While the ultimate goal for your Revinate Post-Stay Surveys is to get the highest completion rate possible, you can’t do this if guests aren’t opening your emails. Here are the basic elements of a successful Post-Stay Surveys email campaign. With these tips, and your optimized survey questions, you can maximize your open and click rates to reach your completion rate goals.

1. Delivery Timing

We often get questions about delivery timing and its impact on open and click rates. Industry standard is 2-3 days after your guest checks out. But, we do not see a significant difference in open rates between those who send their review invitation at a different time. Feel free to test the different options to see if any changes have an impact on your open rates. Don’t wait too long! You want to capture the feedback while your guest’s memory of his or her stay is still fresh.

2. Subject Line

If you find that your open rate is well below average, you may want to consider your subject line. Here’s a guiding principle: Keep it simple, and aim for 40 characters or less. Though we have seen a variety of subject lines work, we have noticed that subject lines with promotional messaging have resulted in lower open rates as perceived marketing messaging can be off-putting.

3. Length of Email

You don’t want to write an essay in your request for feedback. Chances are, your guests will probably just scan the content. To optimize your click rates, you want your Call to Action (the link to your survey) to be easy to find. Your email can be as short as three sentences, a link, and a signature. Some potential points to consider:

• Thank the guest for choosing your hotel and express hope that he/she enjoyed the stay
• Ask your guest politely to leave feedback
• State the importance of feedback to your establishment

4. Personalization

Revinate’s Email Center has tools called merge tags that can help you deliver automatically personalized emails. These tags gather data from the Guest List like name and checkin/checkout date. It is important to gather accurate data in your Guest Lists, so that your emails reflect accurate guest information.

If you have your languages set up, your emails can also be personalized based on the guest’s country of origin. Click the “Translate” link to translate your email to one of 13 other languages. The platform also provides the original text for you to translate:

5. Reminder Emails

Feel free to set up reminder emails, set to go out a few days after the Invitation Email. Revinate’s platform will automatically send these emails out, only to guests who have not yet completed the survey (so there’s no need to worry that guests who have already completed the survey will get extra emails).

If you want to learn more about Revinate’s Post-Stay Surveys, email us at info@revinate.com.