Why a weekly newsletter is not smart for your travel business
The numbers are in and year after year, the biggest email marketing platforms in the world have confirmed that newsletters are not the smartest way to do email marketing.
Newsletters work well for schools, local clubs, and community groups. They don’t work for businesses, and they certainly won’t work for your travel business.
Think about it, which brands (where the purchase price of a product or service is over $5K) do you receive newsletters from?
None. You only receive email marketing from them.
They don’t send a weekly newsletter with a personal update from the CEO on what they are doing that week. That would be weird. If you have been sending a weekly newsletter with a snippet of your personal life, and an update on the travel industry that week, it’s time to stop.
Here’s an example of why…
If Delta Airlines sends an email to all subscribers about the Top 5 destinations for 2022/3 travel, and you click on Portugal to read more, you should expect to receive a few follow-up emails about Portugal over the coming hours, days, weeks, or months.
Those emails are triggered by your behavior and set up using automation (pre-prepared email sequences or workflows).
Now if Delta were to send a weekly newsletter about what’s going on at the home of their executives or even behind the scenes of their business, even though it might be an interesting read, there is no chance it will have a positive impact on revenue. It just wouldn’t increase sales to Portugal or any of their destinations.
The team at GetResponse has recently published their take on newsletters vs triggered/automated emails. Check out their results table below and their summary of how and why these numbers came to be.
Automated emails are on top
Want high open and click-through rates? Send automated emails triggered by subscriber behavior.
It’s even worth doing for simple messages like welcome emails sent to your new email list subscribers. Newsletters and email blasts still work. But sending messages with the use of email automation brings the best results.
Why? Timing and relevance.
When someone gets a message straight after taking an action, they’re more likely ready to read and respond to it.
The same is true if they find it interesting and relevant. So you need to know your audience (specifically their information needs and preferences.)
With marketing automation, you can collect important data along the customer journey – and use it to segment your list and personalize your content.
For instance, you can add tags to your contacts based on the products they click and browse. The more actionable data you have, the more relevant your messages will be.
That’s why marketing automation cycles bring the best results.
Irek Klimczak
Content Project Manager at GetResponse
