10 ways to improve your airport’s seasonal marketing emails

Are you making the most of the seasons in your airport marketing campaigns?

While it’s great to market your flights, hotel and holiday booking service all year round, you’ll know there are peak times when customers are most likely to be planning travel, which tend to be the same year-in-year-out. Planning to ensure your airport marketing campaigns are ready for these peak times is crucial. Target the right customer, with the right travel product, at the right time, and the revenue will soon start rolling in.

Email marketing for airports

Today there are many ways your airport can reach out to and engage with its customers during peak seasons. While TV and radio still have their places in the ‘marketing mix,’ more and more companies are now pooling their budgets and efforts into digital marketing instead. And it’s a wise move to make.

Digital marketing, which incorporates everything from social media and influencer marketing to SEO and PPC, all serve a multitude of benefits for airports. But when it comes to ROI, you simply can’t beat email marketing.

Yes, even in 2022, the humble email is still considered one of the very best ways to market to customers. In fact, email marketing achieves a whopping $42 for every $1 spent. And when it comes to seasonal marketing campaigns, it makes sense to spend more time, money and effort on the platform that will guarantee the highest return.

To help you get your airport’s seasonal marketing emails off to a good start, we’ve put together a list of top tips from the airport marketing experts at Rezcomm. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to it…

1.   Plan your seasonal email marketing campaign in advance

 Don’t leave creating your airport’s seasonal marketing emails until the last minute. We know that January is one of the peak holiday booking periods, so it’s worth ensuring you have a campaign ready to go. The same goes for the run-up to Valentine’s Day, when people are likely booking romantic breaks, or the summer holidays, when people might be booking a last-minute getaway. Mark all of the peak booking periods and holidays on a calendar and plan your seasonal email marketing campaigns accordingly.

It’s also worth noting key shopping days like Black Friday and ensuring you have email marketing campaigns ready to deliver exciting offers on flights, holidays and hotels to customers.

2.   Create personalised travel marketing emails

 Sending personalised airport marketing emails will improve your customer experience by ensuring customers only receive content and offers that are interesting and relevant to them. In addition, 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalised experiences, so it’s well worth delivering this within your seasonal marketing emails.

Make sure your seasonal marketing emails are exciting and full of helpful information, or customers won’t engage with them. Remember, the average customer attention span is just 11.1 seconds, so your content needs to be captivating to keep those conversions on track!

Use previous booking data, analytics and AI to predict consumer behaviour and identify the destinations and travel products your customers are most likely interested in. Then, use this information to personalise your seasonal marketing emails, sharing the right destinations with the right customers at the right time.

3.   Design a marketing email that reflects the seasonal theme

Remember that if customers open your airport’s marketing email, there’s only a tiny window of opportunity to deliver the message to the customer. Therefore, your seasonal marketing email must have visual appeal, including images, GIFs and colours that attract and retain the customer’s attention.

If you’re designing an email campaign around a particular travel or holiday season, it’s a good idea to make it obvious what you’re promoting. For example, a marketing email featuring a Valentine’s Day travel guide should feature romantic photos of couples in beautiful destinations and perhaps a red or pink colour scheme, as these are the colours commonly associated with love. Likewise, a seasonal email promoting Christmas Market holidays might include images and graphics featuring baubles, festive lights, stockings, gifts and even Father Christmas himself.

With the Rezcomm Drag-and-Drop Email Builder, it’s easy to design professional-looking seasonal marketing emails quickly. Create or use a pre-existing template, upload your photos, GIFs and written content and optimise your emails with call-to-action buttons linking to relevant landing pages on your airport ecommerce website.

4.   Include a seasonal offer or discount

Exclusive travel discounts and promotions will help your airport’s seasonal marketing email stand out in a crowded inbox. Use your data to create personalised offers that customers can’t resist. Ensure any promotions are time sensitive, so they’re encouraged to book there and then.

Consider how you can make seasonal offers and discounts more exciting to customers—for example, creating an ‘advent calendar’ campaign, where you share a different deal every day in December. Encourage email subscribers to share your campaign to extend its reach with referral discounts and think about offering exclusive rewards for loyal customers to keep them spending with your airport.

5.   Send your airport’s seasonal emails at the right time

Sending seasonal email marketing campaigns when customers are most likely to book with your airport is crucial. Think about email send times from a logistical point of view, i.e., when you’d like people to book. But also look at what your data is telling you about your customers. When are they most likely to open, click through and engage with your airport marketing emails?

Schedule your airport marketing emails to land in customers’ inboxes at the optimal time with Rezcomm’s Email Sending Service. And don’t forget to continually test different seasonal email marketing send times to maximise conversions.

6.   Segment your airport email subcribers for seasonal emails

The success of your airport’s seasonal marketing campaign depends on customer segmentation. By segmenting your email subscribers according to shared attributes, behaviours and previous purchases, you can send better-targeted emails that generate a higher return on investment.

Here are some of the ways you might segment customers:

• Loyal customers
• New customers
• Different genders
• Single people
• Couples
• Families
• By location
• Specific age groups
• Business travellers
• Leisure travellers
• Luxury travellers
• Last-minute bookers
• Customers who book city breaks
• Customers who book all-inclusive
• Customers that only book with a discount or offer
• Customers who only browse, not book

And the list goes on!

Create seasonal emails that engage with the different segments of your customer base. Segmentation is a proven marketing strategy that leads to higher click-through rates and conversions while offering real value to customers.

7.   Automate abandoned cart workflows

We highly recommend automating your airport’s email marketing campaigns to save time, particularly during busy holidays. Rezcomm’s automated Email Sending Service enables airports to deliver hyper-personalised emails at scale. Customise your workflow to engage with customers throughout the buying journey to keep them on track to book with your airport.

One of the most important emails to automate is the abandoned cart email. If a customer adds flights or another travel product to their basket but fails to complete the purchase, an abandoned cart email will remind them to. In addition, including personalised dynamic content, such as ‘other products you might be interested in’ or a small discount, may incentivise customers to re-visit your airport ecommerce website to complete their purchase.

8.   Consider what might affect the success of your seasonal campaigns

It might sound trivial, but the weather can hugely impact seasonal travel marketing campaigns. For instance, if you’ve created a seasonal email marketing campaign for ski holidays, and there’s a projected lack of snow, it’s unlikely to attract the bookings it should.

Keep an eye on the weather and current news and events, and consider how they might influence people’s travel plans. Then, have ‘back up’ campaign ideas ready to run.

9.   Make your seasonal travel emails stand out

Did you know the average office worker receives a whopping 121 emails per day? That’s stiff competition for your seasonal travel marketing emails, so you must ensure they stand out in a busy inbox.

Our first tip is to write an email subject line that they can’t ignore, harnessing the power of ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) to increase open and click-through rates. And keep it short and snappy. Email subject lines with 6 to 10 words deliver the highest opening rate, and featuring the customer’s name can increase open rates by as much as 60%!

As well as personalising email content for customers, it’s wise to build their trust with user-generated content. According to statistics from Stackla, 60% of consumers are influenced by user-generated content before making travel plans.

Start by collecting content like Instagram holiday snaps, Tik Tok videos and written reviews from your customers. Then, use them in your seasonal marketing campaigns to encourage other customers to book directly with your airport and enjoy the same fantastic experience.

10.   Synchronise your multi-channel travel marketing campaigns

While we champion email marketing for airports, we recognise that a multi-channel marketing approach is the best way to engage with customers and get them to spend money with your airport. Synchronising your seasonal email marketing campaign with your airport’s social media content, blog content, and paid advertising is essential. Share a consistent message across all channels and use each platform to drive targeted traffic to dedicated landing pages designed to convert visitors into paying customers.

Get your airport’s seasonal marketing emails ready for take off with Rezcomm

So there we have 10 ways you can improve your airport’s seasonal email marketing campaigns and drive even more revenue during the holidays, peak booking periods and key shopping days.

Take your airport email marketing strategy to the next level with Rezcomm. Download our brochure to learn more about our industry-leading marketing modules, and book a meeting with our team to discover how we can drive more revenue from your airport marketing campaigns.