EMAIL
Hutton Hotel blends video and email to
flaunt its boutique amenities
Client: Hutton Hotel
Vendor: Spectrio
Objective: Gain awareness of
boutique hotel’s events space
and promote its brand through
an email marketing campaign
By Dianna Dilworth
The Hutton Hotel, a three-year- old boutique hotel in Nashville, Tenn., wanted to get the word
out about its 14,000-square-foot-events
space. “As a relatively new hotel, we
wanted to make sure that people knew
that not only could they stay with us,
but that we also have the space to do
weddings and meetings,” says Lisa
Bush, director of sales and marketing,
at the Hutton Hotel.
“As an independent luxury hotel, we
don’t have the mass appeal of a large
brand so we have to find unique opportunities to promote our brand in a
new way,” Bush says.
says. “All I had to do was give Spectrio
the video,” she adds.
The email included the video—a
mixture of footage, still photos, music,
and narration—as well as two calls-to-action: “For Events Space” and “For
Reservations - Book Now.” All of the
content linked back to event pages on
Hutton’s website, which showcased
the various possibilities for events that
could be held at the hotel.
“They provided us with their own
unique video,” says Marissa Allen,
principal and chief brand and strategy
officer at Spectrio. “We worked with
them to come up with brand consis-
tency and highlight the services that
they were trying to show off for this
specific campaign.”
Although Hutton Hotel had already
created the video, Spectrio can pro-
duce one from scratch or graphically
enhance existing footage. Allen adds
that Spectrio’s platform can address
deliverability issues sometimes associ-
ated with emails that contain video.
“Our technology supports video,” she
says. “It is really seamless. The video
plays automatically in the inbox, so
that it is easy for the end users.”
The hotel sent the email to about
15,000 email addresses from Hutton
An email campaign featuring
video of Hutton
Hotel’s event
space had a
20% open rate
Hotel’s database, mostly from previous hotel guests.
STRATEGY: Earlier this year the
marketing team at Hutton Hotel
created a short video tour of the hotel’s events space. The video touted
the events space, highlighting its cocktails, ornate dinners, weddings, and
conferences. Spectrio, an audio and
video marketing company, used the
video as the basis for an email marketing campaign that began May 1.
“It seemed like a new way to approach our customer base and expose
our brand in a unique way,” Bush
Growth in numbers
169M
➜ Expected number
of online video viewers
this year—eMarketer,
U.S. Digital Media
Usage: A Snapshot
of 2012
7.7%
➜ Hotel demand
in Nashville, Tenn.,
predicted growth in
2012—PKF Hospitality
Research, PKF Lodging
Forecast for U.S.,
June 21, 2012
RESULTS: The emails had a 20%
open rate. Eighteen percent of those
who opened the emails clicked on
one of the two calls-to-action. “We got
overwhelming feedback from existing
customers who didn’t know that we
had an events space,” Bush says.
The email led to three lead inquiries, which are in the process of being
booked—two for weddings and one
for a bar mitzvah. “These are very
profitable high-end social event bookings coming from people who weren’t
aware of our space before we sent this
email,” Bush says.
In addition to driving clicks and que-ries, the email was successful from a
deliverability standpoint, as the campaign had no bounce backs and no
undeliverables. “The quality
of the list is imperative if you
want to get a good rate of return,” Allen says.
For Allen, one of the key
takeaways of the campaign
was the benefit of expanding
the knowledge about the hotel’s services among existing
customers. “It is obviously easier to do business with someone you
already do business with, so building
awareness was key,” she says.
Bush says the hotel will use video in
email again. “We are definitely going
to do another one, just based on the
feedback of this one,” she says. ■
paign had no bounce backs and no the knowledge about the ho-
tel’s services among existing
customers. “It is obviously eas-
10%
➜ Expected growth
of email compound
annual by 2016, bringing it to $2.5 billion—
Forrester Research
Interactive Marketing
Forecasts
87%
➜ Number of marketers
who still use email—2012
Social Media Marketing
Industry Report
