The Missing Piece of the Marketing Puzzle for Travel Advisors

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, email marketing is a necessary strategy for travel advisors seeking to connect with clients and drive sales. The power of email marketing lies in its ability to provide a direct line of communication with potential clients, offering a reliable and effective means to engage and convert leads.

Building a Direct Connection

Unlike social media platforms, where followers can be lost due to algorithm changes or outages, email lists are owned and managed by you. Meaning if Facebook shuts down your account and you lose all your followers, you don’t get those back. You always have email. By prioritizing the development of email lists, you cultivate a dedicated audience that has opted in to receive updates and offers.

When implementing an email marketing strategy, you need to be sure of a few requirements:

Credibility and Deliverability

When setting up email marketing, you need to remember to use a dedicated email marketing platform, such as MailerLite, to avoid being flagged as spam and to enhance deliverability. Email best practices now encourage the use of your own domain for email marketing, which not only bolsters credibility but also improves the chances of your emails reaching the inboxes of clients.

Compliance and Best Practices

Adhering to legal requirements, such as the CAN-SPAM Act, is crucial for maintaining trust and compliance in email marketing.  Part of this is making sure you have clear subject lines, a valid physical address and easy unsubscribe options in your emails. You must also get express permission to email someone with marketing material. Obtaining express permission through opt-in forms is essential to build a list of engaged subscribers.

Once you’re set up, what do you send?

Focus on planning email newsletters that offer valuable insights, travel tips and occasional offers. You should be sending valuable content that you find useful for your own travel to build your open and click-through rates. People do not always want to be sold in their inbox.

Sometimes you don’t need to re-create the wheel, either. If you have a post that does awesome on social media, use that as an email campaign too. Remember, most people don’t even see what you post. 

Linking to videos in emails can also enhance engagement. Take a screenshot of the video, link it to the post, and place it in your email as part of the newsletter. This directs your subscribers to your social channels as well.

Marketing is an ecosystem. It’s not really a choice of using social OR email — the best strategy is social AND email.