Why including real-time ratings and reviews is a must for travel and hospitality brands

Think using ratings and reviews in emails are only for eCommerce or retail brands? Think again. 

Travel and hospitality brands thrive on reviews. How often do you check out a hotel without reading a few of its most recent reviews? What about an airline miles program or a tourism company?

The answer is probably pretty close to every time you plan a trip. Research shows that’s true too. Over 90% of consumers look up a review online before they decide to buy something. 

Reviews matter, especially for travel brands, so you need to start incorporating them in your emails. 

Here’s why.

With reviews, recency matters

On the Zembula platform, content blocks enable you to add all sorts of personalized data to your emails. And even better, that data updates in real-time the moment your reader opens their email. 

While that’s great for everything from price drop notifications to loyalty points updates, you can also use it to bring real-time ratings and reviews to your emails.

When it comes to reviews, they aren’t all created equally. Research shows that consumers put more weight on recent reviews. They want to read what’s happened within the last 90 days to get a better picture of what other travelers think. 

However, in the past, it’s been hard to easily incorporate these into emails. If your reviews are too old, they start having less of an impact, but it’s also time-consuming to have to go in and refresh your reviews constantly.

By inserting a real-time ratings and reviews content block into your emails, you can give that to them. Every time they open their email, they’ll get to see the latest and greatest reviews from happy customers, automatically.

Social proof drives action

Another key component of ratings and reviews is they are a powerful form of social proof. Consumers trust the opinions of people just like them, other consumers, even more than you. 

So when you show them reviews and ratings from others, it makes a bigger impact, especially if you include them throughout the sales funnel. 

In an email like the one above, the five-star rating and positive review is front and center. As soon as your reader opens that email, they see that someone else, just like them, stayed at this hotel and had an amazing time. 

Seeing that social proof helps primes a reader to buy, and it can give them that extra push to pull the trigger.

Make your emails stand out

You want your emails to capture the attention of your readers and drive action. It’s hard to do that if your emails are generic and aren’t highlighting the information your customers want. 

Change that by making them have a bigger impact. 

You can use ratings and reviews in a couple of different ways:

• Highlight your best selling or highest-reviewed properties to drive interest
• Showcase what loyalty members think about your program to entice others to join
• Tie in reviews and ratings with special events or sales to give them a little bit more oomf
• Add the customer rating score to specific bookings so they can see how they stack up
• Encourage your customers to get verified so their reviews to go the top of the pack

There are plenty of other ways you can utilize real-time ratings and reviews in your emails to have them make an impact when it comes to driving clicks and conversions. 

And, if you want to go even further, you can tie reviews and ratings in with specific segments of your customer base to provide more personalized content. For example, customers who shop for deals to specific destinations can see ratings and reviews only from related bookings, flights, or services. That way, they know the information they’re getting is exactly what they’re looking for.

Ready to give it a try?

Go on; you won’t regret it. Design your emails to include ratings and reviews and see the impact it has on your customers. You might just find a positive impact on your bottom line.