Boutique marketing woes: Email sounds hard, but it doesn’t have to be.

Email is an incredibly effective channel that hoteliers can use to engage guests, helping them bypass an OTA and book direct.

Capturing direct bookings is at the top of any hotelier’s list. They not only boost margins but also open the door to long-term guest relationships and more revenue per stay. Many hotels lean on display ads, social media, and metasearch, but shy away from one of the most powerful tools in their marketing mix: email. Why? Because when managed in-house, email frankly often feels time-consuming and complex.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Email is an incredibly effective channel that hoteliers can use to engage guests, helping them bypass an OTA and book direct—and the proof is in the data. Email campaigns deliver an average return of $36 for every dollar spent, highlighting a key opportunity to drive revenue. Here’s how hoteliers can uplevel their email marketing to drive measurable results.

Go beyond the basics

Many hoteliers are creating email marketing campaigns because they have to. They use a basic subscription and send emails once per week. This approach is rarely strategic or personalised, and many hotels aren’t even sure how to measure success. While email may technically be an old-school channel, it doesn’t mean it should be treated as such. By moving to a more sophisticated email management system, hoteliers can gain better insights to deliver more polished, relevant campaigns that help them reach their booking goals.

Enable personalisation and targeting

Consumers are hungry for personalised, relevant content, with 90% of consumers expecting brands to understand and anticipate their needs. What they don’t want is a bunch of generic emails in their inbox every morning. Unlike other channels, hoteliers can tailor emails on a far more granular level, enabling them to deliver relevant offers—similar to OTA member-only deals—to smaller groups to entice them to book.

Segmentation is critical here, which means hoteliers must collect information about guests to better understand who they are and what they want, and then design emails that resonate with them. Here’s an example: many hotels in large cities like London don’t see many repeat guests because travellers come from abroad. With email, hotels can also target local audiences with flash sales or package deals to boost occupancy during slower periods.

Measure, measure, measure

Return on investment is a huge metric for any hotel because it’s important to know which activities are generating revenue. While hotels measure the success of display ads or other campaigns, many are not measuring the effectiveness of their email campaigns. By drilling into guest behavior and tracking how they engage with emails, hoteliers can quantify results against effort, hoteliers can make informed changes, such as content, timing, or visuals, to campaigns to maximise ROI.

Offload the work

The reality is, email is incredibly impactful, but it must be done right. Most hoteliers wear several hats on any given day, and marketing is just one function they manage. That’s why more hoteliers are partnering with performance marketing experts to run fully managed email campaigns—from creative and deployment to measurement and optimisation of email performance. Here’s an example: Sojern recently launched a fully managed email marketing service under its Commission model, and early benchmarks show a 30–57% uplift in revenue when layered on top of other high-performing commission channels.

While email marketing may seem like a thing of the past, it’s actually one of the best ways to connect with travelers on a personal level. By elevating their email strategy, boutique hotels can deliver more personalised guest experiences, drive higher revenue per campaign, and finally make email marketing work for them—not the other way around.

This post was originally published by Boutique Hotelier