Airbnb Marketing Analysis- does anyone read their emails?
How many of us actually read all of our emails? I know I personally just multi click them and mark as unread, unless it’s discounts on Pizza.
According to Ben Oren email open rates are great indicators of the quality of your mailing list, subject line choice, time of sending, and even an under performing email service provider, but I’d say emails are only really opened if you’re interested in that company or anything its offering at that moment in time, the subject could be the most interesting line in the world but if you’re not interested then there’s no chance of a read.
I received an e-mail from Airbnb, I would normally ignore an email like this as I’m a poor student and I know I can’t afford to go on holiday, depressingly. This email had attractive photo’s of beautiful Cities; Paris, New York, Berlin and had a personal touch, with the heading ‘Where travellers like you go to escape, Here’s where travellers in Brighton go when they want to live elsewhere. Even if it’s just for a week‘. I appreciate personal touches in email’s, even though thousands of other people are being sent the same one with their name or where they are living on it, it definitely makes me want to read it more. This email didn’t have my name at the beginning which it probably could have done with to be more personal and to ensure they’re grabbing the reader’s attention immediately.
I want to visit every City in the world so if there was any email I would find the most interesting it would be one like this from a company like Airbnb. The photo’s are clear and beautiful, however, the layout is simple which could be viewed as boring. A lot of people would agree that there doesn’t need to be a lot of writing on an email, it is time consuming and doesn’t immediately capture the viewer. Airbnb have added a minimum amount of writing, just short snippets of the greatest parts of these Cities. A downside to the appearance of this email is that the writing is all in black and doesn’t capture the viewer immediately, it is put up against colorful, bright photo’s and this makes the writing look dull and may make the viewer not want to bother reading it. Although, I wanted to because I liked the photo’s and wanted to read more.
Each Photo in the email takes you to a landing page; where to book for each City. It immediately lets you choose dates, a price range, what kind of room you would like and the accommodation on the Airbnb website. A map of the City with the different affordable prices placed around is also immediately visible once clicking on a photo, allowing you to choose price and location, this technique of one click taking you to the affordable and appealing accommodation in a City of your choice will persuade someone to book straight away. There is also a personal aspect to the landing pages, if you are already a member to Airbnb it will take you to the page logged in to your account with your details, making it easy and accessible to book quickly. A link of things to do in the city is also include in this page, another technique to ensure the viewer is seeing all the great parts of the City to ensure they are persuaded to book a room. Each page could have accessible to links to viewing the Airbnb’s available in other Cities as the viewer could then see the others if they change their mind and would not have to return to the email to do so, this accessibility would simply make it easier for the viewer to navigate the web pages.
This email caught my eye because it interests me and in retrospect I am glad I actually opened one of my emails. It showed me what Airbnb has to offer and also exactly what I would send out to customers if I am ever in charge of the emailing.
References:
Oren, B. (2016) 9 ways to fix your Email marketing strategy | SEJ. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/goodbye-spam-hello-inbox-9-ways-fix-email-marketing-strategy/147594/ (Accessed: 4 November 2016).