The Email Wars

There have been some great email makeovers recently. They always grab my attention as I think we become so conditioned to emails that rarely adapt or change that we actually turn our response mechanisms off to them. So some new creative takes me by surprise in a good way.

I wanted to share the changes that Hotel Indigo recently took and talk through how they might help them drive more conversion.

The prior emails were always fun and focus on a Haiku but the real estate was poorly used above the fold to really give people they want in exposing them to hotel locations and deals to make some impulse reservation planning. When people are in market they want to be provided with visual choices and not simply a photo of one location that might not be relevant.

There was good placement of the 1-800 number which I always find to be good with travel as people still like to call and talk to someone when they are making a reservation at a new location. But with all the locations listed in a simple text menu there is not phsycological connection to the physical place itself. Call me old fashioned but I like to see where I might lay my head down at night. Photos with travel and hotel email do more for me. With other travel (like airlines and destination travel) emails seeing a city shot might work, but when dealing with hotels lets share some of the hotel itself.

The new layout does a much better job of reducing the header image while still having the city shot (hero shot) and the copy. But with the text location menu moving down the left hand side and actual room and location photos, information and ways to see what each offers is much better for me to make a decision and explore. Missing from this new layout (which might be their strategy) is pricing/deal information. If you look at many other hotel emails you will see that they incorporate costs or deals with the location information – which I always feel helps me to make decisions with more knowledge.

Overall the change is a good one. Looking for better use of pre-headers, discounts, costs and other decision making information would make this a home run. But remember all of this review is written without any true knowledge of the metrics and performance of this email. It may or may not be out performing the old one, I don’t have that info. But as a whole I enjoy the changes and like to see how they have made the changes that only add to the presentation of the options we have to select from.