How to gain over 1,000 newsletter subscribers for free in a couple of weeks

According to international surveys, 98-99% of website visitors leave a website without booking. The most common reason for this is that many people simply do not go to the site for booking purposes, but only to find out or compare prices.

Even if they are not ready to book now, we already know that they are interested in the hotel, so it is important that we do not lose those interested.

The goal is to sign them up for the newsletter first, so that later, when they’re actually ready to book, we can reach them directly with our offers.

The challenge

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Royal Club Hotel Visegrád, like all other hotels, experienced lower booking rates than usual due to government restrictions.

Recognizing that they can’t substantially increase their website’s conversion rate for reasons beyond their control, they’ve set themselves a different goal for the period of low traffic:

1. To collect newsletter subscribers
2. To increase Club Card registrations that offers 10% discount, which can be used to encourage direct bookings in the future

The solution

HotelHood provides ready-made solutions for hotels on how to easily obtain newsletter subscribers through their own website.

There are several tools available for this, such as:
● Highlighting newsletter subscription on your website
● Providing discounts
● Offering prices subject to registration
● Offering free gifts and product samples
● Sweepstakes
● Interactive games (wheel of fortune, scratch card)

Wheel of fortune campaign

The Royal Club Hotel Visegrád chose the wheel of fortune as an interactive game for their website’s subscription tool. HotelHood’s wheel of fortune template allows visitors to subscribe to the newsletter in a fun and interactive way. By entering their email address, visitors are given the opportunity to spin the wheel of fortune and win one of the prizes offered.

This way it is not only fun to spin, but also particularly exciting in the hope of winning a prize.

Royal Club Hotel Visegrád offered a welcome drink, a free massage, a 1,000 HUF discount, a 5% discount, a club card discount or free accommodation for the lucky winners.

The chance of spinning out each winning field can be set manually within the system. This can also be used to control, for example, that each guest receives at least the lowest prize (eg the higher prize with 5% chance, the smaller one with 95% chance), so that the sign-up process is a very positive experience for them.

In the case of the Royal Club Hotel Visegrád, the campaign was set up like this, too. No subscribers were left without prizes. All of them received the club card discount which was the purpose of the campaign. This also strengthens the proportion of those who book directly with them to get 10% discount.

Additional campaign settings

Thanks to the fullscreen display of the wheel of fortune, we have ensured that all visitors see the prize draw with the following criteria:

1. They have spent at least 10 seconds on the website
2. If the system detects that the visitor wants to leave the site
3. The campaign was available from both desktop and mobile devices

The frequency of the campaign was set to appear to the same visitor up to 3 times, at least 1 hour between two impressions. This prevents the visitor from feeling irritated by the pop-up window.

The campaign has also been supplemented with an A / B test. In version “A”, clicking the close button left the game, but kept it available in the recommendation tab in the lower right corner of the page. This is the so-called minimized view:

In version “B”, the wheel of fortune disappeared completely from the side and could not be reopened. Of the two versions, test “A” achieved a better click-through rate with a conversion rate of 14.64%, while version “B” achieved 13.77%. In other words, some of those who closed the wheel of fortune at first, eventually reopened it and spun it.

Result

In the weeks of the campaign, despite reduced website traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic, the hotel managed to collect more than 1,000 new subscribers who are now eligible for the club card discount. The campaign appeared on the site a total of 7,170 times, and 1,030 of the visitors subscribed, so the conversion rate was above 14% on average. This means that every seventh visitor who saw the wheel of fortune pop-up participated in the game and signed up.

All this was done for the hotel free of charge thanks to the 30-day test period we offer. In other words, from zero investment, the hotel acquired 1,000 new subscribers who already know and actively look out for the hotel. Moreover, thanks to the 10% discount the club card offers, they will have an even better chance of booking them in the near future.

If you are also interested in how you can collect free new newsletter subscribers on your site, ask for a free consultation and we will share our best solutions with you.

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