Millennials and Email Marketing: Hospitality-specific data yields intriguing results.

Many marketers have claimed that Millennials don’t use email. They’re on Snapchat, they’re on Facebook, but not in their inboxes. Others say just the opposite. But what do the numbers tell us? Do the campaigns your hotel is sending to 20-somethings end up in long-since-forgotten inboxes? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at 20 different email campaigns sent by 10 different hotels and resorts to a total of 1,600,000 recipients. We can get more granular in a follow up, but we decided to group our initial results by three generations: Millennials (roughly 30 years old and under), Boomers (roughly 50 years old and older), and then two decade-long groups between those to cover Generation X.

For this sample, Millennials average an open rate of 12.9% and a click rate of 8.4%. Age 31-40 saw an open rate of 15.0% and a click rate of 8.8% with 31-40 seeing 20.4% and 10.3% respectively. Boomers saw a 23.4% open rate and 13.0% click rate. The overall average for this sample was an 18.2% open rate and 9.9% click rate.

What This Means
Truth be told, we thought Millennials might be lower than this and were surprised to see that, while they are certainly below the average, their behavior isn’t that far off email marketing averages from just 5-6 years ago.

Are there other ways to reach millennials? Absolutely, but a 13% open rate among this group is nothing to sneeze at. Email is still required for the vast majority of online services and transactions. As long as that game continues, expect Millennials – just like the rest of us – to keep our inboxes open.

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