With the holiday season round the corner and a great deal of revenue to be recouped since the start of the pandemic, now is the time to start planning holiday offers and campaigns. As travel restrictions continue to ease across the globe, there’s more opportunity for individuals to take advantage of compelling offers and take that trip they’ve been waiting for since the pandemic began.

To help you get started with your holiday campaigns and capture the attention of those deal-seekers we’ve compiled a list of best practices that will see your revenue numbers jump through the roof!

1. Do your historical research before getting started, and set goals
   • Review your historical performance of past successful campaigns (when comparing YoY, look at 2019 as well). What was the audience criteria that you used? How was your deliverability/unique Open Rate (OR)/Click Through Rate (CTR). Looking historically will help you set benchmarks for success this time round.
   • What links were most clicked vs least?
     • For eInsight follow this link path: Reports > Campaign > Link Click Detail Report
     • For NextGuest follow this link path: Central Reporting > CRM Reports > Marketing Campaign Reports > Campaign Link Analysis
   • Take a look at your Average Length of Stay (ALOS) and Lead Time for your holiday target periods.
     • For eInsight follow this link path: Reports > Operational > Lead Time Analysis Overall 
   • Set internal expectations – Do you want to drive Revpar? Do you want to drive a longer LOS? Be sure to align on target metrics to help set your goals.

2. Look at current trends in the market
   • Review what markets you can reach now and research what people are looking for in their offers.
   • Define your target launch dates so you can prepare and stay on track.

3. Target the right people
   • Once you’ve defined your objectives and audience, segment your lists so you’re targeting the right people. Is it your drive-market or can you expand further domestically or even internationally?
   • Get started with building an audience following these guidelines (NextGuest)
   • Get started with building an audience following these guidelines (eInsight)

4. Get creative with your subject lines
   • Create a sense of urgency
   • Avoid spam words
   • Create a sense of exclusivity
   • Personalize using First Name
   • Be creative and think outside the box

5. Create an irresistible offer
   • Work with your revenue team to determine the best offer you can get for the holiday period.
   • Listen to the market and align your offer with what people are looking for right now. It may well be more about family experiences or city tours – see what the market is saying at the time.

6. Wow with creative visuals
   • Get playful with your email design and be compelling with your header image, e.g., ‘Colorado is calling you’ or ‘London misses you.’
   • For help building your email design, review how to edit images in Studio (eInsight), for NextGuest CRM click here and Guestfolio click here.

7. Get personal with your emails
   • Blasting your database is not good practice and may lead to higher opt-outs. Drive higher engagement and booking revenue by segmenting your database into Audiences. Then personalize communications to those Audiences using tactics like dynamic content.
   • Start building personalized emails now (NextGuest)
   • Start building personalized emails now and adding personalization tags to your emails (eInsight)

8. Encourage click-throughs
   • Make sure you have a compelling call to action (CTA) to help focus recipients on clicking your email. Try and stick to one offer per email to avoid distractions.
   • Use visuals and text to draw people to the offer and ensure you use interests and profile data to showcase emotive offers and reasons to click through that are compelling for the recipient.

9. A/B test different aspects of your email
   • A/B testing is the best way to ensure you are always striving to create the best offer and campaign you can. Test subject lines, CTAs, visuals and headers – to name a few.
   • Just remember, test one variable per campaign so you can clearly see what it was that recipients preferred (e.g., one subject line over another).
   • Start testing your campaigns now (NextGuest)
   • Start testing your campaigns now (eInsight)

10. Take them on a journey
    • This is probably one of your biggest promotions of the year so capitalize on the holiday shopping frenzy by creating a series of campaigns.
    • Using the Campaign Journey builder in eInsight, you can automate the series to generate more interest and engagement using teasers and follow-ups based on user actions. This will drastically increase visibility during the most competitive marketing season of the year.

11. Test, review and hit send!
    • Once you’ve tested your email, had all reviewers check it over and sent it to your seed list, now’s the time to hit send!
    • Start using seed lists today and be sure your emails are rendering across all different browsers and email clients.

12. Spread the word even further
    • Use social media and/or digital marketing to expand the reach of your campaigns.
    • Export your audiences to use across marketing tools and maximize visibility across look-a-like models (eInsight).

13. Report out on each campaign
    • Which campaigns and which A/B tests are driving more clicks and bookings?
    • Open rates may be skewed from Apple Mail updates so focus on hard-hitting engagement metrics.
    • For NextGuest CRM, start using success parameters to measure success in your campaign and use the result report to check on your audience built.
    • For eInsight, take a look at how to manage your reports and be sure to measure success across your campaigns.
    • For Guestfolio, check out the marketing training session to ensure you're reporting out on your campaign success.