Crystal Rae
Email marketing is difficult to imagine without visuals and rich multimedia, so much so that visuals have become an integral part of email marketing. This fact is all the more applicable for the Travel industry. Traveling and tourism is a huge industry worldwide, and in 2019 the contribution of the US tour and Travel industry to the global economy was to the tune of 580.7 billion US dollars. Once pandemic recedes, this industry is likely to bounce back to even newer heights. As we inch closer towards reopening, start reaching out to your clientele to grab maximum opportunities after everyone is allowed to travel as they wish. Today we will explore how email marketing can help you make the most out of the upcoming traveling surge. Read my top five tips on leveraging visuals in emails for the travel industry based on best practices followed at my email marketing company:
Impact Of The Internet On Travel And Tourism industry
Earlier travel and tourism was promoted using travel magazines and tv shows; though there were limited sources, the information provided was mostly detailed, and people found them trustworthy. Since the Internet has become an inseparable part of our travelling experiences, the number of avenues to consume tourism-related information has increased exponentially. This is well reflected in the professional email examples available on the internet.
Back in the day, one watched an entire series of episodes on a travel destination before making up their mind, but now we see a few pictures and compare budgets. This translates to situations where some travelers take into account only dispersed information about destinations. With the help of email marketing, you can provide them with well-curated insights and handpicked tourist spots based on their preferences and budgets. Let us see how you can leverage visual email marketing to fill the gap between innumerable options and refined knowledge:
#1 Use Visuals As Storytelling Props In Your Email Template
We’re visual creatures, and when sending emails to market your traveling services, you should use graphics as storytelling props. The best way to get started with it is to understand what your customers seek from these experiences. Which aspects of your expertise will prove to be useful for them? What delights them? The humane side of your traveling services and the parts that will become memorable. Weave these aspects into your email templates using visuals, and you will surely delight your subscribers.
#2 Use Professional Photo And Videography
It is extremely necessary to use professional pictures and videos in your travel industry emails since using stock photography or accidentally sending the competitor’s material can invite serious problems. On the other hand, using professionally shot visuals allows you to focus on useful elements. What makes them even more favorable is that you can capture the shots that are in line with your marketing campaigns. This turns out to be a privilege when establishing yourself as a thought leader as you have complete control over every aspect, right from how they blend with your template’s color palette to how they complement the narration of your email copy. Like all professional email examples, you can see how the photograph complements the word “Grand” in the below example:
#3 Curate Images At Par With Social Media
Here’s the secret to making high engaging travel industry emails- use images that dance to social media tunes. Remember we talked about people accessing a lot of information from innumerable sources but miss on a specialized curation that helps decision-making? By using images that mimic social media and imparting in-depth knowledge, you can fill that void. This approach works exceptionally well for all travelling industry clients at our email marketing agency. You can turn this into an opportunity where your subscribers can rely on you to provide deep insights through emails like in the below example:
#4 Build Up On UGC Visuals
User-generated content is one of the most underrated approaches to email marketing, and I strongly suggest experimenting with UGC visuals for driving your email campaigns. This move will help you harness the benefits associated with social proof while giving a raw, authentic touch to your email campaigns. You can also motivate your subscribers to share their pictures and videos from their favorite tips and run contests to drive engagement. This will be a great move for your marketing initiatives apart from emails as well. Even our email marketing company leverages this method to stay relevant and keep ourselves updated for the ever evolving travel scenario.
#5 Keep Visual Hierarchy In Mind While Designing Travel Email Templates
Visual hierarchy in emails is what cinematography is to movies- it does the technical work which goes unnoticed unless done wrong. To make your messages visually attractive, it is recommended to keep principles like using thin and long fonts with luxury destinations, maintaining color contrast, image orientation, and relative positioning in mind. For instance, all your images from your newsletter should stick to a common theme, or else it will make your message look vague and disoriented. Campaign managers at our email marketing agency find that visual consistency plays an important role in keeping the reader hooked, as you can find in the below example:
Summing Up
Lastly, I would like to drop a few pieces of advice: Use alt text as a large percentage of people consume emails with images turned off by default, while email clients also strip off visuals in many cases. Alt text will make your emails more perceivable in such cases. Also, pay attention to image personalization as you set your automation workflows. This is an area where a lot of travel industry email marketing mistakes are made. Also, our email agency finds that email templates should always resemble your website to build trust. I hope this article boosts your understanding of using visuals in emails sent by the traveling industry.
Author Bio
Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing full service email marketing agency, that specializes in professional email template creation and PSD to HTML email conversion; they are Marketo certified experts. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.
