With booking abandonment rates as high as 81% (at least) in the travel industry, the issue is perhaps one of the top problems travel brands face daily. SaleCycle, a remarketing specialist lists three email tips to recover lost travel bookings.
Here, 'booking abandonment' is the process where a user searches for a travel product, goes all the way upto booking/payment page, but drops off without converting.
Abandoned online bookings (across all industries) are estimated to be worth $3 trillion in 2014.
SaleCycle analyzed about 100 global travel brands (including Millennium Hotels, P&O Ferries and Hertz) to understand their email conversion parameters.
Below is a summary of three tips from the company to effectively leverage email marketing to boost travel bookings:
1. Best time to send the remarketing mail: Emails sent within 30 minutes from booking abandon time gets the highest conversion rate. This rate falls down by 51% if the email is sent after 24 hours.
2. Best subject line: Emails with 'booking details' mentioned in the subject line scores the highest open rate. Other best open rate parameters include - Company name (travel brand), and sense of urgency tone.
3. Best email content: Among the various fields such as booking details, recommendation, promotional ad, social links present in an email, the section that gets the highest clickthrough is - "Complete your booking" button.
Below is the detailed infographic, click on it to view in high-resolution:
NB: Email image via Shutterstock.