The future is looking bright for the travel industry after a rocky few years post-pandemic.
In fact, we’re delighted to report that international tourism is expected to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2024, with initial estimates pointing to 2% growth above 2019 levels.
However, increased demand results in increased competition. Meaning that for travel businesses, forging strong and long-lasting connections with potential travellers has never been so important.
Through the strategic use of lead nurturing campaigns, travel businesses can initiate these connections right at the start of the travel planning journey. Once they’ve secured a traveller’s email address, businesses can focus on maintaining engagement, providing valuable information, and fostering brand loyalty, all to secure that important first booking.
At Deployteq, we have found that lead nurturing is leading the way in terms of email, with 57% of respondents in our latest report stating they will be executing lead nurturing campaigns in 2024.
So, whether you’re at the start of your journey with lead nurturing, or you’re a seasonal pro looking to elevate your existing strategies, this blog post can help.
Explore our top five lead nurturing campaigns specific to the travel industry, designed to ignite inspiration and captivate a fresh wave of prospective travellers.
Welcome campaigns
At Deployteq, we love a well-crafted welcome series. It’s not just because they boast impressive statistics like generating 4 times more opens and 5 times more clicks compared to regular email marketing campaigns.
But for travel businesses in particular, the welcome series presents the perfect opportunity to set the stage for an exceptional customer experience. Just like the warm greeting you receive from a smiling concierge when stepping foot into a hotel lobby.
A typical welcome series comprises of a single email or a sequence of messages triggered shortly after a potential customer takes a specific action, such as signing up for email communications, joining a community, or showing interest in a travel destination or package.
Regardless of the number of emails in your welcome series, the overarching goal remains consistent: to extend a warm welcome to your brand, establish credibility, and encourage further engagement.
To achieve this, here are some essential tips to consider:
- Ensure that your emails reflect your brand identity, from colour schemes to the tone of voice, to build brand recognition and foster a sense of trust.
- Ignite a little wanderlust by showcasing your best-selling or most relevant travel experiences to give subscribers a taste of what your business has to offer.
- Consider offering an incentive or special offer to thank new subscribers for joining your community, such as a discount on their first booking, a complimentary upgrade, or exclusive access to limited-time deals.
- Include key details about your business, such as your specialisms, social media channels, and contact information.
Travel inspiration
One thing that travel businesses boast a wealth of is captivating imagery and an offering that inspires.
Through images, videos, and storytelling, travel businesses can send campaigns that showcase a variety of irresistible destinations, activities, and accommodation which entice travellers to book their next adventure.
This could be achieved through a series of emails highlighting different destinations, your most popular packages, or tailored recommendations based on demographics and browsing behaviour.
Key strategies to inspire a first booking are:
- Incorporate vibrant visuals that showcase the beauty, culture, and unique experiences of your chosen destinations.
- Provide practical travel tips and recommendations from other seasoned travellers or local experts, which offers valuable insights for trip planning.
- Where possible, utilise the data you have on recipients to segment based on traveller preferences, interests, and browsing behaviour.
- Even better, utilise dynamic content to provide a highly personalised, one-to-one experience for each individual.
Seasonal sales
The seasons can have a significant impact on travellers’ desire to book their next trip.
Recipients feeling the winter blues might be desperate to book a winter sun holiday, or during the festive period families might be inspired by a snowy paradise.
As well as being a great excuse to offer inspiration, seasonality is also the perfect opportunity to promote sales and discounts that could be the final nudge travellers need to make a booking.
Here is a little inspiration for your seasonal campaigns:
- Ensure branding consistency in your campaigns, but inject creativity with themed emails that align to the destinations or seasons you are promoting.
- Utilise urgency-inducing language and countdown timers to encourage travellers to take advantage of the exclusive offer before it expires.
- Implement time-limited discount codes tailored to individual recipients, enhancing personalisation and incentivising the booking process.
- Harness the power of personalised sale recommendations by leveraging segmentation or dynamic content, utilising the data you hold on your recipients.
Abandoned booking recovery
Despite all of your efforts to guide recipients to a travel booking, there’s always a chance that they will abandon the process midway. In fact, 81% of travellers abandon online bookings, which is not only frustrating for marketers, but also results in potential lost revenue.
Fortunately, there is a lifeline that can be offered to encourage a booking in the form of abandoned booking recovery emails.
These communications are triggered when travellers start the booking process but fail to complete. This could happen for various reasons, including distractions, indecision, or simply needing more time to consider their options.
Here are some tactics to entice potential travellers back into booking:
- Ensure that your recovery emails are sent in a timely manner, shortly after the booking abandonment to prompt action whilst the booking is fresh in recipients’ minds.
- Offer assistance by including support contact details, FAQs, and further information on the destination or package that recipients can delve into.
- Showcase trust by incorporating your positive testimonials and reviews from other happy travellers.
- Promote relevant offers such as discounts or upgrades to offer a financial incentive to complete their booking.
- Recommend similar destinations or packages which may be of more interest to the recipient.
Re-engagement campaigns
Frustratingly, despite your best efforts, potential customers may simply stop engaging with your emails.
But all is not lost, re-engagement campaigns are designed to rekindle connections with inactive or disengaged travellers. Targeting those who have not opened or clicked your emails in a while, or are no longer browsing your website. Encouraging them to rediscover their passion for travel, and consider booking their next trip.
There are a multitude of reasons why recipients disengage, which can be addressed with the following tactics:
- If your emails aren’t being opened, utilise compelling subject lines which incorporate humour, emojis, personalisation, or a question to pique interest.
- Personalise your emails with relevant destination or package suggestions based on demographics or browsing behaviour. This can be achieved through segmentation, or highly personalised dynamic content.
- Promote special incentives to encourage inactive recipients to return and book their next trip, this could be a discount on their next booking, or a free upgrade.
- If your emails are not receiving click-throughs, look at your calls to action. Ensure these are clearly visible in your email design and offer a clear prompt for action.
Are you a travel brand wanting to elevate your lead nurturing?
Then you’ve landed in the perfect place.
At Deployteq, not only do we boast a team of specialists well-versed in nurturing campaigns tailored to the travel industry, but we also provide a cutting-edge Automation Platform trusted by renowned travel brands.
What’s more, our dedicated Data Platform seamlessly integrates data and automation, empowering you to create highly personalised, data-driven campaigns that will captivate your prospective travellers.
To dive deeper into how our solutions can elevate your travel marketing strategies, contact our friendly team of experts or schedule a demo of our platform.
