Email Marketing Trends in 2024

Tracking the top email marketing trends for 2024 will give you the latest techniques to attract guests and get the most out of your email communications. An essential element of digital marketing for hotels, email has the power to foster relationships with guests, generate new leads, and promote repeat business.

To compete in this ever-changing and competitive channel, you need to not only master the basics, but also stay on top of industry trends, new technologies, and more. Everyone else too.

Check out our list of 2024 email marketing trends below and learn strategies to improve your hotel's overall email marketing performance.

1. Put more emphasis on email content and messaging

Providing engaging and interesting email content will continue to be a top marketing trend in 2024. Almost 90% of businesses communicate with their customers via email, so you need to craft your content well to stand out from the crowd. New for 2024 is a focus on customer needs, including accessibility considerations.

Enhanced software capabilities allow hotel marketers to embed a variety of elements in emails to create more engaging content experiences, and accessible templates ensure that all readers receive the message. Masu. Review your email framework to make sure it supports a variety of tactics, and use A/B testing to find content that best resonates with your audience and drives engagement and bookings.

accessibility

Making your content easy to read for everyone on your sending list is a top trend for 2024. Many of our email subscribers rely on Screen Reader and other tools to translate their messages. Make sure your email follows a logical order and includes headers so virtual assistants and screen readers can navigate the content. Color contrast is important for readability, so choose your palette wisely. Make the information in your images and infographics accessible to everyone with alt text, video transcripts, and descriptive link text.

storytelling

Storytelling is a marketing trend that will continue into 2024, providing an emotional connection to readers by presenting personas (heroes or characters), problems, and solutions through impactful stories that customers can relate to. In 2024, we expect storytelling to include more visuals (infographics, videos, photos) than in previous years. Whether this is his one long body email or a series of drip his campaigns, the result of a storytelling strategy is increased audience interest.

User-generated content

If you need to fill a content gap or are looking for something new to update your email marketing, turn to user-generated content (UGC).

This approach reuses (with permission) customer photos, testimonials, or reviews in emails. Messages that feature UGC often resonate with guests because of the authenticity and personal voice the message provides.

interactive email content

The popular trend of embedding interactive content into transmissions will continue in 2024. Gone are boring, text-heavy emails in favor of engaging content with rollover effects and animated buttons. When subscribers interact with text or image elements directly in the body of your email, they are more likely to click on your email and visit your website.

Examples of interactive hotel content include a carousel of images that showcase the resort's destinations, videos about new offerings, and surveys that ask guests to select their favorite amenities during their stay.

2. Use email templates

Gone are the days of coding emails from scratch, and the trend of using templates with new features has arrived (and continues). Software design libraries can provide a shortcut to achieving a consistent brand look without the need for technical expertise.

Whether you're creating an email campaign or writing individual messages, the drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to rearrange and modify templates. Built-in best practices ensure that emails are automatically answered, images are optimized, and accessibility features such as alternative image text are introduced. If your CRM doesn't offer a drag-and-drop builder, choose a pre-built responsive template instead.

3. Email personalization with artificial intelligence

Message personalization is nothing new, but using artificial intelligence (AI) to customize email marketing for hotels is one of the emerging email marketing trends of 2024. Instead of creating generic content for large audience segments, marketers use generative AI tools to fine-tune copy and content to appeal to smaller audiences. These tools can use past shopping behavior and customer personas to recommend the right products and services and improve subscriber satisfaction.

Email programs have long helped hotel marketers combine data and subscriber lists to inform campaign strategy, and AI can complete these tasks quickly and accurately. Here are some ways marketers can use AI to create more personalized and engaging email experiences for their customers in 2024.

• Sophisticated segmentation: AI can identify shopper characteristics and behaviors, as well as past shopping trends, to create specific user groups more efficiently than humans. You can also clean your list based on response rate.
• Automatic email: AI can help create automated workflows to message customers throughout the guest journey, from pre-arrival to post-stay. You can also respond to common customer questions with automated responses using natural language.
• Predictive analytics: Rather than relying on data to schedule email deliveries, marketers can use AI to predict variables such as optimal send times and audience behaviors such as unsubscribes and purchases to help marketers deliver emails at the right time. You'll be able to target the right customers.
• A/B testing: Artificial intelligence can ease some of the A/B testing workload for marketers by suggesting email subjects, content, and send times for different audiences. AI tools can also analyze and summarize test success.

4. Prioritize email security

Improving security and email authentication measures are marketing trends for 2024. Google and Yahoo! (with other providers to follow) have made authentication mandatory for high-volume email senders. This shift to best practice requirements for authentication is forcing many email marketers to review their authentication methods and make updates to stay (or become) compliant. Email authentication, which verifies the sender of an email message, can reduce spam in recipients' inboxes, improve security, and increase engagement for marketers.

New trends in email security in 2024 require marketers to pay close attention to three areas:

• Email verification: Set up domain authentication to prevent cyber attackers from impersonating your brand through email spoofing and phishing scams.
• How to unsubscribe: Bulk senders must offer a one-click unsubscribe option, and marketers must process requests within two days.
• Spam rate: Google monitors spam complaint rates and penalizes high-volume senders that exceed a threshold.

5. Mobile-first email optimization

Optimizing email for mobile devices rather than desktop is a trend that all marketers should follow in 2024. Like 85% of smartphone users, most check email on their mobile devices. Responsive templates ensure that your messages render correctly on the smallest screen and adjust to any device or orientation. Follow these tips to ensure that elements of your email are visible on every phone or computer.

• Limit your subject line to around 30 characters so it's fully viewable on small screens.
• Use preheader text to encourage readers to open your email.
• Split your copy into consumable chunks for easy digestion on small devices.
• Include white space between links and buttons to make clicks more manageable.
• Utilize buttons on text links to provide a more clickable area.

6. Monitor email performance

Email monitoring is trending in 2024, even though Apple's email privacy settings make open rates unreliable. Data-driven decision-making has become widely used as companies now have easy access to comprehensive reporting tools that break down complex metrics into easy-to-understand reports.

To address tracking challenges due to privacy updates, measure engagement through clicks and click-through rates, monitor list health through subscriber and bounce rates, and use booking revenue to help you reach your goals. Make sure you're working on it. To comply with Google's bulk sending rules, don't forget to add spam complaint rate to the metrics you follow.

Email Marketing FAQ

Is email marketing still effective?

Yes, email remains one of the most effective marketing channels for businesses. It's an economical way to use targeted messaging to reach customers, increase brand awareness, and drive revenue. Email users are expected to reach nearly 4.5 billion in 2024, so marketing to this growing number of users will continue to be an essential tactic for businesses.

What are the best email marketing tools?

Email tools that allow you to easily create audience segments and send targeted automated campaigns will be a must-have in 2024, as many businesses will be doing more with less staff. It will be a tool for you. Hotels need to start with a reliable CRM that can manage customer interactions and improve campaign effectiveness through personalized messaging and timely lead nurturing.

Are you ready to see positive results from your hotel marketing emails? Contact us for a free email marketing assessment.

About travel boom

TravelBoom specializes in developing and executing customized, data-driven marketing solutions that drive direct customer bookings and growth. With over 25 years of experience in travel and hotel digital marketing, TravelBoom leverages advanced data science and analytics to uncover insights and strategies that significantly improve client outcomes and reduce reliance on third-party channels. Develop. TravelBoom is also the host of the world's #1 hotel marketing podcast and its quarterly Traveler Sentiment Survey, both available at www.travelboommarketing.com.