3 Big Hospitality Email Marketing Questions Answered

When we welcome new customers to Stampede and show them the marketing feature, there are often 3 big questions when it comes to sending times and frequency. So, we’ve gathered these 3 common email marketing questions together and grilled our own marketing team for some answers to share with you.

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1. When is the best time to send an email campaign?

No doubt, the right timing has a big impact on the success of your email campaigns. Research shows that the best sending time for the hospitality industry is between 8 and 10am, whereas marketing emails get the highest results at 4pm. Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all time for best email performance. It’ll be specific to your industry, business and customers.

A good starting point is to look into your social media stats to find out when your customers are online and engaging with your content. Historic email data, especially your open rates, also give you a hint on which times usually work best for you.

Around 75% of consumers will access their emails on their phones. Think about when your customers might check their inbox during the day and are most likely to have time to read it. This will probably be at times before work, during their lunch break and after work/late evening. However, the right time also depends on the customer demographic, e.g. families have different daily habits than business people. 

The actual email content matters as well. Your longer monthly newsletter is something your customers can read after work or even during the weekend. Whereas your short and punchy lunch offers will ideally land in their inbox around the time people start thinking about where to go for food.

2. Which day is the best to send emails?

Statistics show that Tuesday and Thursday are in general the best performing days of the week for emails. 

However, always consider your content and its relevance. Are you trying to fill in empty tables due to cancellations? Or are you trying to promote any upcoming events in the next month? Regardless, you should always send time-sensitive offers based on their own timeline before considering overall industry best practices (ideally within your ideal time slots). 

And again, dive into your own data and compare different weekdays to the weekends to see where you can get the best responses. You can also start your own A/B test and experiment with different days. Social media analytics will also provide you with the days of the week.

There’s only one golden rule for days: avoid public holidays if you can.

3. How many times a month is considered the optimum for emailing customers?

The important bit here is to be consistent and to come up with your own schedule. If you do it randomly, you might end up sending too many or not enough. Watch out for increasing opt-out rates, this is a sign of emailing too frequently. And always bear in mind, only send out emails that provide value to your customers and not just because it’s time to send one.

Your loyal customers especially will appreciate tailored offers and updates coming through on a more regular basis. They’re highly engaged and want to hear from you.

Your schedule could be weekly, bi-weekly or only monthly. You could, for example, do a monthly newsletter recap about your company and send out emails with offers in between whenever relevant.

Need a hand with sending your emails to your customers? Or got more questions around email marketing? Get in touch with our team.