Summer months represent the peak season for companies in the travel and hospitality industries, especially as so many of us travel, take vacations, rent a car, and (hopefully) get the chance to unwind.

Yet marketing teams in these industries realize that the traditional holiday season also represents a significant opportunity to help them increase their “heads-in-beds” and other utilization metrics, and ultimately, maximize revenues. 

So if you’re looking for a little inspiration, or an idea to turbocharge your marketing efforts this year, here are some proven holiday email marketing tips, tricks, and best practices from two of the world’s leading travel and hospitality brands: Celebrity Cruises and Hertz. 

Celebrity Cruises increases revenues by 3X with email personalization

Celebrity Cruises recently needed a new approach to its standard emails in order to increase click-through rates, engagement metrics, and generate higher revenues. The brand also hoped to move away from using too many promotion-based emails—a standard approach in the industry—to further maximize profitability.

Celebrity Cruises partnered with Liveclicker to design and deploy highly personalized, highly engaging email campaigns for loyal guests, one of the company’s most profitable segments. The objective was to use each customers’ data in creative ways to relive their past experience or their overall journey as a loyal guest.

The emails accomplished this goal—and so much more.

For example, using innovative real-time personalization strategies, Celebrity Cruises’ marketing team came up with fun new ways to display significant milestones in each guest’s sail history. For example, different emails featured personalized content to highlight key details such as:

• The guest’s first name, which was rendered as a stylized image as the email was opened
• The number of ships the guest had sailed on
• The date the guest first sailed
• The number of cruises the guest had taken
• The number of nights the guest had cruised
• Three suggested regions to visit based on propensity-modeled data

By all accounts, the entire campaign was a success. Celebrity Cruise developed engaging emails its customers loved, and in doing so, generated revenues three times higher than its standard “business-as-usual” emails. 

Holiday marketing tip: Use customer information to personalize holiday email marketing campaigns in ways your audience may not expect. You’ll foster long-term relationships and create a first-class experience that is bound to pay off!

Hertz creates an engaging new experience

Hertz needed a better approach for its reservation confirmation emails. Specifically, the company was looking to delight its customers by providing as much helpful information into these emails as possible.

In working with Liveclicker, the Hertz marketing team realized that it could display maps and clickable directions that would help its customers find their specific rental locations to pick up their cars.

Hertz used an API link to a native map application to successfully automate the process of adding and updating maps on a regular basis. This new capability enabled Hertz to create dynamic reservation confirmation emails that included a map and detailed directions to the exact location. 

Additionally, to provide more information and deliver an even better experience, Hertz also incorporated weather details, forecasts, and local activities to help customers plan ahead. The brand even created a specific poll to ask interactive questions for follow-up emails. This capability helped Hertz quickly gather valuable feedback about customers’ rental experiences.

In addition, Hertz used Liveclicker’s LivePoll feature to ask interactive questions in follow-up emails. This capability helped the rental car companies quickly gather valuable feedback about customers’ rental experiences. 

These emails exceeded expectations. Not only did they increase click-through rates and reduce production times, but they generated impressive customer response.

Holiday marketing tip: Leave no stone unturned in your search to find new ways to communicate with customers and deliver engaging new experiences. Reservation confirmations and even order-tracking emails can now be used to communicate valuable information and continue to market your products or services.

All the holiday inspiration you need, all in one ebook

Looking for even more holiday email marketing ideas, you can download our new guide, “9 Solutions (With Real-Life Examples!) to Retailers’ Biggest Headaches,” now!