Marketing has just been made easier and more effective, at the same time. How? Through marketing automation software.
But wait, what is marketing automation software?
It is a technology that helps businesses to streamline their marketing tasks and processes around digital marketing campaigns.
Using this tool, businesses could target their audience with automated messages across multiple channels such as e-mail, social media, text messages, WhatsApp, etc. Marketing automation software offers efficiency to the marketing department and personalized experience to the audience.
Businesses across various major industries are leveraging marketing automation software. Hotel marketing automation software, for example, is extensively used by many hospitality brands to automate, simplify, and enhance digital marketing campaigns and communication.
Marketing automation software increases the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns through the automation of repetitive tasks and reduces human errors. This software allows staff/employees to focus on more crucial or strategic tasks such as marketing campaign planning and design, research, KPI analysis, etc.
There are various applications of marketing automation software in multiple industries due to its many use cases and benefits: Some tasks streamlined by it are:
Campaign management
Email and WhatsApp marketing
Lead scoring
Audience segmentation
Upsell and cross-sell
Reporting and analytics
Messages or e-mails are sent automatically through different channels to the target audience. This is done as per the sets of instructions known as workflows which may be defined by different templates, built from scratch, or changed mid-campaign to hit the bull’s eye.
But how? How does the marketing automation software find information about the target audience and help in sending the right communications to the right people?
Let’s quickly find out in the next section.
How does marketing automation software work?
These common processes facilitate the working of marketing automation software:
Collection of data about potential guests/customers through website visitors monitoring, usage of the app, e-mail clicks, etc.
After analysis of the collected data, relevant and targeted content is created.
The next step involves the identification and segmentation of the prospects.
Designing marketing campaigns based on the segment data; allowing personalization across multiple marketing channels such as e-mail, mobile devices, social media, etc.
Guest/customer response and pre-set schedules trigger cross-channel workflows to lead prospects down the sales funnel or look after them for conversion into qualified leads.
Result tracking and analysis for effective and non-effective marketing campaigns and adjustments to achieve better marketing results and higher ROI.
By carrying out these basic processes, marketing automation software optimizes marketing as well as content strategies and drives growth for businesses.
Many contemporary hotels use it to streamline their marketing workflows. But how?
Let’s just find out.
How Hotels Use Marketing Automation Software?
Hotels use marketing automation software to automate marketing campaign communication primarily through e-mail and WhatsApp.
Let’s learn more about these types of marketing and how hotel marketing automation software streamlines the tasks involved.
E-mail marketing
Automating e-mail campaigns is one of the primary functions in the hotel marketing automation process. Despite being a traditional communication platform, e-mail still holds a powerful position in marketing.
With over 4 billion daily users, e-mail reaches almost every household and creates a significant impact. In fact, according to a survey, around 73% of marketers rated ROI from e-mail marketing as ‘good’ or even ‘excellent’.
Marketing automation software allows hotels to personalize marketing campaigns for the target audience using tools for hyper-segmentation and email autoresponder. The former tool allows hotels to create small segments to correspond with every prospect. While the latter tool helps them to create an automated e-mail campaign to be sent to the prospects post a trigger through an action.
With the help of hotel marketing automation software, you can set triggers to send e-mails or messages whenever a visitor seems interested in any of the services on your website or social media pages. An email or message is sent with all the relevant information to the potential guest looking through a service.
This proactive approach helps hotels show value and care to potential guests. At the same time, the guests can receive all the relevant information at the right time. This results in higher chances of getting a booking, and hence boosts ROI and increases conversion rates. It also helps re-attract or entice old guests into checking out the updated services and offers.
This all would be more effective with a segmentalized, or a targeted list of guests. Therefore, include only the interested people in your line of work and your services. Further, make sure you are acting appropriately and do away with all unresponsive or unsubscribed e-mail addresses.
WhatsApp marketing
Similar to the automation of e-mail marketing campaigns, strategies and communications meant for WhatsApp could also be seamlessly automated through hotel marketing automation software.
With WhatsApp being used in over 180 countries by millions of users, it is practical and profitable for hotels to communicate their digital marketing campaigns to the targeted list of audience. The right messages are sent to the right crowd through a well-curated list of guests using hotel marketing automation software.
From pre-arrival offers and upsell and cross-sells to mid-stay messages and post-stay promotions, WhatsApp marketing automation allows hotels to communicate with the guests right where they are.
It is also easier for guests to engage with marketing campaigns on WhatsApp since it has become a household name and multiple generations are aware of its usage. This offers them the ease of navigation and interaction through the messaging platform.
Furthermore, hotel marketing automation software makes it easier for hotels and guests to connect after an action is triggered by the latter on a particular marketing campaign.
Hotel marketing automation software or tools also allow hotels to personalize WhatsApp broadcasts to an unrestricted number of contacts, hence enhancing the visibility and engagement of the campaigns.
Marketing automation software is a technology that is highly beneficial for marketing teams across multiple industries. Hotel marketing automation software especially is a success.
It allows hospitality industry businesses to reach a wider and more relevant audience without getting lost manually in the guest lists and creating room for human errors.
Hotel marketing automation of repetitive tasks allows the hotel staff to focus on more core tasks at hand, and enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of the digital marketing campaigns. As a result, this technology is worth exploring and investing in.