I recently booked a room at the Mandalay Bay Casino for an upcoming Vegas trip. While I usually stay elsewhere, I had heard good things and have enjoyed several visits to Mandalay so thought I would give it a shot.
Surprisingly, I see a lot of basic mistakes email marketing being made by very large casinos. With such large marketing budgets, I would expect more sophistication from their email programs.
After making my online reservation, I received the following confirmation email. (click image to enlarge)
It’s great that they are sending me a confirmation with some information in case I have questions, but where is the branding and other relevant content?
Key Items Missing:
1. Branding: All of us here at Email Aptitude are pretty big fans of having a higher text to image ratio, especially for transactional email triggers. But in this case there is zero branding. Mandalay Bay easily could have maintained a high text ratio (and all text for this main body copy) while still having a branded header and footer with additional call-outs.
2. Helpful Recommendations: Why not use this opportunity to let me know about exciting things to do at the hotel? They could have a graphic section showing events occurring during the dates of my visit; information about the the restaurants they have; games they offer; and other amenities I may be interested in. This can all be done in a very tasteful way that does not take away from the simplicity of the email.
3. Cross-Sell/Up-Sell: On my reservation confirmation email it would be a great opportunity to up-sell a different room or cross-sell some services like show tickets or a spa package. This too can be done very tactfully and presented in a way that truly benefits the customer.
With a little effort, Mandalay Bay could be doing much better with email. With some structured planning and testing, they could be crushing it. As of now though, they are leaving a lot of money on the table.
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