Benefits of Push Notifications in Hotel Marketing

In an environment where e-mails frequently keep going directly to spam folders and people usually don’t spare the time to read them, how would hotels keep their customers engaged? How would they go on with their marketing efforts and reach out to the customers? The answer: Push Notifications.

The name “push” notification may sound a bit pushy at first but marketing practices reveal that they work. Apparently, users are 9.6 times more prone to making in-app purchases when they are engaged through push notifications and they spend 16% more when they do. Push notifications also seem to improve retention by 20%.

These facts alone translate into more revenue and improved customer loyalty. All the good reasons to take advantage of push notifications.

This doesn’t mean that a hotel should abandon all other marketing methods and focus on push notifications alone. Marketing is a comprehensive effort that needs to be omnichannel, planned meticulously and implemented carefully. But it’s obvious that push notifications can be an effective gear of a complete marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at the benefits of push notifications in hotel marketing.

Push Notifications Can Make Customers Hold on to Your App

Customers usually tend to think that they are done with a hotel’s mobile app when they leave the hotel. If we consider the usual way that a hotel app is used, this seems to be a natural outcome.

They stay at the hotel, use the app for anything they need throughout their stay. Sometimes they even check out the hotel’s mobile app after the booking and prior to their stay. But once they leave, the app stays inactive for a long time until they realize that it is not useful at some point and remove the app from their devices.

Push notifications are a good way to convince customers that the app is still useful. With a carefully planned and executed push notification marketing plan, you may reach out to them. We emphasize the word “careful” here because there is a thin line between reaching out to them and starting to annoy them. Therefore the frequency, the content and the occasions of push notifications must be fine-tuned.

Keep your notifications short and to the point. Let them become aware of the opportunities and offers which are available to them and if possible, keep the notifications as personalized as possible.

Push Notifications are Effective During All Stages of Guest Stay

It’s easy to mistakenly believe that push notifications are good for post-stay marketing but they are not. They are useful at all stages of the customer journey- in this case; guest stay. They can be an effective tool for cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

What’s an important rule in content marketing? Offering added value to the customer. You can even offer added value to your customers through push notifications by using them for informational purposes. You can provide them with brief information about your property, the surroundings and even about the major events during their stay. Be creative and try to reach out to them on occasions that you think it might catch their interest.

If transportation is a bit problematic in the area of your property you can even inform them about transportation options or even offer a lift for a reasonable price. A little bit of convenience on a holiday is what we are looking for after all isn’t it?

During the stay, push notifications can be a great tool to keep your guests informed. You can even cosy them up a bit. Spice the notification up with your delicious breakfast speciality when reminding them about breakfast time. Or let them know about your fun after dinner event when you are about to inform them about dinner hours. The possibilities are almost endless.

Push Notifications Can Emphasize Your Personalized Marketing

Personalization is the key factor in today’s marketing mentality. But not all your customers may be aware that you are implementing a personalized marketing strategy. Push notifications are a very useful tool to make them aware. And they are good for business too. Apparently, personalized push notifications are read by users up to a whopping 800%!

You can create push notifications triggered by specific user actions, or segment your customers and target them with tailor-made messages. Create triggers for your in-app actions and create personalized notifications. An 800% more engagement is sure to drive some increase in revenues.

Drive Loyalty Through Push Notifications

Do you observe a drop in your brand loyalty? You can take advantage of push notifications to drive the loyalty up. Offering loyalty packages and opportunities through push notifications seems like a good way to achieve it.

You shouldn’t also forget to personalize these notifications, too. Nothing too private or personal of course. Something “We hope you like our town in the summer. But you shouldn’t miss the winter festival in our town.” seems to be personalized and interesting enough if they have actually stayed in your hotel in summer and they are planning a winter holiday in a place they haven’t decided yet. Complete that with a loyalty package opportunity, and you are sure to have a new booking for the low season in winter.

How to Use Push Notifications Effectively?

We have already mentioned that marketing is a comprehensive effort and personalization is a big part of it. To be able to personalize all those push messages you need data! Detailed, well-curated and insatiably accumulated data is the key to personalized marketing. Well, there is also the issue of having a platform to be able to send those notifications.

A good branded guest engagement platform like WeBee is the key to both of those problems. A well-designed app can collect the data that you need to segment your customers and send those attractive notifications.