Travel Agency Tribes Email Marketing

You will never build a business relationship until you master the art of earning trust from your potential customer. Every contact you make using your email should aim to achieve two things – build trust and sell your products.

In this guide, we have created best practice principles that you can use on your emails to not only gain your customers’ trust but also build lasting relationships.

Types of Emails that Build Trust

Handshake Emails

Also referred to as ‘welcoming email’, a handshake email introduces your business to your customer. It should always be short, warm and inviting. Do not forget to ask the recipients to add you to their address book so that your emails are not marked as spam.

Notification Emails

These are also called alert emails. They are sent to notify the recipients of new deals, potential dangers to the business, new technologies to help the business etc. You can, for example, send your email/newsletter recipients a weather alert email.

Newsletter Emails

The purpose of newsletter emails is not to sell products but to educate your travel clients. You can use the newsletter to inform your customers of upcoming events, recent changes in the industry etc. Newsletters should be sent on a regular basis.

Apology Emails

Did you make a mistake such as sending an email with a broken link or the wrong deal? You can build trust by admitting you were wrong in an apology email. In the email, show the client the steps you have made so that the mistake doesn’t recur.

Handout Emails

These are educational emails where you send free expert articles, videos, and infographics to your email list. The handout emails will establish your expertise in your travel niche, hence build trust between you and your email recipients.

No-Strings-Attached Emails

Sometimes you just need to make your email recipients feel appreciated. You can, for example, send them a thank you email for not marking your emails as spam. You can announce free consultations and memberships using this type of email.

Email Best Practices to Help You Build Trust

Sender Identity

One of the easiest ways to establish trust is to clearly indicate from whom the email is coming from. Customize your email campaign template to have a “from” section that clearly indicates your name, organization, and brand. Your email campaign template should avoid generics such as “sender” and “noreply”.

Seek Permission First

Before you send out your email campaign, you need to seek permission from the recipients. According to MailChimp, people are likely to label your email campaign as spam if you didn’t seek their permission to send emails to them.

Follow Through on Your Promises

If your email promises budget trips, then ensure the content of your email delivers exactly that. Staying true to your words earns you the reputation of reliability and trustworthiness.

Be Respectful to the Customer

When you have conversations with a person face to face, you are always polite. Rude people are very dislikable. You cannot, for example, ask somebody to “buy right now” when all they were doing is enquiring about the products and services. The tone of your emails should be as polite as face to face conversations.

Personalize the Email

Generic emails almost always do not have the contextual experience of all of the people on your emailing list. In order to build lasting relationships based on trust, you must go the extra mile to get the customer data in order to personalize your email’s content. In short, your email should help individual customers solve their individual problems.

Never Hype Your Content with Misleading Titles

The fastest way to kill trust is to over-promise using the title and under-deliver in the content. In order to build long term relationships, you have to deliver what you promise.

In Summary:

Customers will view your email as spam if;

• It looks like spam e.g. by overhyping your title
• You send emails they don’t want or expect
• Your email contains broken links
• You don’t have an easy way to unsubscribe. Trust the readers to report you as spam if they can’t unsubscribe easily.