monthly/seasonal emails?

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four at four forty four

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Do you send monthly or seasonal emails to guests that have stayed?
What sort of system, if any, do you use? Outlook, constant contact?
What works best? Any good response/bad response from guests?
 
absolutely! i did mine quarterly (except in summer - when i cranked things up more) the seaon in the area i was in (mid maine, small harbor where everything but the post office and the general store closed in late sept til may) was late spring, summer, very very early fall) that was it.
i say 'did' because i'm sadly not at 'my' b&b any more.
anyway, i did my own in publisher. i am not a fan of constant contact but you can sign up for a free trial if you want to do that route.
i did mine in a style that appealed to me. it should reflect you, your b&b and the great things about your area.
i had it tied in to my blog and also my website. and for sure a link to book a room online, tied into the online reservations. i always had some 'discount' or contest as part of the newsletter ... and the same guests were happy to take advantage and participate in those things over and over again.
if you do this, be absolutely certain that you pay attention to guest response. i had a sign up form that was a part of the online booking process asking if guests wanted to receive periodic emails and newsletters from me. i think there is a check box in webervations that says something like 'i added myself to your mailing list'. i also had a sign up sheet at the b&b.
within the emailing, i told guests to let me know if they didn't want to receive those emails again. and if they did, i pulled their email address out of there immediately, without sending an annoying 'sorry to see you go' email ... a pet peeve of mine. i also promised not to spam or share their email address, and i NEVER did ... not with anyone.
i also made the newsletter a part of the email. an attachment is a bad idea as it might be immediately flagged as spam and then unread.
i created a return email address that immediately told the guest what the email was and where it came from. for example '[email protected]'
i know there is more info buried somewhere in this forum if you have time to search.
good luck!
 
I send out a monthly newsletter to previous guests and have an option on our website for people to signup or opt out. I include all the area goings on and any specials packages that we might have available.
You'll probably want to compose your mailings in HTML so that you can include images and formatting.
I'm on a Mac, so struggled with something that would work well for mass mailings. I finally settled on Mac Mail. It is NOT the best for HTML mailings, but I found a work around.
EDA: To keep your guests emails private, ALWAYS send the email to yourself and Blind Courtesy Copy (BCC:) the guest list. I made the mistake of putting all the email addresses into the TO: box and got a few disgruntled replies.
 
I send monthly emails. Response is spotty. I use Constant Contact because their mail gets thru and mine does not. Funny thing is, every month I get at least one 'spam' report and this is from guests who have been receiving the email for months. They could just reply and say 'no thanks' but they hit the spam button instead. You do not want that with CC, they will require you to confirm every email address if you get too many spam reports against your account.
 
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