Hotel email marketing: 4 steps to build a strategy that drives revenue and loyalty

With the right approach, hotel email marketing becomes a powerful tool for communicating special offers, upselling extras and tailored packages, and maintaining long-term relationships that lead to repeat bookings. Through smart timing and personalized messages, your emailing strategy can keep your brand top-of-mind and add real value to guest experiences.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use email marketing strategically and efficiently, not just to inform guests, but to increase revenue and long-term loyalty.

What is hotel email marketing?

Hotel email marketing is about sending the right message to the right guest at the right moment throughout the guest journey.

It goes far beyond booking confirmations and check-in details. In practice, email marketing for hotels usually includes three types of messages:

• Promotional emails to showcase special offers, packages and discounts.

• Transactional emails to send booking confirmations, check-in instructions and post-stay review requests.

• Engagement emails to share travel tips, refer local guides and give personal recommendations to nurture this guest relationship. Even when their stay has ended, you can keep the conversation going via exclusive deals, loyalty programs or interesting updates.

The most important elements of email marketing are when, who and what:

• You need to carefully consider when to send each email, as you don’t want to bombard guests or offer deals way too long in advance.

• Always keep in mind who you’re talking to. Gather the right data to make each email feel personalized and relevant.

• Lastly, what you say – the content of your emails – will make or break this digital marketing tool.

Why hotel email marketing deserves a central place in your strategy

Email marketing is often underused by independent hotels, even though it delivers strong results with relatively little cost. In short, email marketing is personal, affordable, and powerful. It allows you to engage with potential and existing guests in a personal, direct way across all stages of their journey.

Used well, it enhances the guest experience, strengthens loyalty, and increases revenue. Here’s why it works so well:

• Guests value personalized communication: A growing number of consumers prefer communication that feels personalized to their needs and preferences. In hospitality, this means timely, relevant emails that reflect their preferences, habits and interests for an elevated experience – no more one-size-fits-all.

• It builds lasting guest relationships: Whether you're sending an exclusive offer for a special occasion or sharing travel tips, each message helps maintain a sense of familiarity and increase the chances of repeat bookings. Remember, retaining existing guests is far more cost-efficient than acquiring new ones.

• Effective email communication drives positive reviews: When guests feel appreciated and informed, they’re more likely to leave feedback and share their experience with others. A thoughtful post-stay email asking for a review or simply thanking them for their visit can result in more reviews, strengthening your online reputation.

• Boost revenue through upselling: Well-timed emails give you a non-intrusive way to promote additional services that enhance the guest experience. These upselling opportunities can help increase guest satisfaction and average spend – all while feeling like a friendly value-added suggestion rather than a sales-y email.

How to set up an efficient hotel email marketing workflow

An effective email strategy follows the guest journey from first interest to post-stay follow-up. Each message plays a vital role in shaping the overall guest experience and encouraging repeat business. The goal is to stay relevant without overwhelming guests or your team.

Step 1: Collect the right email addresses

To build a successful email strategy, you need a strong list of (potential) guests to contact. Make sure to collect email addresses at multiple stages of the guest journey, not only when they actually book their stay. Offer something of value like a local travel guide, a discount or giveaway in exchange for their email.

Always try to gather personal email addresses, especially including those from guests who booked through a third-party platform like an OTA – so you can stay in touch beyond the booking platform.

Step 2: Automate to save time and stay consistent

Manual emailing is not feasible for a busy independent hotelier wearing many hats. Just responding to routine guest emails alone can easily take up several hours a day. For a 20-room hotel, this comes down to up to 4 hours of answering the same pre-arrival questions.

You can save countless hours and manual labor by setting up an automated workflow that ensures your guest receives timely, relevant communication before, during and after their stay. Templates and scheduling tools allow you to offer a personalized experience, while reducing your day-to-day workload.

Step 3: Compose impactful email messages

When composing your marketing emails and newsletters, bear the following best practices in mind:

• Mobile-friendly design: Make sure your emails are readable on any device, including smartphones. Most guests nowadays read their emails on their phone, so make sure they won’t skip yours.

• Personalization: Use personal data you’ve collected to make their email more tailored. Address them by their name, offer packages you know they have already booked, offer child-friendly activities if they’re arriving with kids. This will not only improve your engagement and open rate, they will be more likely to add extras to their booking.

• Relevant and valuable content: Avoid sending only promotional emails. Instead, share local insights, travel tips, guest reviews, and new amenities. Each email should feel useful to the reader and spark interest.

• Strong subject lines: The main principle to keep in mind for email subjects is KISS – keep it short and simple. Your subject line should entice your reader, without giving too much away or being misleading. Test out some different options and see which produces the best open rate.

• Consistency: As with every marketing channel, consistency is key. You might be tired of reading it by now, but every single communication you do in the name of your property should follow the same tone of voice, visual style and messaging.

• Add interactive elements: To create more engagement, you can add links to your own website to showcase reviews, informational blogs, local guides and even ask for feedback in a poll. You can take this even further and personalize your interactive content with weather-based suggestions and itineraries based on guests’ booking information. These interactive elements should contain a clear call-to-action (CTA) to show them what the next step should be, whether it’s booking a room, exploring activities or adding extras.

• GDPR compliance: Legally, this is the most important aspect of your email strategy. Every single email you send, has to be compliant with the GDPR or other privacy laws. It is crucial you obtain consent from the receiving party, offer the option to unsubscribe and keep their data private.

Step 4: Measure results and optimize your email campaigns

Keep track of your email performance by regularly monitoring key success metrics:

• Open rates

• Click-through rates

• Completed bookings

• Upsell conversions

• Repeat bookings

This gives you valuable insight into what does and doesn’t work, so you can adjust where needed and finetune your strategy.

Turn email into one of your most valuable hotel marketing channels

Hotel email marketing isn’t about sending as many emails as possible, but about sending highly relevant messages at the right time to the right guests. When done well, emails:

• Improve the guest experience

• Reduce repetitive questions

• Increase upsells and repeat bookings

• Strengthen long-term guest relationships

Lighthouse for independents helps you achieve those goals, offering you the time and tools you need for effective hotel marketing across all channels – not just email. Aside from automating guest emails, Lighthouse lets you manage your room prices, distribution channels, bookings, payments and guest details in one place. This means less manual work, more personalized communication and better results without adding complexity.

Need more help with your marketing strategy? Be sure to check out our full guide on hotel digital marketing.

Lighthouse is here to turn your marketing efforts into revenue. Request your free demo below and discover how our solutions help independents optimize their strategy while saving time.