How To Write a High Performing Tourism Newsletter
July 14, 2021
How To Write a High Performing Tourism Newsletter
Gone are the days of pages long, text-heavy, black and white paper handouts shoved through a letterbox and shiny, colourful, tailored email newsletter has proudly taken its place.
Much like writing a blog, putting together a weekly or monthly tourism newsletter doesn’t need to be feared or dreaded. The perfect newsletter will not only increase sales, but will improve brand awareness, build trust and relationships. Even if some of your readers don’t convert into customers – it may just give them the escapism they desperately need.
We will cover the following top10 tips
1. Mobile friendly
2. Videos and imagery
3. Prioritise your readers
4. Create a strategy
5. Layout
6. Think of the bigger picture
7. Always focus on the “why”
8. Analyse your data
9. Word of mouth
10. Being inspired
1. Mobile friendly
In Europe, 38.6% of internet traffic is mobile, and in Asia it’s a staggering 60.08%. Yes, your website and tour booking system is mobile-first, but the layout, template and imagery of your emails and newsletters must be as well. Always send the newsletter to yourself first, and proofread on your desktop and mobile. If an email is poorly formatted, there’s a 70% chance it will be deleted within three seconds and up to 15% of users will even unsubscribe.
Also, by proofreading, we mean that – don’t just skim over the look and feel, check for typos, grammar and punctuation errors. You want to be seen as a respected, reliable source (and it’s important for SEO, too.)
41 – 50 characters is the ideal length for a title here, keep it short and sweet.
2. Videos and imagery
Make sure your photos are as crisp and high quality as possible – nowadays, all mobiles have a pretty amazing camera on them, so you don’t need to dish out for a brand new DSLR. Images are storytellers and evoke emotion – they’re doing a lot of the work for you so put as much time and effort into these as you do your writing. PR News have reported that online content with good images get 94% more views than those without.
Some recipients may have an image ban, so your email will need to make sense and look great without them, just make sure there is plenty of white space to create balance and increase appeal and readability.
3. Prioritise your readers
Most of your travel newsletter should focus on human and helpful over promotional, but if you’ve got a great deal going on, it’d be foolish not to let your readers know about it! Just bear in mind that words like “FREE” and “% OFF” will trigger spam filters.
Be sincere – of course, there are ways to monetize your newsletter and this is your livelihood, but don’t treat your audience like an income. Be aware of your reader’s buying journey and focus on that when writing your latest piece.
Some of your readers may have signed up as they’re looking to go travelling soon and you cover their destination; so fill your newsletters with interesting facts and educational content to engage and intrigue them. Maybe they’re a customer that’s been on one of your tours in the past, share a new destination with them to get their feet itching again! Try to segment your recipients into different contact lists to avoid sending them irrelevant content as that will lose their trust, and your relationship.
4. Create a strategy
Email marketing is all about sending the right message to the right person at the right time, create relationships and provide solutions.
Make sure you have your recipient’s consent, otherwise you’ll go straight to junk and could even be blacklisted, this will affect your website’s domain authority and will not give you the trustworthy reputation you’re working so hard for.
Create contact lists and send tailored, targeted emails to each list – we touched on this above when discussing the buyer’s journey. It’s all too easy to unsubscribe if you’re receiving an email that doesn’t interest you in any way, be human and treat your audience as individuals – a little organisation here goes a very long way.
5. Layout
When thinking about how your newsletter should look, you may want to consider the AIDA method. It’s probably the most well known marketing model, and it’s a great technique to keep in mind when laying out your newsletter.
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Awareness: This is what I’m talking about today.
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Interest: Here’s why you’ll love it.
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Desire: This is why you want it.
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Action: Here’s how to get it.
6. Think of the bigger picture
Your audience aren’t just reading your emails, they’re reading your blogs, your website, reviews and social media channels. Unfortunately, email can’t do everything so don’t put a good conversation on the wrong channel.
7. Always focus on the “why”
Why do you want your readers to consume what you’re putting out there? What is the goal of this piece of content? How will it benefit your readers? Focus on the why, ascertain the goal and optimise each component of your newsletter around that; the subject title, the preview text, the body, footer and images.
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” – Simon Sinek
8. Analyse your data
If you don’t know how successful your newsletters are, then why pour your heart and soul into them? There are many tools available, like Google Analytics and HubSpot that will allow you to review bounce backs, open rate, click rate and heatmaps. Here you’ll have a wealth of information on what your readers love, and what they’re not so fussed on. Here, you can experiment, tweak your language, talk about different topics and most importantly – be creative!
9. Word of mouth
Word of mouth is the best marketing of all, that’s a well known fact. Holiday goers spend a lot of time and money to ensure their well earned respite is as enjoyable as can be, so it’s not a surprise that reviews are scoured and so important within the tourism industry. Be sure to share these reviews within your newsletters, and you could even ask one of your customers to write a piece for you! It’s likely your customers will be avid travellers with a passion for exploring the world, so when you’re talking to them and building the relationship on the tour, why not ask what their other passions are? You may be interacting with an aspiring journalist who would be happy to write a piece on their experience with you. Campaign Monitor have reported that nearly 75% of millennials admit that user-generated content inspired a travel decision when booking over professional photos. With this in mind, travel agent Hotel Tonight includes user-generated photos in a gallery to showcase where their customers have visited.
10. Be inspired
Do your research. Look at what’s getting lots of engagement, find articles that appeal to you and why. Do you love the layout? The informal language? The visuals?
Take these components into consideration when creating your newsletter, this is the perfect opportunity to show off your personality and curate your brand image.
We hope this article has given you the inspiration and building blocks to start your own newsletter; but there’s many more resources and blogs online, here’s a few of our recommendations:
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