Following the top email marketing trends for 2024 provides the latest techniques for engaging guests and getting the most out of your email communications. As an essential part of digital marketing for hotels, emails have the power to nurture guest relationships, generate new leads, and drive repeat business.

To compete in this ever-changing, competitive channel, you’ll need not only to master the basics, but to also keep in touch with industry trends, new technology and well, everyone else.

Explore our list of 2024 email marketing trends below and learn strategies to help improve your overall hotel email marketing performance.

1. FOCUS MORE ON EMAIL CONTENT & MESSAGING

Providing engaging, interesting email content continues to be a top marketing trend in 2024. With nearly 90% of businesses communicating with customers via email, the content must be well executed to stand out amongst the crowd. New for 2024 is a focus on customers’ needs, including accessibility considerations.

Enhanced software functionality allows hotel marketers to embed a variety of elements in emails to create more compelling content experiences, and accessible templates promise every reader will get the message. Review your email framework to make sure it supports different tactics, and employ A/B testing to find the content that resonates with your audience most to drive engagement and bookings.

Accessibility

Making content easy to read for everyone in your send list is a top trend for 2024. Many email subscribers rely on screen readers and other tools to help translate messages. Make sure the email follows a logical order and includes headers so virtual assistants and screen readers can navigate the content. Color contrast is vital for readability, so choose your palette wisely. Use alt text, video transcripts, and descriptive link text to make information in images or infographics accessible to all.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a marketing trend that continues in 2024 and offers readers an emotional connection by presenting a persona (a hero or character), a problem, and a solution told through an impactful narrative customers can relate to. Expect storytelling to include visuals—infographics, video, photos—more in 2024 than in previous years. Whether this is a single, long-bodied email or a drip campaign series, the payoff of the storytelling tactic is a more engaged audience.

User-Generated Content

When you need to fill a content gap or you’re looking for something new to refresh your email marketing, turn to user-generated content (UGC).

This approach reuses customer photos, testimonials, or reviews in your emails (with their permission). Messages that feature UGC often resonate with guests because of the authenticity and personal voice they offer.

Interactive Email Content

The hot trend of embedding interactive content into your sends will continue in 2024. Boring, text-heavy emails are out, and engaging content with rollover effects and animated buttons is in. When subscribers engage with text or image elements directly in the body of the email, they are more likely to click through to a website.

Examples of interactive content for a hotel might include an image carousel showing off a resort destination, a video about a new service you offer, or a poll for guests to choose their favorite amenity during their stay. 

2. USE EMAIL TEMPLATES

The days of coding emails from scratch are over and the trend of using templates is (and has been) here—with new features to boot. Your software’s design library likely provides a shortcut to achieving a consistent on-brand look without requiring technical expertise.

Whether you’re creating an email campaign or an individual message, a drag-and-drop interface makes rearranging and modifying templates simple. Best practices are built in, so your email is automatically responsive, images are optimized, and accessibility features like alternate image text are in place. If your CRM doesn’t offer a drag-and-drop builder, opt for pre-built responsive templates, instead.

3. PERSONALIZE EMAILS WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Message personalization isn’t new, but using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to customize email marketing for hotels is one of the top emerging email marketing trends for 2024. Instead of creating generic content for a large audience segment, marketers can use generative AI tools to fine-tune the copy and content to appeal to smaller audiences. These tools can use past shopping behavior and customer personas to recommend products and services that are on point—improving subscriber satisfaction.

While email programs have long assisted hotel marketers in marrying data with a subscriber list to inform campaign strategies, AI can complete these tasks quickly and accurately. Here are a few ways marketers will use AI in 2024 to create a more personalized, engaging email experience for customers:

• Sophisticated Segmentation: AI can identify shopper characteristics and behaviors, plus past shopping trends to create specific user groups more efficiently than humans; it can also clean up the list based on response rates.
• Automated Emails: AI can help create an automatic workflow to send messages to customers throughout their guest journey, from pre-arrival to post-stay; it can also reply to common customer queries with automatic responses using natural language.
• Predictive Analytics: Instead of relying on data to schedule email distribution, AI-powered predictions for variables such as the optimal send time and audience behavior, including unsubscribing or purchasing, help marketers target the right customers at the right time.
• A/B Testing: Artificial intelligence can take some of the workload for A/B testing off marketers’ plates by suggesting email subject lines and content or send times for different audiences; the AI tools can even analyze and recap the success of the tests.

4. PRIORITIZE EMAIL SECURITY

Improved security and email verification measures are marketing trends for 2024. Google and Yahoo! (with other providers to follow) have made authentication mandatory for bulk email senders. This transition of authentication best practices into requirements will demand many email marketers to review their authentication methods and make updates to remain (or become) compliant. Email Authentication, validating the sender of an email message, should lead to less spam in recipients’ inboxes and improved security, which can benefit marketers with better engagement. 

These new email security trends for 2024 require marketers to pay close attention to these three areas:

• Email Authentication: Setting up domain authentication to prevent cyber attackers from impersonating brands with email spoofing and phishing scams.
• Unsubscribe Methods: Bulk senders must provide the option to unsubscribe in one click and marketers must process the request in two days.
• Spam Rates: Google will monitor spam complaint rates and penalize bulk senders who exceed the threshold.

5. MOBILE-FIRST EMAIL OPTIMIZATION

Optimizing emails for mobile devices over desktops is a trend all marketers should be following in 2024. Most—as in 85% of smartphone users—check email on their mobile devices. Using responsive templates ensures your messages render correctly on the smallest screen and adjust to fit any device or orientation. Follow these tips to make sure the elements of your emails are viewable on every phone or computer:

• Keep the subject line limited to around 30 characters so it shows in full on a small screen.
• Take advantage of pre-header text to entice readers to open your email.
• Break copy into consumable chunks so it’s easy to digest on a small device.
• Include white space between links and buttons for more manageable clicking.
• Utilize buttons over text links to offer more clickable real estate.

6. MONITOR EMAIL PERFORMANCE

Despite Apple mail privacy settings making open rates unreliable, email monitoring remains a trend for 2024. Data-led decision-making has seen widespread use now that businesses have easier access to comprehensive reporting tools that break down complex metrics into digestible reports. 

To combat any tracking challenges from privacy updates, measure engagement through clicks and click-through rates, monitor the health of your list with subscribers and bounce rates, and use booking revenue to make sure you’re working toward achieving your goals. Remember to add spam complaint rates to the metrics you follow so you comply with Google’s bulk sender rules.

Email Marketing FAQs

Is email marketing still effective? 

Yes, email is still one of the most effective marketing channels for businesses. It is an economical way to reach customers using targeted messaging to increase brand awareness and drive revenue. Email users are expected to nearly reach 4.5 billion in 2024, so marketing to this growing audience will remain an essential tactic for businesses.

What are the best email marketing tools?

Many businesses are doing more with less staff in 2024, so having email tools that create audience segments and make it easy to send targeted, automated campaigns are must-have tools for 2024. Hotels should begin with a reliable CRM that can manage customer interactions and improve the effectiveness of campaigns through personalized messaging and timely lead-nurturing.

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Ready to see positive results from your hotel marketing emails? Contact us for a free email marketing evaluation.