Boutique hotel group Kimpton Hotels kicks off its annual winter promotion with 15 percent off e-mail coupons at all Kimpton Hotels through February.
In addition to the e-mail promotion, later this month Kimpton will be sending the Kimpton Style catalog along with reminder e-mails to promote for the holiday season.
“We have seen a very high amount of incremental revenue driven through our e-mail marketing channel,” said Renee Will George, director of strategic marketing and CRM at Kimpton Hotels, San Francisco. “It has been a great means for us to target guests with the right promotion at the right time at a relatively low cost.”
Kimpton Hotels is chain of 40 small boutique hotels, most of which are inspired by vineyards. Kimpton sends regular e-mail statements and newsletters to members of its Kimpton InTouch loyalty program to communicate hotel openings and promotions, as well as to get customer feedback.
All of its e-mail addresses come through customers opting in. Customers considering the messages as spam would be unlikely, said Ms. Will George.
Kimpton works with various e-mail vendors to get its message out, including iPost, Novato, CA, who powers its e-mail marketing technology. In addition Kimpton also works with customer marketing agency rDialogue, Atlanta. All of the Kimpton InTouch and other guest profiles are stored in its customer retention management system, GuestWare in Seattle.
Other promotions that Kimpton is currently running are promotions for new properties, including 15 percent off best available rate at the Nine Zero Hotel in Boston and the Hotel Palomar in Washington.
Strategies for 2007 include sending out versioned promotions based on what the hotel knows about a guest. For example, a male customer who lives in San Francisco, travels frequently to Boston, and has identified himself as eco-friendly may get an entirely different set of promotions and news than female customer who travels primarily in the Pacific Northwest and who always travels with her pet.
“One of the exciting things we are working on is really increasing the relevancy of each e-mail that we send to our guests,” Ms. Will George said. “We take huge pride in the genuineness and personalized experience that our guests experience at our hotels. Therefore, it would be inconsistent of us to then blast our guests with a one-size-fits-all promotion.”
