How to do Email Marketing for Hotels

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to another show, the Askavi Arya show, where we talk about social media and how it can completely change your life. You know why? Because it had changed my life. And now I travel all over the world and I see people whose lives have completely changed, which means they're making more money, they're happier, they've been living their passion and whatever message they have is reaching to tens and hundreds and thousands and millions of people across the world. Isn't that the best way to live?

Me 2 times 5th gear, 6th gear master til I get there Philadelphia state of mind until I get my head clear DMV stand up Baltimore and what the politics of everything suck so just man up don't know what to stand for at least I'm still upright even those on the down not me, I'm me Balls in my hand when I'm spitting? Cause my potency's stronger than any man's and I'm never laying down Feet are not in the sand Only vacations we get are at the bottom of a glass Top me off again Popping pocket overtan this is like a time machine A weekend in Japan Line by line my rhyme's revealing what's inside of me Nothing to be proud of but at least I get it out of me. How did he get the doctor out of a lobotomy? Whatever he's got to probably be put inside a bottle Please FDA approval and.

If it's down, you know my, my tagline, if you see Karan, just put my, my tagline over here. My tagline always says, social media is the biggest opportunity in the history of business. And I make such an exciting and such a bold statement because I've, like I said, I've seen people's lives change. Their kids are going to better schools, they're taking better vacations, they're affording whatever they want to do. They're more fulfilled, passionate lives by doing whatever they're doing on social media. Now I get a lot of questions on my YouTube show on how to do this, how to do that, and today's topic is how to do email marketing. And I'm going to. It can be for everybody, but I'm going to make it slightly more specific as I go into this show for my friends from the hospitality and the restaurant industry, because that's where I'm known more for being the hospitality and social media guy. I like to talk about social media. Social media helps and changes aspects of life for people from all fraternities, all backgrounds, all industries. Doesn't matter where you're from. But we're going to slightly deviate into hotels. So here goes. How should I start email marketing? How does email marketing work? What software should I use to send out emails? How many emails should I send out? Do I need to make an email marketing funnel? How does the funnel work? Can I actually monetize my emails? Can you actually sell information that you're selling? All these questions, this show is going to answer all of those for you. So first, how to start email marketing. Now, there are two opportunities here. So if you're a personal brand or you're a business, you could be a hotelier, you could be a restaurant and you've been running for a while, then you have some data locked in somewhere. Get that data, spend a couple of days and fine tune all of that data, the email IDs of people, where they live, what they do, fine tune it, segment it and put it into different buckets. Because in most it doesn't matter how much. You don't have to have millions, but even if you have 5,000 people, 500 people in your database, it's a good start, it's some beginning. So segregate that data properly, put it into an Excel format, the names of those people, where they're from, what kind of business opportunities they can get for you. Segregate them and for segregation, you can say A, B, C, C. Doesn't mean that those clients are not worthless, but these are clients who give you a different opportunity for revenue. And so you know that in your mind you have to send them a different message. Some people like a red phone, some people like a black phone. So if you're somebody who's selling phones, you know, I'm going to put people who prefer black in a different separate bucket. Send them a different message maybe. So first you do that segmentation. But if you are somebody who does not have an email marketing any email database and you're just starting off as a personal brand, you're abhijitarya.com or you karan vyahas.com and you're saying I want to become a social media brand or Karan says that he wants to become a color car brand or a creative brand. I don't have any database. How should I start my email marketing? So today I suggest Facebook is one of still, still, still the most inexpensive mediums to collect database. So you create a content around, try create a content around how to start email marketing. And I have a, I put a blog around it and I put that blog online and I do a Facebook campaign. I split sponsors that ad and I start promoting that. Hundreds and thousands of people see my ad. If they like how to start an email marketing campaign, they click on it. I give them some advice and I ask them for that email address. They give me the email address. They subscribe, I send an automatic email to that email address. They go to their email, they sign, click to double confirm. Because most email providers are looking for double opt in just to make sure there's no spam. They double opt in and there you've got one person's email id like that. You create Facebook and you give out free content in exchange for their email IDs. You get their email ID and you can keep on shooting out content to those people who will benefit from your content regarding email marketing. So you start building up your email funnel like that. So now in the first section, what I've covered is what you do if you already have an email database, you segment it. If you don't have it, I said use Facebook ads to start getting that. Now let's assume you and I have both reached this phase. We've got 50,000 people in our email database. Great. And we've segregated it into three buckets just for the. You can segregate into 20 buckets. And a lot of businesses do as your business rises and say, for example, you're selling cell phone accessories. So for the covers you'll have a different thing. For smaller cameras, you'll have different stuff for remote controls here have a different target audience. So for everybody you will have different, you know, avatars for chargers, you'll have somebody else. So you have different categories, but at this. But so, so what you do with these categories is that you start emailing them the information they are searching for. Now you say, how do I know what these people are searching for? And you scratch your head and you say, this is what I feel I'm looking for. So let's start doing that. Hang on, take a step back. Why don't you do what? Why don't you do this? Go to Quora Q U O R A. Go to Buzzumor and type the how to questions. Again, I'm repeating type and search for the how to questions in and around the subject that people are looking for. For cameras, for social media, for restaurants, what are people looking for? For hotels. And then you start seeing people are looking for how to get a camera, a phone charger which clips onto the phone and charges your battery twice as fast. Or how to get accessory for a phone which Becomes a camera right on top. And you can travel around portable camera, whatever people are looking for or for a hotel people are searching for, which is the best hotel to have a party at with 200 people, which is the best rooftop restaurant in town, which is the best banquet facility to have a conference in town. You will see that people are looking for those and then you pick up those and you see that there are hundreds and millions of people who are searching for that. Then you create content around what is already being asked. So you say how to cook a particular dish or what kind of cameras that are available that clip in and clip out and have charges or best rooftop restaurants in town or best banquet facilities in town which can hold conferences of about 400 people or whatever, you know, people asking for those questions. And you're creating emails around it and then you start running a Facebook campaign around those and you get more email IDs of more people who are looking for that content, filter them into your email database and then start sending out those people those emails. Now once you got an email database and you know what questions people are looking for and you're now giving them tailor made content on an everyday basis. I send out mails every single day to my database. Some people say it's too much. I don't think so. I've experimented with all formats because everybody is not opening your email on an everyday basis. So I send out emails every day because every day about 7 to 15% open rate is there which I'm very happy with right now. I think it can improve but I'm still happy with it so far. And then next day there's 10 to 15%. So every day there are some people who are looking at my content who might not have seen my content yesterday. And I'm not reshuffling it as often. I'm every day putting in new content out there. So I want to be for social media the go to place to say that if there is something changed in social media, if there is a new format, if there is a new like yesterday Google Docs said we might be shutting off. So it might be no Google Docs or if Facebook has come up with Facebook Watch. Which means that today you and I, Karan, you can go and I can go and apply to Facebook to say I am going to do a Facebook show for you. Facebook is starting, has started Facebook Watch in the US it wants Facebook all over the world. So Facebook is going to be like Netflix. So you need to be the first person giving out information. So my Newsletters are giving out information every day. You might start with once a week, but when some people say, I send out a newsletter once a month in this crowded space where people are bombarded with information, I don't think you're going to be able to establish yourself as a personal brand or a service or a product or whatever you're doing by doing it once a week or once a month. Do it at least once a week a month consistently. Then most important, 70, 80% people fail when I ask them, what was your open rate last week? We haven't seen it. What was your how much engagement? How was the engagement rate? We're not very sure because you're not even going and looking at your analytics. My dear friends, once you've reached this stage, the best thing for you to do is to keep your ears and eyes open to always try to understand what is it that your customers are asking for. So you might send out an email and people are like, oh, we loved your information. Can you tell us more about this? Or we love your information, but it's got this missing. So you listen to those people and your next newsletter should be addressing those questions that people are asking for more. So this is how you know this is the first part of how to do email marketing. Now I want to talk to you about some software. See, most softwares are giving great services. There are softwares like SendGrid, there are softwares like Mailchimp that allow you to put templates. So if you don't have time, if you don't have a developer or a graphic designer, you can choose from the hundreds of options they have, you can customize those templates and you can make a template and make text around it and send it out to those people. They also help you to make sure that there's anti spam. They will not. Most good providers will not accept your database when you upload it. If they feel it's not double opt in or if it's spam, they'll block it. And some of them will also block the IP address and blacklist it. So you want to make sure that every piece of data that you've collected is double opt in and it has been collected from somebody who's willing to give that information to you. And, and, and one of the most important things is that when people are looking at your data, your email every day, they must have a sign sign off option as well. So they can unsubscribe whenever they want to. If you don't have that, you're flouting the rules in many parts of the world and you don't want to do that and, you know, invade somebody else's space. So that's about software. Sendgrade and mailchimp are some of the good ones. There are many others that Karan will be listing here in the slide that you can go and check. I like Mailchimp. I've never had a problem. I like SendGrid. I've never had a problem with it. But you need to know, you need to first get it, segment it and send it consistently to your database. Listening to them, what are the questions they're asking for? Going to Cura, going to buzzsumo, Understanding what are the how to questions around your passion? Point around the subject that you're selling and then create content around it. Now, let me be a little more specific. I said that I will speak to hoteliers and restaurant people slightly more specifically. So you're a new restaurant and you have people around your area and you say, how should I target those people? And you have a database of people who've checked out from your hotel. Or there will be database of people who've eaten at your restaurant. So you can target emails to them with offers, with festivals on a regular basis. Now people are like, how many people read emails? I get millions of emails. Do you know sometimes the email open rate and the email success rate and the email booking rate. The idea is to send an email and get that person to click on that email and either go to your Facebook page where the offer opens up so he has something interesting, or going to your web page so that he's able to get what you're promoting. Your idea is to get more traffic and so that you can show him more opportunities over there and more options for your restaurant, for his eating and whatever. Now the biggest mistake that restaurant and hoteliers make is they become very myopic and they're like, we have the best butter chicken in town. Come and eat it. You know what I would step back and say, why not inform the person on some of his signature dishes. So if you're a chicken lover or if you're a meat lover or if you're a vegan, I will talk to. My newsletter will talk to you more about how to be a better vegan, how to be a better eater, how to be a healthier eater, and then somewhere talk about my hotel promotions as well. So what you're doing is your hotel or your restaurant is being branded as the expert in vegan food, is being branded as the expert in you know how to balance having a meat diet but still having a good health and heart rate and all of that under that, it's all sent by your restaurant. So your restaurant is being branded as an expert. So it could be you, the personal brand, it could be your chef or it could be one person. The brand should not be sending out these emails. There should be something. Avi Arya is coming to you with social media information or Karan Vyas is coming to you with information on how to become a good director or a good filmmaker. So chef Manjeet is coming to you telling you what kind of dishes you should cook or you know, a car expert is coming out you and telling you what kind of cars you should drive. So the information, the email should be going from a person and please include the picture of that person in the mail. It makes all the difference because people connect and that's how it makes it better. What I've started discovering now is there are a lot of videos coming in and I, you know, I love videos because video helps me engage with people more. So you do a how to show. You do a video on your show. You answer a how to question in three to five minutes. You don't have to make it as long as the show that we're making right now here, but you can make it a three to five minute short video on a how to subject, have five lines written about it. How to how to to find the best rooftop restaurants in town. And then you're an expert in you talking about rooftop restaurants. People go click on it and you're like, hi, my name is Avi Arya. I'm going to tell you how to find the best rooftop restaurant in town. I did a survey, I went to 10 restaurants and I wanted 10 rooftops and I wanted to tell you which rooftops I graded is how. And so you can start grading them and you have a video around it. People watch your video, they get to know about your product. They get to know about the fact that you're an expert on that product. So doesn't matter if you're a hotel or a restaurant, you need to make somebody the brand ambassador of your product. If you're the owner or the owner's wife or the owner's son or the owner's manager, owner's best friend, owner's dog, great, you can be a brand ambassador. If not, and all of you people are shy or for some reason you're busy or you have multiple restaurants and you don't have the time or you don't like being in front of the camera like I do. I mean I love being in front of the camera. And maybe you don't, then you can hire somebody or you can have somebody who can be the face. And you know what, you don't need to necessarily worry about what if that person leaves, what if he's not there? Then somebody else comes in, somebody else takes on that role. But the show must go on. There should be somebody all the time. Because today 2017, when I'm making this video, everything belongs to video and it's going to become bigger and bigger and bigger. So if your emails have videos, if your YouTube channels, if your emails have links to your YouTube channels, if you have more how to videos, your emails are winning. People are saving text. If I have great information in a five page method, I'm sorry, people are not downloading it or if they are, they're saving it. So I would make a short mailer with one or two paragraphs, crisp to the point and a short video. And then if you want to watch more, come to my YouTube channel. So give them short because attention spans they say are reducing. I don't know, I've not tried it, but I've always had a low attention span and I've always been impatient and I think impatience is a virtue for entrepreneurs. But that's just me. But if you people feel the same, you should make shorter videos on your email. And that's how I feel you will win, win at email marketing. So these are just an overall on how you should win at email marketing. I hope you like this video. I don't want to make it very long and very boring. Karan will put in the slides, put in some examples we work with here at Internet Moguls. Karan is going to show you the behind the scenes look at Internet Moguls. We had about 155 of us. We work with about 400 plus clients all over the world. So we get a lot of learning and experiences of working with our clients. We send out millions and millions of emails. So there's a, you know, we call ourselves real practitioners. We have a pulse on the market, on what's happening in the market. And so we pick up that information, we see what's working and we create these videos so you can do the same for yourselves. If there is anything that we can help you with, if there is any advice, is there any software that you're looking for and you're not being able to find this, send us your comments in the comment section below. We'll be more than happy to reply to you and help you create your own email marketing. Like I said, 2017 doesn't matter. But email is still there. It's still winning, still helping you get more business. Go out there. You want to get our case studies, we can send you some case studies as well. But go out there, create your email. Data is the new goal. Data is the new oil. If you don't have data, you're not going to win in the future. So you have to have a captive audience. People who want to listen to you have similar passions as you have. You know, their life depends on the kind of information you're giving. Create that data. Create those funnels. Create those buckets. Send those videos. Use the right software. Send it on time. Send it consistently. Go back, rewind this video. I put in a lot of energy, as you can see. I'm getting tired. Go back, rewind this video. See it again, show it to your team, show it to your staff, show it to your entire management. Get everybody on the same page on how email marketing works. And I wish you all the best for your success from your email marketing. Once again, this is Avi Arya signing off from the Askavi Arya Show. Thank you very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next show.