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Sharing guest contact info between hostels for marketing

Internet Marketing

Rucksack Brian started this discussion 11 years 1 month ago

We were recently asked about the concept of sharing guests’ email addresses between hostels for marketing purposes. By submitting their contact information guests could receive exclusive deals, special offers, discounts, promotions, etc. from multiple hostels.

What do you guys think? Would you be interested in marketing your hostel to a collective pool of travelers who are willing to be emailed?

You know your guests. Do you think your guests would be willing to participate? What kind of marketing or information do you think they would want to receive?

Obviously some considerations would need to be made for a marketing effort like this. For example:

Guest must provide their email address and opt-in to receive emails from other hostels
Regional marketing zones could be established to ensure relevance to the guest (selected by the guest)
Time limits could be established for marketing so that guests can choose to stop receiving emails after their trip is finished

What other considerations would you suggest in order to make this kind of email marketing successful for hostels and both beneficial and unobtrusive for travelers?

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John Moriarty

11 years

This is interesting.

Now I think it would be better to group together and create a type of newsletter from a group of hostels within a travel area rather than every hostel e-mailing the customer.

At the moment I e-mail customers to their addresses I get from their booking so I don't necessarily ask them or get them to opt in to emails from me which obviously for this I would then need to do this.

I wonder if there was just some code at the end of our emails saying would you like to get newsletters for offers on other hostels within Europe it might be good.

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Josh Hostels

11 years

I think it's a good idea, especially if the email is sent out by a group with a dedicated content editor and not by individual hostels. Some hostels tend to get very enthusiastic with their newsletters and it could get spammy. :)

Check out Mailchimp.com for newsletter software -- it's free for up to 2,000 subscribers. Using software like that makes complying with spam laws easier. Emails are stored in one location and it only takes one click to unsubscribe.

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

Dennis from XHostel had this to say outside of the Forum:

I never read unsolicited emails, even if the offer is great. I do however search around for the same offer, so you could make a site and a corresponding newsletter

Plenty of pms move emails into a csv file for marketing newsletters like mailchimp. its been going on since the start of the booking engines

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