Best 6 Email Marketing Tools for Tourism

Many Marketers believe that email marketing is dead, but the following statistics give a very different perspective : 

• 89% of marketers say that email is their primary channel for Lead Generation.
• Millennials are the age group most likely to check their emails.

Email Marketing has progressed to the next level. It no longer focuses on volumes but continuous engagement and conversions. 

1. Email Marketing through Personalize Emails

Understand the context and personalize every single email while interacting with the customer. 

Here is an example: Mr. Smith was looking for a place to stay in Chennai. He used expedia.com to search for properties but could not find any. Within the next few days, he started getting customized emails that showcased the properties satisfying his criteria.  And then he got an email that listed properties similar to those generated by his search results.

Some of the points to observe about Expedia’s email : 

• The email from Expedia reflected personalized search results. The results satisfied the criteria mentioned in Smith’s search.
• The search results contained the prices of the properties to enable decision-making.
• They also mentioned the distance of the property from Smith’s daily destination, making it very easy for him to make his choice.
• The email also contained a photograph of the properties showing exactly how they looked.

2. Email Marketing through Create Urgency

The human brain stops thinking and starts acting when presented with an urgent situation. Once you have shared options with the buyer, the next step is to set the timelines for decision-making.  There are multiple ways of creating urgency but the most commonly used types are :

• Time-based Urgency
• Scarcity-based urgency

Time-based urgency is when the customer is told that he has a limited number of days left to avail of an option, while scarcity-based urgency is when he is told there are only a few items left as the product is in demand.

An example of time-based urgency in the earlier scenario mentioned is when, after a few hours of shortlisting a property, Smith received an email from Expedia mentioning that he had just 4 hours left to finish the booking. This creates urgency and ensures that the customer needs to act fast and take quick action to complete the transaction.

3.  Retargeting Emails :

As an IBM report put it, the average cart abandonment rates have been as high as 68.95 % for e-commerce. 

Email Remarketing is one of the most popular techniques to reduce this abandonment rate.

Remarketing involves bringing back the customers who have already visited your digital properties. One of the basic requirements of remarketing is that the customer should have visited the digital property of the brand at least once.

Email remarketing is the process of sending specific emails to website visitors based on their behavioral data.  

The advantage is that targeting is extremely precise. Email remarketing communications are very timely, enable high conversion rates, and lift the opening and clicking of emails ( more than regular, promotional emails do).

Forrester Research found that remarketing emails can generate nearly four times more revenue and eighteen times greater net profits compared with marketing using untargeted emails.

There are two ways by which email marketing can be leveraged. The first one is by tracking the email subscribers who have clicked your content and shown interest. The second one includes tracking the logged-in customers and triggering emails based on their activities.

• Initial Email Sent – Customer clicks the email and lands on the website
• Web browsing/Shopping – Customer browses and adds items to the cart
• Abandoned Cart or Form – Customer leaves the website without making the purchase
• Remarketing Email Sent-Customer receives abandoned cart reminder email.
• Online Purchase made – Customer clicks the remarketing email and makes a purchase

4. Email Marketing through Social Proof :

One of the reasons for the success of Amazon is its focus on honest user feedback. It enables users to consider the advantages or disadvantages of a particular product. This is called Social Proof.  Even Emails can leverage social proofs, such as the number of subscribers, number of readers of email lists, social sharing, etc. This allows other users to take action based on the reflection of the correct behavior of the community.  

One of the most effective ways is the inclusion of actual user stories in the email. Share user stories the customer can relate to. Transparent and authentic information, which reflects actual scenarios that your ideals customers are experiencing is valued a lot.  You can also leverage the ” Share the feedback” functionality or enable the product’s rating to enable social proof.

5. Mobile :

According to Google, 53 percent of customers shop using a smartphone or tablet. More emails are read on mobile than on desktop.

Since the real estate on mobile is very small, the email should be easy to read, with a very short paragraph (preferably bullet points) and enough white space. Images can be used to support the content.

Considering this, it’s obvious that email should be compatible with mobile devices. One of the easiest ways to do this is by selecting an email template that works well on such devices. Not only the open rate but also the CTR is higher for the first few links on mobile-responsive emails.

Some of the points to consider :

• Mobile emails should have larger fonts than other emails. Certain devices like the iPhone automatically increase the font to 13 pixels.
• Sometimes the images are blocked on mobile, so it is very important to include Alt Text, as this will allow the readers to understand what the images are about even if they are blocked.
• The Calls to Action (CTA) on mobile should be eye-catching. The recommended size for CTA is 45 x 45 pixels. This ensures that users get enough space to complete the action.

Source: Liga Bizune, “Infographic: Segmented Emails Is what the Future Holds,” Mailigen blog, 

Kristin Naragon, “Subject: Email, We Just Can’t Get Enough”, Adobe blog,

Special Thanks to Mr.Apurva Chamaria with  Mr. Gaurav Kakkar –  Author of : Master Growth Hacking Book