Boosting dining reservations for The Spread Eagle Hotel
The Spread Eagle Hotel has been providing “good old-fashioned hospitality” to the Richmond area of Melbourne for more than 130 years.
Since opening in 1854 The Spread Eagle Hotel has been providing world-class service via passionate staff, who aim to give every diner a memorable dining experience.
As one of the leading dining establishments in the area, they greatly value the positive feel and feedback of customers.
The challenge faced by The Spread Eagle Hotel
The Spread Eagle Hotel has a membership program and collects mobile phone numbers from their members.
They have always used email to market and communicate with their members, but were curious to see how their members would respond to mobile marketing.
With this in mind The Spread Eagle Hotel wanted to find a way to encourage diners to make a booking for their special Melbourne Cup race day event, which included live entertainment, sweepstakes, eating and drinking, and televised coverage of the big race.
What were The Spread Eagle Hotel looking for?
For such a special event, The Spread Eagle Hotel wanted to find a more interactive and visually appealing way to promote their event.
The platform should allow for the automation of bookings, capitalise on the high open rate of SMS (95%) , and provide the visual benefits of platforms like email.
“The experience with Messaging Studio was great. The platform is very user friendly. It is so much more streamlined than the email platform we use!”
MANDY WOOD, SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER, SPREAD EAGLE HOTEL
How was this achieved?
After consultation with Esendex, The Spread Eagle Hotel decided to use the SMS Landing Page platform.
This involved using our Messaging Studio to build a tailored web page that is specifically designed for mobile users, with a clear call-to-action button to guide recipients to take the desired action.
About a week before the Melbourne Cup, the hotel sent its members a personalised text message with a link to the SMS Landing Page. The landing page was built with attractive graphics and contained all the information including time, ticket price and what was included for the day; with a clear call-to-action button that took the users to their online booking system where they could make a booking straight away.
What were the results?
“The results were fantastic, with bookings coming through almost instantly. What started as a trial with no expectation quickly became a pleasant surprise.
The experience with Messaging Studio was great. The platform is very user-friendly. Once I got my head around it, it’s very easy to use. It takes the graphics really well and the process of creating the Landing Pages was straightforward. It is so much more streamlined than the email platform we use!
I think that SMS Landing Pages are great tools for marketers. With our experience, they work well with more targeted campaigns that want to prompt immediate actions. We will continue to use it for campaigns with specific segment groups.”
Mandy Wood – Social Media Manager – The Spread Eagle Hotel