As a hotel marketer, ensuring the consistent performance of your email campaigns is crucial. After successfully warming up your domain, it’s essential to maintain best practices to prevent your domain from going cold, which can negatively impact your campaign performance.
Useful Checklists:
Maintaining a strong domain reputation is critical. Here are some key tips to follow:
Consistently Monitor Campaign KPIs
Regularly check key performance indicators (KPIs) such as bounce rate, open rate, and click-through rate. A bounce rate over 2% should be investigated immediately. Repetitive bounce messages need attention, and if unclear, reach out to the Cendyn Email Deliverability Team for assistance.
Focus on Collecting Quality Emails
Collaborate with your operational teams to ensure the collection of valid email addresses. Avoid using placeholder emails like Pleasegetemail@hotel.com, as they can harm your sender reputation. OTA email domains are disposable after the guest checks out. Please consider removing OTA email domains from marketing campaigns (i.e. guest.booking.com).
Implement Double Opt-In Processes
If your web signup form is connected to Cendyn CRM, activate a double opt-in process to confirm email addresses. This helps in maintaining a clean email list and reduces the risk of spam complaints. Ensure your web developer has security measures in place to prevent web bot attacks (i.e. reCAPTCHA or Honey Pot Solution).
Establish a Consistent Marketing Cadence
Please ensure that after the warm-up phase, you have a clear communication strategy in place and are prepared to maintain consistent campaign sends. It’s crucial to prevent your domain from going cold post warm-up. We recommend sending at least one campaign per month, but ideally, aim for 2-3 campaigns to keep your domain active and engaged.
Develop a regular email marketing schedule that includes trigger/automation campaigns throughout the guest journey. Consistency helps in maintaining engagement and keeps your domain warm. Hotels that have 5-10 automation campaigns across the guest journey have 10-15% lift in CTR.
Segment Your Audience
Proper segmentation is critical for maintaining a healthy sender reputation. ISPs favor campaigns that show high engagement rates. Focus on quality over quantity by targeting engaged segments of your audience and incorporating click engagement criteria. Open engagement is no longer a clear sign of engagement, since the adoption of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection in 2021.
Manage Email Volumes Carefully
Avoid sending more than twice your normal marketing volume in any single campaign, as this can trigger IP blocks. For larger campaigns, distribute the audience over multiple days to prevent sudden spikes in email volume.
Regularly Review and Clean Your Email List
Periodically remove inactive subscribers and those who haven’t engaged with your emails in a while. This helps in maintaining a high engagement rate and reduces the risk of being marked as spam.
Personalize Your Emails
Personalization can significantly improve engagement rates. Use data such as past bookings, preferences, and behavior to tailor your messages to individual recipients. Personalization in the subject and campaign body increases engagement.
Test and Optimize
Continuously test different elements of your emails, such as subject lines, content, and send times. Use A/B testing to determine what works best for your audience and optimize accordingly.
Stay Updated with Email Marketing Trends
The email marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Stay informed about the latest trends and best practices to ensure your strategies remain effective and compliant with regulations. For example, ensure that you activated Google Postmaster and are actively monitoring your Gmail Reputation & Spam Complaints (new Google & Yahoo sender requirements were published in 2024.
By following these best practices, you can maintain a healthy domain and ensure the success of your email marketing campaigns. Consistency and attention to detail are key to keeping your domain warm and your campaigns performing at their best.
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