4 Benefits of Email Marketing

Foreign. To the Boosted podcast. Have you ever tried email marketing? Mailchimp, sendfox, Mailerlite, there's loads of them out there. But I mean, the reason why so many people don't do it is because they try it and they become despondent and they. There's so many reasons and benefits to doing email marketing. The problem is that people don't give it enough chance. The number one reason why I think everybody should at least give it a go is because it's free. In a world where you got to pay for everything nowadays, email marketing is free. Mailchimp, sendfox, like I say, it's all free to get started with. They have got freemium options, but it's free to get going and you can send emails en masse to your email, list your previous guests, potential guests, for free. And it has got such a, a great opportunity which I will go through in this podcast about why it will benefit you. So please do check it out, please do go to the links and everything that I give you. If you stick around to the end, I will share with you an actual email template copy that you can go and grab copy, paste, personalize and post it right now. All that I ask for you to do. Number one, go check out hostfully.com podcast sponsors. Go get your free digital guidebook. Number two, share this video with somebody that you know from the world of hospitality, whether it's on a Facebook group, LinkedIn, wherever, grab the link, go send it, but also go and like subscribe so you can get more of this content. So markooster.co.uk, instagram ooster UK, go send me a DM. Get in contact. Any questions that you have, leave them in the comments. Doesn't matter whether you're watching this live or if you're watching this on the replay. But now please make sure you grab your pen and paper, grab a note, make some notes, listen, watch, take notes and then implement into your business. So it's going to be just me. I had a full structure and everything. I thought, you know what, should I just cancel tonight's live? But then that's, you know, I've committed to doing daily live videos. We're now on the seventh week of Daily Live Videos, helping the hospitality industry bounce back. So it's going to be just me. So hello everybody. As you are tuning into to this, whether it is live or whether you are watching back on the replay, as always, like I say, just do me a big favor. As you are coming into this, just hit that like button. So I know that you're there. Leave a comment with hashtag bookdirect and also as well give your business a little pitch as well. And always, please do share this in a group. Any Facebook groups that you're a part of always. Always helps to spread the word about what we're doing. So tonight we're going to talk about email marketing and luckily seeing that the guest decided to pull out last minute. Very luckily. About a couple of hours ago, I was on Jasper's get paid for your pad podcast talking about email marketing, which is, funny enough, what we're going to be talking about this evening again in the comments. I would love it for every single one of you if you are in the comments right now. Just let me know. Email yes or email no. Do you currently send emails to your list? Do you have an email list? Do you even know what an email list means? So email yes or email no? I'm going to give you some help and advice on how to get started. And also as well, what I'm going to do for everybody that's watching this, whether it's live now or on the replay, I'm going to give you a link to go to where you can get access to an actual email template that you can copy it, you can paste it, you can personalize it and you can send it and it's super, super effective. Now, why is email important? Two lanes. And for those of you that have been listening to me for a long time will know that I bang on about this a lot. There's the slow lane and there's the fast lane. Okay, the slow lane is say somebody arrives on your website, somebody maybe sees a post on Facebook from you or sees a post on Instagram. Instagram or one of the social media channels. They may see your advert in a magazine or they may see your TV advert or your radio advert. That's, that's the slow lane. Okay? The slow lane isn't going to benefit you or them. You know, what you want to do is you want to get them to the destination, and if you want to get them to the destination sooner rather than later, then that's the fast lane. So the destination is a booking. That's where somebody goes onto your website, picks up the phone, sends you an email, gives the dates where booking comes in. Okay? That's the destination. Now the fast lane is email. That email marketing is, is super, super, super effective because over here in the slow lane, there's loads of distractions. You know, the radio could Be playing loud. You know, there could be things going on out the car. Again with social media, when you land on social media and if they see your post, even if they leave a like there's still somebody else to look at below there's that notification that's going on in the top right hand corner. There's loads of distractions that are there. Now with an email in the fast lane, you have got this amazing ability to have a one on one communication with somebody. Now with tools like mailchimp, Active Campaign, sendfox, you're able to have that communication at mass, but the person getting that email doesn't know this. Again, just because you and I savvy when it comes to email marketing, we know of the tools that are out there, don't assume that everybody else does. And again, you're able to with tools like mailchimp and sendfox, send an email out, type out once and send it to thousands or hundreds of potential people in just one in one click. But when that person opens up that email, as long as you've done it well, then they, you've got that one on one attention with the guests. And again, I think the reason why so many people get disheartened with email marketing is because they think of the emails that are in their inbox. They're thinking of the spam, they're thinking of the, all the salesy ones that are just sat in there that you never read or you put it to unsubscribe or you know, or even worse, those ones that come out once a year around Black Friday sales, they're the worst type of emails because people don't put much, put much effort into it. The way that I would encourage everybody to get involved with email marketing and if you're trying to get into the mindset of it is try and think that you're writing to a friend or a pen pal and that's how you should be creating the content around your email. The second rejection whenever anybody says to me about email marketing is I don't know what to send. Now if you want the simplest way of sending an email and coming up with something to send, you've got a couple of options. Number one, you can just send them a link to your favorite Facebook post of the last month. Number two, you could talk about what you've been doing in the past month. Number three, you could be talking about things that are been happening or places to go, places to visit, places to eat. Again in the last month. Now obviously the last six weeks is A little bit different from what you would normally write because with coronavirus, but it doesn't mean you can't send emails. The ratio that I like to adopt when it comes up to how to send an email is I like to do the 8020 rule. So 80% social media, 20 selling. So when you come to create that email and you send it, you know, maybe a couple of them will be all about what's going on in the area, etc. Etc. Etc. You won't even mention about special offers or anything like that because in the end that becomes too salesy. But then that 20 that will be when you're going to send that maybe a special offer or a voucher or telling them about availability. And again, this is where it is, is really powerful to do. And the beauty of the sending them to your Facebook page is that you're ticking off two boxes here because number one, you're going to get someone open your email, they're going to click on a link and they're going to engage with it. But then you're sending it back to your social media pages, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, and then they're going to engage with that because we all know what social media is like. You can be visible on that newsfeed one second, hit refresh and you're gone the next because so many people are trying to get the attention. And that's the same for your email list, that's the same for your users, your followers. Just because they're a follower doesn't mean that they see everything that you post out. But with this tactic of just sending them back to maybe one of your favorite posts from the previous month is that you're able to bring them back. So maybe they've missed that post, maybe they've missed that, whatever. And you can grab them and send them back. Now, every time you get somebody to open your email, but most importantly to engage in that email, whether it's a click or a reply, what you're doing is you are guaranteeing that your email doesn't go in the junk or the spam folder later down the line. So you've got to be sending something that you think that your audience would like to open. And again, if you have got a business where you've got a very clear niche, like where I am right now, family friendly farm stay property in the middle of the North Yorkshire moors, ideally located between Scarborough and Whitby and Pickering, there's so much stuff on I'm not going to be sending to my audience, some of the best places to go on a, on a night out or the best bars. We're going to be talking about things that have been happening on the farm. We're going to be again sending them back to pictures we put up on social media of the pets and the animals that are around here in the views and whatnot. And again, that's, that's something that we know and we know that our audience likes. Now, what I love the best about track websites such as mailchimp and sendfox, not only are they free, so it's free to get started, so it's zero cost, but what you're able to do is you're going to go into an email, you're going to send it out to your list and what you're able to do is say that you've got a list of 100 people. You'll be able to see A, who opens that email up, but B, who is clicking on the links. So if I go back and look at the last four emails that we've sent out, the last four campaigns, then I'm able to tell number one, who's open them. But number two, how many times has that person clicked on a link? Because that tells me that they're really engaged and they really want to find out more about us. Now, even better, on that email that I'm going to send out a link to, it's going to send them to my booking page. I can then open up that email and go right out of a hundred people that I've sent this to, 50 people have opened it, but there's two people that have clicked on the link and gone to my booking page. And I sent that on, on the 1st of May, so I can go to my PMS, my property management software, and I can go, okay, on the first of May, did this person who clicked on the link go to my booking page? Did they book? And it's a yes or no. And if not, then you've got two hot leads right there. Somebody that you can send a personal email to. If you're brave, you can pick the phone up and have a call to. And again, that's super powerful. And that's just off sending one email. The next question that I always get is how often should we send emails? And this is why I say it's totally up to you, but it's totally up to your data. Now, if you've never sent an email before or you haven't done long for a long while, then my recommendation would Be to start off monthly, once a month, that's all you need to do. Gently wean your way back into it. When you get more confident, you can start to do weekly. And then what you'll be able to do again with the reports is you go, right, so I've sent six emails over the last six months. I sent it once a month and we've got an open rate of 40%, which is, which is great. When I've started sending them weekly. So for the last two months I've been sending them weekly and that 40% has dropped down to 15%. Then what's that telling me that my audience don't like to get weekly emails. They prefer to get one email once a month. So again you can flip back. And again you've got to test and trial it, see how it goes, look at the numbers and then you can always then adjust from there. The beauty of websites like mailchimp and sendfox is again, they are free to use. You don't have to have any costs. So it's not like there's a big setup cost. And you can get started right now. And one of the most biggest questions I get right now when I talk about email marketing is gdpr. So it's signup forms. How do I get started? How can I send an email to a list of people that I've, you know, I've already got? How do I do it around GDPR? And again with Mailchimp and Sendfox, they let you create signup forms that are GDPR compliant. Now you cannot now in 2020 and moving forward, just go into your reporting tool of your pms, export all of the bookings, take the emails, dump them into mailchimp and start sending. Because that's not allowed. You've got to have an actual tick or acknowledgement from your guest that they are okay with you sending them marketing emails. But again, it's, it's free to do now, right now with mailchimp, you just set up a signup form, you send them the link and they will opt themselves in. So again, these big companies now, like sendfox and mailchimp, they make it super simple. So what I would recommend, if you haven't done this in the past, so if you haven't got physical proof that somebody has opted into some of your email marketing, whether it's from mailchimp or anywhere else, then what I recommend that you do is start now with mailchimp and all of his software, sendfox as well. What you're able to do there is when somebody joins, you can tag them. So if you have got an email address from a guest who has stayed with you before in the past, you can add the tag as guest. If somebody signs up for your email list from say your website and from social media and they haven't stayed with you before, you can tag them as non guest. This makes email marketing even better because now you've got one list here of guests, one list of non guests. And it may be that the email that you send to a guest will be different to the one that you'll send with the non guests. So it's, it makes it really cool, really simple to use. And again, the beauty of it all is that it is free to do. If you would like to get my email template that we've sent out to guests, create it with a copywriter, used it time and time and time again and it works so well. All I want for you to do just pop into the comments is just put in hashtag email email template, all one word. Once you've done that, you're going to go to boostly.co.uk MDB it will divert you to a Google Doc and then what it will take you to is to an email that I've got, which is called the do you know anyone? Email. And it's a super effective email to use and you can start using it straight away in times like these with the, with the coronavirus is really, really, really effective because you're able to use that template and put it into practice straight away. It's called the do you know anyone? Once you've got access to that email template, there's a little video right at the top which just shows you how to use it and you can go ahead and go from there. All I ask is that when you get that email template, don't forget booster.co.uk m d b go there, grab the template. Once you've used it, please report back to me again. If you're watching this live, you're watching this back on the replay, please go. All that you need to be thinking about and focusing on over the course of the coming weeks and months is really start to get the hang of email. If you want to get more advice on how to set up mailchimp, if you want to get more advice on how to get started, if you want to get more free advice on how to get started with all of these direct booking tactics, then all you need to do is to go to boostly.co.uk YouTube that takes you to my YouTube channel. I've put a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube and you can go and just type in mailchimp in the search bar. And I've got step by step guides on how to set it up, how to set up a signup form, how to share it with guests, how to share it with previous guests, how to put it on your website, how to put it on your social media, how to get more and more people on there. Now once you've got people signing up and again, I think people worry about the numbers game here. They'll go to me, Mark, I've only got four people on my email list. Well, guess what, that's four potential bookings right there. The best thing in the world is when you first start off an email list and you've only got four or five people because you can pretty much email them directly and say, hey, what would you like me to send you? What would you like to know more about? You've got the perfect little case study right there because when it grows to the numbers that I've got right now we're into like the 4000s. It's hard to do that. So when you have got such a small list, you've got a perfect little core group of people that you can contact with and engage with and ask questions and they will tell you what they want to see. So please do get started with it, please do share your results with it. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a follow up podcast later down the line when we get some results and I want to share with everybody the fantastic work that you've been doing. Now tomorrow I've got a special, special, special episode lineup. I am going to be talking about another form of marketing again which is new, which is massively unused, but it's so effective if done right. We're going to be talking about influencer marketing. I've got two special guests lined up, ones that I've gone to get, which is important, not ones that have approached me, the guys that let me down tonight. So I've got two people lined up. I'm going to be speaking to a hospitality owner who doesn't have a website, doesn't use any of the OTAs. He gets all of his bookings from Instagram and people calling him up, which is amazing. And I'm going to be speaking to Harry Hugo who is one of the co founders of the Goat Agency. It's one of the biggest influencer agencies in the UK and he's going to be sharing some tactics and advice with you. So that's the next episode of the Boostly podcast. Again, please make sure you check that out before. So make sure you check that out. And also, as well, please do share. Please do tell people about the work that we're doing here. We're trying to help hospitality owners. Again, I've called May Project Kickstart. This is all about getting the hospitality industry kickstarted on the back of this COVID 19 getting this world and hospitality world getting bookings. Most importantly, getting them direct bookings, so you don't have to rely on third parties to do so. So if you want to find out more, just remember, keep here bookdirect, tell more people about it, and I shall speak to you all very, very, very soon.