data helped follow up with prospects and close deals.

Communicating Benefits and Offers

Restaurants, travel companies, theme parks, hotels, and other hospitality businesses must find new ways to reach decision-makers.

With a broad audience, finding the ideal channel to connect with teenagers, millennials, and older generations is daunting.

Fortunately, they can use direct mail that resonates with all age groups to create personal connections. This hospitality marketing channel sparks interest in everyone and motivates them to complete the call-to-action (CTA).

Brands want to contact prospects using creative marketing that focuses on exclusive experiences and brings value to people.

Direct mail does this job well! 

Our direct mail automation solutions assist companies in bringing these hospitality marketing goals to life. They can launch effective mailing campaigns without taking on the workload or investing a fortune.

Why Should Businesses Include Direct Mail in Their Hospitality Marketing Plans?

Direct mail adds an emotional touch to your marketing messages. It also creates a 1:1 communication space where you can address decision-makers and encourage them to buy your services. 

This offline channel works best for hospitality marketing because people pay more attention to it. They also consider it a credible source when making purchase decisions. 

Here are more reasons direct mail should be among your top marketing plans:

Better Motivation Response

Mailing campaigns drive a 20% higher motivation response than online channels. Thus, it is more persuasive and result-driven than email, social media, and other advertising methods. 

You can include direct mail for hospitality and marketing to create a valuable network of long-term customers. Add tailored messages and compelling offers to instantly grab your audience’s attention and hook them to your brand. 

You may build upon your efforts with frequent mailings to bring prospects closer to the bottom of the funnel. PostGrid allows you to launch on-demand and bulk campaigns based on your goals and needs. Hence, you can start hospitality marketing anytime and reach potential customers before your competitors!

Integrate Offline and Online Campaigns.

Direct mail lets businesses integrate offline and online channels to improve performance. Unlike old times, you can conduct mailings online, making omnichannel campaigns possible!

Make your hospitality marketing successful by sending direct mailers that reinstate your online messages. It better impacts your prospects’ minds and helps them remember your brand for longer. 

Drive a Higher ROI

A Canada Post study shows that 47% of customers visited the brand’s store after receiving direct mail. It denotes how offline mailings can impact people’s actions and drive better response ratios. 

Using direct mail to enrich hospitality marketing strategies can guarantee higher engagement if you do it right! It helps bridge the gap between you and your customers, allowing you to seal more deals faster. 

Create a Memorable Impression

Sending direct mail to introduce your brand to prospects is an excellent idea for hospitality marketing programs. They can send welcome postcards to everyone who moves to the area. 

For example, food chains can send their menus with handwritten letters to new movers. It helps them get people’s attention before the competition, generating steady leads in their sales pipeline. 

People can refer to this menu to order online or visit the location, making it a win-win for both parties. 

Businesses can also send direct mail to make their hospitality marketing efforts memorable. Its tangibility helps prospects and customers save the item for a few days or weeks, expanding exposure and brand recall. 

Tips to Make Your Direct Hospitality Marketing Plans Successful

You can achieve higher-than-average results when you take the time to learn how to reach your milestones. 

No all-in-one hospitality marketing book tells you the secrets to success. But proper campaign planning and execution lets you get more valuable leads, boost brand awareness, and retain customers hassle-free. 

Below are some tips and tricks to help you conduct successful direct mail marketing campaigns:

Leverage Your Audience’s Propensities

You may zero in on your prospects by studying and using audience propensities. 

They provide in-depth insights into your prospects’ behavioural trends to respond to your offers and buy your services. For example, if you run a lodge near Niagara Falls, you can target people who search for hotels nearby. Such targeting allows you to improve your hospitality marketing results without wasting time and money on cold leads.

Consider what type of business you manage and list your existing customers’ characteristics. Understanding your buyer personas well is best before diving into hospitality and marketing ideas. 

Find an updated and targeted mailing list, enabling you to send mailers to relevant people. 

If you need help, use PostGrid’s direct mail API, letting you compile refined lists from scratch. We also provide address verification to cross-check your existing customer records before your campaigns, preventing mail returns and ensuring responses. 

Present Upfront Offers and CTAs

Your offers encourage clients to contact you and learn more about your company. Please ensure they best represent your company’s features and benefits, differentiating you from others. 

Also, use straightforward CTAs to guide your prospects on what to do next. They allow you to generate and measure your hospitality marketing campaign’s results. 

An excellent practice is to link your offers and CTAs. For example:

• Sign up on our website to get two tickets for the price of one. 
• Call us now to unlock your special package discount. 

You may include a deadline to ensure your hospitality marketing program produces the desired results within a fixed timeframe. For instance:

• Use the code below before May 15 to get a flat 15% off on hotel bookings. 

Ensure Your Mail Design Matches Your Branding. 

Brand guidelines help existing and potential customers remember you. They make your messages and offers unique. 

For instance, your company’s logo and colours help establish brand recognition. People might forget your name, but they remember these aspects well. 

Here are some tips to make your hospitality marketing campaigns represent your branding:

• Use the same colours for your mail artwork as your logo and website. It instantly catches the audience’s interest and informs them that the item is from your company. 
• Keep your hospitality marketing offers consistent across all direct mail items, social media ads, emails, and online banners. It avoids confusion and misinterpretation among customers. Also, it allows you to channel your campaign’s results in one direction. 
• Make your mail design visually appealing. Use different fonts, layouts, infographics, and other elements to stand out and motivate people to engage with your mailers.

One of our old clients wanted to create artwork but didn’t know where to start or whether they should hire a designer. We helped them use our pre-built templates to design eye-catching hospitality marketing mailers with a built-in editor. 

It allowed the company to customize designs, add its logo, and experiment with different layouts. Thus, they saved 100% on design costs and launched their mailing campaigns with more flexibility. 

Inject Video Marketing Into Your Offline Mailers.

Marketers forget to automate direct mail and transform it into a powerful online tool when planning campaigns. 

They believe they can only communicate written texts to their audience. But in reality, direct mail opens several digital possibilities for businesses. It takes hospitality marketing to another level, where companies can thrive with overflowing customer responses. 

One fantastic idea is to add video marketing pURLs to your printed items. They redirect recipients to your YouTube, website, or social media videos, making the experience more meaningful to them. 

People love watching video clips before planning trips or restaurant visits. Hence, this hospitality and marketing tactic can do wonders for your brand. And PostGrid makes adding such links and code a breeze. 

Moreover, you can learn which recipients visited the links, giving you better insights into their behavioural patterns. 

Conduct A/B Testing

PostGrid’s automated direct mail solutions enable you to test different mail formats, sizes, and designs. You can send small batches for experimentation and learn which hospitality marketing combinations perform the best. 

For example, create groups A and B. Imagine these groups have 1,000 small-sized postcards and 1,000 letters, respectively. We allow you to set your campaign dates in advance. You can launch both programs on the same day and wait for the results. 

Also, you can send hospitality marketing mailings with different discount offers, say 10% cashback or 10% flat off. It is an excellent way of learning and using your audience’s preferences to your advantage. 

Hospitality Marketing and Direct Mail Trends to Focus on in 2023

Businesses can use the latest trends to make their advertising efforts more fruitful and valuable. It allows them to adapt and communicate their messages to more markets.

Here are some recent hospitality marketing trends to improve your mailing programs:

User-Generated Content

Customer testimonials, ratings, and case studies are essential to making your brand relatable to prospects.

Imagine you want to visit a recreational facility in Ottawa. You research the best places and read online reviews. Also, you may skip locations with one or two stars because you already know they are not worth your time.

Stepping into your prospects’ shoes helps you improve your hospitality marketing strategies. You can print your customers’ feedback on your letters or postcards, letting people know what your audience thinks about your brand.

Post the same reviews or customer stories online to link your channels and expand outreach.

Apart from Google or website reviews, tap into your social media interactions and direct mail responses. They also allow you to collect valuable user-generated content for your hospitality marketing mailings.

Remarketing

It involves connecting with potential customers who already know about your brand or have visited your website. This tactic lets you contact people who spent time browsing your services but didn’t complete any bookings.

Re-engaging such prospects with a tailored offer can help increase sales easily compared to getting new leads. A hospitality marketing agency can help you derive customer data using Google Analytics and other tools.

API Integrations

More businesses have started using API integrations to add functionalities to their CRM systems.

Hotels, travel agencies, food and drink services, and other businesses use different APIs to stay connected with their audience and expand marketing.

They allow you to improve efficiency when conducting hospitality marketing campaigns. For example, you can integrate our direct mail API into your accounts, customer relationships, or other platforms. It lets you print and mail transactional and promotional mailers at the click of a button!

The best part is that you don’t need to do anything in-house, saving time, effort, and money! It makes your hospitality marketing campaigns more productive and result-bearing.

Promoting Unique Benefits. 

Flexible cancellations, guest safety, voice search, and better discounts are some benefits most hospitality companies promote. You can also market these services using direct mail to provide value to the readers and get them to complete the CTAs.

Create tables, infographics, graphs, and images highlighting your best features and benefits. These hospitality marketing aspects might get lost on your comprehensive website, where readers find much information. But it is simpler to promote them in a direct mail piece.

Use the Power of Personalized Direct Mail.

Combining personalization with direct mail is a powerful combination. It allows you to use customer data to customize everything, from discount offers and CTAs to promotional messages and mailing frequencies.

Personalizing your hospitality marketing campaigns is a sure-shot way to success. These programs perform better than generic mailings because recipients pay more attention to them.

For instance, imagine getting a letter titled “Dear Reader.” You already know the company made no effort to learn about you before sending the mailer. Hence, you decide not to read it or toss it in the bin!

It can happen with your mailers too! Avoid sending spam mail to prospects and hoping they read your message. Take a better approach to hospitality and marketing by personalizing customer interactions across all stages and channels.

Ask yourself the following: Do you have a generic audience? If not, why use one-size-fits-all hospitality and marketing content to connect with them?

The vacation plans of a large-sized family with six children will be different than a young couple.

Also, business travellers, senior couples, honeymooners, and teenage friends will have different needs when booking restaurants. Your advertising plans must consider the differences and curate special offers for each group.

Integrating personalization into direct mail may seem puzzling. But it is relatively simple and affordable, primarily if you use PostGrid’s automated mailing services!

We let you add your recipients’ variable data to all mailers to make every piece unique. You can customize the reader’s name, location, hospitality marketing message, heading, offer, CTA, and more—we don’t impose any restrictions.

Our variable data printing can prepare your custom hospitality marketing items without trouble. Also, you don’t pay anything extra to print and mail personalized pieces.

PostGrid allows you to create mailing lists based on the following;

• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Income level
• The number of children
• Marital status
• Buying habits, and more.

Hence, you can use these variables to craft custom messages easily and get better engagement ratios.

PostGrid makes personalized and targeted mailings as simple as sending emails. You can launch your campaign online and reach tens of thousands of people without leaving your office or doing anything manually!

What Are the 4 Types of Marketing Segmentation in the Hospitality Industry?

As discussed above, personalizing your customer interactions is significant for your success. But it would help if you first segmented your audience into small groups for better customization.

Here are 4 types of market segmentation in the hospitality industry:

Demographic

Categorizing customers using demographic details is beneficial for all businesses. They can tailor their messages to their ideal customer profile (ICP).

Consider income, qualification, profession, and other factors to group your prospects into trackable classes. Such precision helps make the best use of hospitality marketing efforts and budget.

Geographic

This segmentation type answers the “where” for your campaigns. Where should you send your mail? Or where can your customers visit if you manage brick-and-mortar locations like restaurants or theme parks?

You can group your intended prospects based on their

• Street address
• City
• Province or territory
• Postal code
• Country

Also, categorizing them into business and non-business customers can help improve your hospitality marketing campaigns. You can print the nearest store or hotel address in your mailers, letting people know you are not far away!

Psychographic

This categorization enables you to group customers based on their personality or lifestyle. You can define buyer personas by considering their

• Values
• Life goals
• Personality traits
• Hobbies
• Buying preferences
• Likes and dislikes

Ensure your hospitality marketing agency leverages this data to let you conduct laser-focused programs with maximum results.

Behavioural

It involves segmenting people depending on their behaviour in the past few weeks, months, or years.

Behavioural trends include

• Spending habits (when, where, and how much)
• Service ratings
• Brand interactions
• Purchasing habits (the number of touchpoints before buying)
• Brand loyalty

Types of Direct Mail Items Hospitality Brands Can Ship

Direct mail is no longer a lost art. You can use many ideas and methods to conduct data-driven and creative hospitality marketing campaigns with PostGrid!

Also, you can print and ship many direct mail formats based on your messages and objectives. Below, we have listed some of the best types:

Postcards

They are the most commonly-used mail types for hospitality marketing and other campaigns. Postcards come in many sizes to allow you to be flexible and creative. You can also use portrait cards to make your messages more unique and attention-grabbing!

Sending postcards is apt when your message is short. You can use bullet points or images to make it pop since the space is limited.

Also, postcards work well as discount coupons you want your recipients to store. They can refer to them to avail themselves of your hospitality marketing offers whenever needed.

So do you want to use postcard marketing for your upcoming campaign? 

We offer many postcard templates to let you design your artwork within minutes. You may also make last-minute changes and customize all elements based on your preferences!

Hence, you can send eye-catching mailers to your intended audience and guarantee positive outcomes.

Letters

Letters are an excellent choice to communicate longer hospitality marketing messages. For instance, you can use them to thank your existing customers and request referrals. You can also send letters to new movers, explaining your services and motivating them to contact you.

Please customize your envelopes to avoid making your letters look like junk mail. Also, it helps differentiate your mailers from bills and other documents your prospects might receive.

Folder Self-Mailers

Self-mailers don’t need envelopes for shipping. They are similar to postcards but have a different format for inserting your address and message.

Some marketers prefer folded self-mailers for hospitality marketing to add a creative touch to their messages. They can use the extra space to add pictures or other graphics, like large fonts and tables.

Folded self-mailers can cost you more than hospitality marketing postcards because of the extra weight. But you can customize the paper size and weight to control prices. Fitting into Canada Post’s guidelines can also help you save money on postage.

Newsletters

You may believe hospitality businesses don’t use newsletters to keep in touch with prospects and customers. But it is incorrect!

You can print and mail newsletters to your audience to update them about many things, like

• Your latest awards and accomplishments
• Your workplace culture
• Insights into how you treat your customers
• Your goals and mission
• Guest stories
• New offers and discount sales
• Upgrade services

These stories can keep prospects and customers hooked, giving your hospitality marketing campaigns a headstart.

How to Deploy PostGrid’s Direct Mail Solutions for Your Campaigns?

Many clients conduct direct mail campaigns with us conveniently and affordably. Below are our top deployment methods:

• Direct Mail API Integrations: We allow popular integrations, like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and ActiveCampaign. Our clients integrate our API into their websites or other CRMs, making printing and mailing faster than ever. It lets them fetch customer records and auto-draft their items without manual intervention! You can also start with your hospitality marketing plans using our API docs. The setup only takes a few minutes; you can contact us for assistance. 
• Automation Software: Some companies prefer downloading our direct mail automation software to schedule, launch, and track campaigns. It is also an effective option for your business!
• Dashboard: Do you want to create an online account and start without an API integration or software installation? We have got you covered.  PostGrid lets you sign up on our website and place your print and mail orders for hospitality marketing in only a few steps. You can log into your account anytime and access the features.

PostGrid as Your Hospitality Direct Mail Marketing Partner!

Hospitality businesses need robust advertising strategies to get and keep customers. They need to constantly connect with new people and discuss their services while maximizing the positive experience for existing customers. 

Though online marketing seems quick and convenient, it does not guarantee valuable leads. Most email replies and social media comments are spam, making identifying real prospects puzzling!

But conducting direct mailings online with PostGrid can change your hospitality marketing approach. It allows you to explore new opportunities and tap into different markets without much effort. 

• Launch your mailing campaigns quickly and affordably. 
• Use our Restful API to incorporate direct mail into your CRM without technical expertise. 
• Save your staff’s time and effort by automating every task from start to finish. 

Here are some of PostGrid’s features you can benefit from

• Address verification: To prevent delivery delays, you can cleanse and validate your mailing lists before shipping. It also allows you to access high-quality databases to make quick business decisions. 
• Print and mail fulfilment: Our reputed PDN comprises industry experts to provide you with end-to-end printing and mailing. You can print and mail your hospitality marketing mailers in one go, shortening the turnaround time and improving efficiency. Also, PostGrid gives you many delivery options, like First-Class Mail, Certified Mail, and Express shipping. 
• Real-time tracking: Check your campaign’s progress through our dashboard and stay informed. It helps you learn when your items travel through Canada Post’s network and reach their destinations. 
• Detailed reports: Access and download your hospitality marketing reports to learn about your campaign’s performance. They let you determine which aspects work well for your brand and which to avoid.
• Do you want more details on our features? Click here to talk to our sales team and discuss your hospitality marketing needs!

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source https://www.postgrid.ca/hospitality-marketing/

source https://postgridcanadainc.blogspot.com/2023/05/hospitality-marketing.html