UpMail is a powerful tool for enhancing your hotel’s business development activities. Here’s how you can leverage UpMail for various business development activities:
1. Prospecting
Prospecting is crucial for attracting new business to your hotel. With UpMail, you can send personalized emails to groups of prospects, ensuring each recipient feels like they are receiving a one-to-one message. Using merge fields, you can easily add recipient-specific details such as name, company, and title, which dynamically update for each email. Not only will using UpMail to facilitate prospecting help save time and maximize your outreach, but you’ll also benefit from comprehensive tracking and reporting capabilities.
> Click here to learn about strategies for hotel prospecting
> Click here to learn about crafting effective prospecting emails
> Click here to learn how to use UpMail reporting to optimize your prospecting emails
2. Nurture Campaigns
Nurture campaigns will help strengthen relationships with both potential and past clients, keeping your hotel top of mind. We recommend implementing three strategic nurture campaigns:
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Past Bookings: Reach out to past definite bookings. Reconnecting with these clients shows appreciation and keeps your hotel in their consideration for future events.
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Previous Inquiries/Lost Bookings: Engage with contacts who previously inquired but did not convert to a booking. This approach can rekindle their interest and provide an opportunity to address any previous concerns or highlight new offerings.
- Past Bookings Based on Type: Segment your past bookings by type—such as weddings, corporate retreats, or holiday parties. Invite these groups back for an anniversary party, follow-up strategic planning session, or suggest making your hotel the annual holiday party venue of choice.
The cadence of this outreach is flexible, but should be consistent, whether it’s quarterly, six months, or one year after the inquiry or booking. Pull the list from the previous quarter, half-year, or year and send your nurture email accordingly. You can streamline this process by creating a nurture email template for each scenario.
Data for these contact lists can be found within your hotel’s CRM (Salesforce), Sales & Catering System (Delphi, Opera), or Meetings & Events System (Cvent).
3. Tradeshows
Tradeshows present an excellent opportunity to connect with past or potential clients face-to-face, and UpMail enhances this by enabling strategic email communication at various stages of the event. Here are key types of tradeshow communications to consider:
Pre-Event Outreach: Send personalized invitations and detailed information about your presence at the tradeshow. This sets the stage for engagement and ensures that attendees know where to find you or to schedule a time to meet.
On-Site Engagement: Use UpMail to send real-time updates, exclusive offers, or dinner invitations to attendees you interact with at the event. This immediate interaction can strengthen relationships and maximize your impact.
Post-Event Follow-Up: Promptly follow up with attendees after the event to thank them for connecting and provide additional information or offers. This reinforces the connection and keeps the conversation going.
By creating templates for each of these stages, you can streamline your tradeshow communication process and ensure a consistent, professional approach.
4. Follow-Ups
Follow-ups, though simple in concept, are crucial for maintaining visibility and driving business forward. UpMail offers tools like automated reminders, scheduled emails, and follow-up templates to ensure you remain proactive and timely in your follow-up efforts. Consider using UpMail’s group email capabilities and creating templates for the following areas:
Sales Blitzes: Create templates for introductory emails, follow-up messages, and appointment scheduling to streamline your outreach.
Site Visits: Schedule and confirm site visits with clients or prospects to send detailed itineraries and post-visit follow-ups. Templates can ensure consistent communication and help manage logistics smoothly.
Networking Events: Create templates and send emails to invite contacts to events, share event details, and follow up afterward with personalized thank-you notes and next steps.
As you can see in all these scenarios, UpMail not only facilitates follow-up emails but can also manage every step throughout the process.
5. Invitations
When it comes to any kind of event invitations, UpMail streamlines communication from pre-event planning to post-event follow-ups. As you can see in all these scenarios, UpMail can contribute to every step throughout the event lifecycle. Here are the templates we recommend when using UpMail for events:
- Initial Invitation
- RSVP Reminder
- Event Reminder
- Post-Event Follow-up
> Click here to learn more about creating templates for the event lifecycle
6. Client Feedback
Once a meeting, event, or group booking has concluded, gathering feedback is an essential final step to ensure you stay attuned to your clients' needs and experiences. With UpMail, you can create templates to send feedback requests easily. We recommend keeping these templates simple, using an image with a call-to-action linking to a survey, or opting for a straightforward text-based email asking about their experience. Simplifying this final step in the booking process ensures your team will follow through, helping you maintain strong client relationships and continuously enhance your offerings.
7. Announcements
UpMail can be leveraged for making announcements, enabling your team to communicate important updates efficiently while keeping prospects, clients, and stakeholders informed. By using UpMail's group email capabilities, you can ensure that your personalized message reaches your entire audience quickly and effectively. Whether it’s a renovation, a new restaurant or amenity, or a company update, you can create professional, visually appealing templates that capture attention and convey your announcement clearly.
8. Promotions/Special Offers
When promoting a promotion or special offer, reaching a wide audience is key. UpMail facilitates running effective promotional campaigns, ensuring your message reaches your target audience efficiently. By crafting visually appealing templates that emphasize your promotions and include clear calls to action, you increase the likelihood of generating immediate responses. UpMail's tracking features provide real-time insights into campaign success metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement. This data empowers you to refine your strategies and optimize the impact of your promotions, effectively capturing audience interest and driving conversions.
By effectively leveraging UpMail for these business development activities, you can optimize your sales communication, boost prospect and client engagement, and attract more business to your hotel. If you’re unsure where to begin when creating new email templates, explore our Template Gallery for inspiration and practical starting points to generate ideas.