Increase sales with your CRM and marketing automation

Pairing a CRM with marketing automation lets hospitality venues save time, build loyalty and grow sales.

Marketing automation works well on its own. Back it with a customer relationship management (CRM) system and hospitality businesses can grow both revenue and customer loyalty.

The pairing creates real opportunities to engage and retain customers, drive conversions and improve profit margins. Here is what marketing automation fuelled by a CRM means in practice, with best practices and real examples.

What is marketing automation

Marketing automation is a tool for businesses to organise their marketing and communicate with customers using personalisation and targeted messaging.

The driver behind it is customer data, collected and stored in the CRM. Many CRMs now include automation features, which makes campaigns easier to manage and track. Emails and SMS go out automatically on pre-defined triggers, such as a customer characteristic or an interaction.

Automation also saves staff time and reduces the risk of human error.

Trigger-based campaign examples

Campaigns hospitality venues should consider:

• New newsletter subscribers: a simple welcome message drives engagement and encourages a revisit

• Win-back for lost customers: bring them back with a special deal

• Birthday offer: shows customers you value them and strengthens the relationship

• Review requests: an automated post-visit email keeps guest feedback flowing

The customer data each campaign needs can be pulled from the CRM through segmentation. In Stampede these are workflows: trigger-based emails and SMS that run themselves once you set them up.

4 reasons to use marketing automation

1. Long-term loyalty. Personalised, targeted content nurtures customers. Messages that match a customer's interests make them feel valued.

2. Better conversion. Personalised emails are more relevant than generic ones, so they convert better.

3. More sales opportunities. Automation surfaces upsell opportunities from historic customer interactions, in-venue and online.

4. Time. Once the setup is done, campaigns run automatically and your team can focus elsewhere in the business.

Best practice tips

To be effective, automation needs a few habits:

• Combine data sources. Pull data from your tech tools into the CRM: guest Wi-Fi, a loyalty scheme and a table booking platform together build a complete customer profile.

• Segment the data. Split customers into distinct groups, and use the pre-defined segments your CRM provides to make it quicker.

• Check your triggers. Review them regularly so the automation still works and customers receive relevant, timely messages.

How hospitality operators succeed with automation

Real examples from hospitality businesses using a CRM to automate their marketing:

• Bar Tonic saw strong results from automated birthday emails offering a martini on the house, generating over £10,000 in return visits.

• Signature Pub Group automated their review request emails and collected more than 12,000 reviews in a short period.

• Birdhouse London saves two hours per week since implementing automation.

Put a CRM to work

Automation earns its keep when it runs on real guest data. To see CRM, segmentation and automated campaigns in one place, book a demo of Stampede.