Stop Calling it Spamming! Why Email Marketing is still a Powerful Marketing Tool

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Welcome back to the Get Fully Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.

It's great to have you here today.

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Now, today's episode might feel a little bit uncomfortable for some of you because I'm going to challenge a phrase that I hear all of the time and I'm going to tackle it head on because this comes up so many times.

And the thing I hear this came up on my, on my marketing help desk only last week is, oh, I don't want to spam people.

And of course they were talking about email marketing.

Now every time I hear that, I do gently but firmly say that sending emails to your subscribers is not spam.

Okay?

If you're emailing, if you're not emailing your audience, you are seriously leaving bookings and money on the table.

So today I wanted to talk a little bit about this and there are definitely instances when it is spam.

But generally email, if it's permission based, is not spammy.

It's not outdated.

I know we all tend to gravitate to social media, but it's absolutely probably the most powerful tool in your marketing toolkit after your website.

Now you know how I feel about websites.

If not have a listen to episode 41 that will tell you what I think about your website.

But you know, it is email marketing is a very powerful tool.

So let me start with an interesting thought that might just help to reframe this for you.

So let's start with the, you know, the reality that if you're using, I mentioned social media platforms, you really are renting that audience because you don't own it.

Whereas with email marketing, bit like your own website, they are two marketing assets that you do own.

Instagram could change the algorithm tomorrow.

I mean, they're constantly fiddling with it, so, you know, it's like trying to, you know, scoop up sand.

Most of the time, Facebook could lock you out of your account.

And this happens all the time.

There's a lot of phishing where people click on a link and before they know it, they've lost their Facebook account.

TikTok could get banished or disappear overnight, but your email list, that is yours.

And the reality, and this statistic particularly, I think, really hits home that for every pound that you spend on email marketing, they have estimated that your average return on your investment is between 36 and 42 pounds.

Whereas with social media, for every pound, it's £2.80.

So it gives a much higher return than paid ads than like, doing all your organic social media activity, even higher than influencer marketing.

And yet email marketing is still something that so many owners of, you know, holiday cottages, Airbnbs and Glamp sites avoid doing because they are terrified.

I think of two things.

One, being seen as being spammy, and the other one, particularly if you're in the UK and Europe, is gdpr, which this episode is not specifically about that, but if you follow the principles that I'm going to talk about, you won't have any issues with gdpr.

So let's dive a little deeper into this.

So, firstly, I wanted to, you know, like I said, sending emails to your subscribers is not spam.

End of.

Spam, by its very definition, is sending unwanted, irrelevant messages to people who didn't ask to receive them.

That is spam.

We've all had them.

But ultimately, good marketing is the opposite of that.

You know, if someone has entered their details on your website pop up because you've got an incentive and you're saying, you know, get like, we're doing a free romance package on our first day, you might be doing an upgraded hamper or free firewood or a free hot tub fill.

Doesn't have to be money off, although you could do a gift voucher.

That works quite well as well.

You know, if they're entering their details on your website and signing up for that offer, they're going to redeem that on their.

On their first booking, they have put their hand up and said, yes, I want to be on your list.

Maybe they entered a giveaway or they've actually booked with you.

So they are your existing customers and therefore you are perfectly entitled, even under gdpr, to send emails to any of those people who've done any of those actions because they're either already one of your Customers and, or they have opted in to receive your communications.

So they've actively put their hand up and said, yes, I'm interested in your business and I want to hear from you.

That's what we call permission based marketing and email marketing and that's the right way to do it.

And if you don't show up in their inbox, you know, they really don't sit there going, oh, I'm really glad that X company's gone really quiet and hasn't sent me an email.

They just don't notice.

They forget about you.

They go and book somewhere else the place that stayed front of mind and actually did send them the monthly email.

You know, your emails are how you stay visible.

It's one of the easiest ways of constantly popping up in front of that engaged audience who've shown an active interest in your business.

It builds trust, it turns your past guests into repeat bookers and also encourages them to recommend you to other people, which is the best form of marketing.

Um, it's a great way of filling your booking gaps, you know.

So let's be honest, how many times have you booked something off of an email reminder or bought something when you've had an email that's just landed in your inbox at the right time?

You know, it could be a seasonal offer or maybe some holiday accommodation has said that they've got some last minute availability and you just think, actually we were talking about having a weekend away or doing X, Y and Z or meeting up with some friends for a weekend away and it gives you that nudge and you book.

So that's exactly my point.

You know, at the end of the day, if we're not interested in what's appearing in our inbox, what do we do?

We just swipe left and delete it.

I will go through and if the subject lines or the people that are sending me emails, if they're not something that's of interest to me at the time, I don't get offended.

I just delete them and move on and then they'll send me something and it will be the right time and I'll buy it.

The next point I wanted to touch on was gdpr because it is a little bit of the sort of like elephant in the room, particularly if you're in Europe or the uk, because people do panic around it and they say, well, I'd love to email my guests but you know, I really don't want to get into trouble and you know, obviously I'm not allowed to email people unless they've opted in.

And that is true of people who visited your website or maybe even sent you an inquiry or they've, you know, obviously entering a giveaway.

They have opted in through entering the competition.

Those people do have to opt in.

That's there's actually six different basis for processing people's data and opting in is the sort of, is one of them.

But if they are your existing customers, they are legitimate business interests, you know, you have actually transacted with them and therefore you can send them a communication.

But you do have to follow some principles.

You need to be clear who's sending the emails.

You do need to obviously give them an unsubscribe and an easy way to opt out on every email that you send them.

So you can't make that difficult.

You do need people to actually be confident that they, if they don't want to hear from you again, they can just click on an unsubscribe link that actually works and gets them off the list.

So I think, you know, GDPR is not there to stop you from doing email marketing, but it is there to stop people doing or to try and stop people spamming.

And it's mainly there to protect people's personal data, which is really, really important.

And you have a responsibility as a business owner to take good care of any data that's shared with you in the, in the form of or in line of your business.

And if someone decides that they don't want to hear from you, you must let them unsubscribe and you must manage that properly.

So I think, you know, using third party email marketing software like mailchimp or there's lots of others like Flodesk, they manage all of that for you and make sure that you don't accidentally send it to somebody who's unsubscribed because you can only send it to people who are active subscribers and they have to opt back in if they've opted out and unsubscribed.

So, you know, when people stay on your list, I think people also get a little bit upset when people unsubscribe.

And I wouldn't get upset because you don't want to be paying to send emails to people who don't want to hear from you.

And it is a really good principle to go through your email list and to cull inactive people who've maybe not interacted with any emails that you've sent in the last six months or the last year if you're sending them regularly.

Obviously if you've only sent one email in the last year.

Don't delete everyone, otherwise you'll probably have nobody left on your email list.

But if you're actively sending monthly emails and you've got a proportion of people who've just never engaged with it, maybe you've did a giveaway and you've got some people on your list who are not that engaged, then you can definitely, you know, think about taking some of those people off.

So it's not just about people actively unsubscribing.

You can also be proactive as the owner of your list to get rid of people who are not really that interested for whatever reason.

You know, if they haven't opened like your last 10 campaigns or the last six months worth of communication, they probably are not that interested.

Because even if people aren't interested in booking a stay at the moment, they probably will have a look at the odd email, even if they don't look at every single one.

But if they do stay on your list, it's a clear signal that they want to hear from you.

So I think you have to respect that.

And then you have to send them good stuff on a regular basis to remind them about why they might want to come and stay with you.

But I don't want you to fear gdpr.

I think, you know, it's there and it's very, very important to protect consumers data, but it's not designed to stop you doing business.

And I definitely, even if you've got a small email list, this often comes up on my marketing help desks and my membership, the club, fully booked business club.

And people will say, oh, but I've got a really tiny list.

There's no point emailing them until it's bigger.

No, start now.

You know, the best time to start was like yesterday.

But if you didn't start yesterday, start today, you know, send your first email.

A smaller engaged list will always outperform a massive uninterested one every day.

So our list for the hideout currently stands at just under 5,000.

That's not a huge email list, but we only have to sell 120 stays roughly a year.

So that's quite a big list to fill.

120 stays and our email list works really hard for us and is a very effective means of, of filling our stays.

So, you know, it doesn't have to be a huge list.

And I would always be quite nervous if you've got a business and you say you've got like maybe one holiday cottage and you've Got a massive list of like 30,000 people you may have grown it through promote like giveaways.

And often they aren't the right people on your list.

So I've got another 3,000 people that I had through a giveaway.

I haven't put them into my main list.

I'm filtering them to bring the active ones into my list because I don't want to damage my email lists for the Hideout for our treehouse by having all of the competition entrants in there because I know there's going to be quite a lot of waste in there and people that are not that interested.

And my final point is about thinking about the content of your emails.

And I have three things to think about under this.

It's a sort of bit of a rule for you, is that before you send any email, ask yourself three questions.

Is the email timely?

So are you sending information that is relevant to the booking behavior and the audience?

So maybe seasonal availability, last minute cancellations, maybe school holiday reminders when we've just gone into a new year.

Maybe people want to grab their holiday dates off peak escapes.

Maybe there's some events happening locally like a food festival or something that you think will, you know, will be right for your audience.

But if you're sending an email about a cosy sort of winter break in July, that's not timely to me and it doesn't feel right.

So a subject line that says something like fancy a last minute escape this weekend emailed out on a Wednesday could be perfect.

And you could be trying to shift, you know, ultimately you're doing this because you've got a business need.

You could be trying to shift a last minute cancellation or a date that just hasn't filled in your calendar.

The second point is, is it relevant now?

Not everyone in your list, particularly if you have multiple audience types.

So ideal guests.

So maybe you have like couples and families and groups.

Maybe you do weddings.

You know, you could have a whole different, you know, corporates.

If you've got a very mixed audience, you need to segment it.

So you need to, when people opt in, you need to find out what they're interested in.

Or if you're uploading the data, you need to put some tags in your database so that you know, like past guests who stayed with you.

Before we do that with the Hideout, we know what year they stayed with us and we also tag them past guests.

And then we have people who've signed up through other means like our website, so we know where they've come from.

Because I then Sometimes do some special emails that are just for the past guests.

If you've got families or couples and maybe you've, you may even have a cafe on site or I've got one client who's got a farm shop, you need to know what they're interested in.

So you want to put those tags in your database.

Maybe there's a local audience.

So that's.

If you've got a cafe or a farm shop, you're going to want to sort of segment the local people versus maybe guests who come and stay in your holiday cottage at your farm maybe.

And they definitely might not be interested in the same content.

So you need to be able to segment because then you can send the families or the couples or the local versus the, you know, the more distant people on your database different messages and that will increase the open rates and the click throughs and the success of those campaigns rather than doing blanket emails that just go out to everyone.

And the third point is about permission based.

So making sure that they have signed up and that they have actually opted in.

And this is your.

Because it's permission based, it's a continuation of your relationship with this, you know, maybe with your past guests and people who've discovered your business long after that first point of contact.

So you're going back to them and reminding them about what a great experience you offer.

This is what's available, this is what's new, and this is why you might love staying with us.

Again.

It's not spam, it's about being a good host.

It's about being hospitable and sharing what your business has to offer.

And for me, that is never spamming.

So I want you to, if you can just take one thing away from today's episode, I hope it's that email marketing isn't spam, full stop.

When you don't email, you're going to get forgotten.

You're going to be more reliant on the OTAs to do the marketing for you.

You're going to lose control of your business and your bookings.

But when you do email marketing, you stay front of mind, you drive direct bookings and you build long term customer loyalty and lifetime value.

And honestly, your future fully booked calendar will thank you for it.

I hope this episode has made you rethink email marketing.

I'm a little bit on my soapbox because I do having.

I have actually done email marketing for over 20 years.

That's how old I am.

Email marketing is something that I've lived and breathed.

I feel I'm very good at it.

I'm a specialist in it.

And email marketing is still a brilliant marketing tool and it does give you phenomenal return on your investment.

So you know, if you, if you want help with email marketing that is actually going to work for your business and you don't want to fear it and feel guilty or to cringe, do you think about coming along and joining me in my membership, which is the Fully Booked Business club where I can boost your confidence and your email marketing skills.

And like I say, I have these weekly help desks where if you get stuck on anything or you're tall, concerned about anything like things like this, like saying my emails, how can they not be spammy and how can they get good open rates, etc.

Come along and check out the Fully Booked Business Club.

I'd love to welcome you in there.

I'll pop a link in the show notes or you can go to my website which is get fully book.comclub to find out more about the Fully Booked Business Club.

Thank you for listening.

If you enjoyed this episode, you know what to do.

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Next week I'm back with a wonderful guest to share their marketing journey.

See you next time.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free direct booking Roadmap quiz.

Head to my website get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.