Email Marketing for Tourism Businesses

What waiting for ‘perfect’ is costing you

For my 50th birthday, my kind and thoughtful sister-in-law got me a typically thoughtful present: a beauty advent calendar.

This was a black box filled with 25 smaller black boxes, each one containing the reassuringly expensive kind of beauty product I never feel I can justify buying for myself. Mascara that doesn’t give me conjunctivitis, tiny vials of floral fragrance, delicately scented oils. As more of a Superdrug kind of girl, I was delighted.

Now just a couple of years ago, I would have opened each gift, admired it, and then secreted it away. Waiting for the perfect moment to enjoy it.

Waiting for that magical moment when I would be the picture of serenity. Sorted sock drawer, clean inbox, sparkling house. Towelling robe white and fluffy, slippers warmed.

Which (as anyone who knows me knows) is a day that will never come.

I’d probably have kept these products till they’d gone off or evaporated.

Well, not this time. I’ve learned enough about life to know that if you wait for the perfect moment, you’ll be waiting a long time. My eyelashes are coated in Clinique and sophisticated floral notes are wafting from my clothes as I write this.

And (just in case you’re wondering what any of this has to do with travel and tourism copywriting) the same lesson applies to your email marketing: don’t wait for perfect.

The cost of waiting

You know you should be sending emails. You’ve probably been saying it for months, maybe even years.

“I really need to get started with email.”

“I need to get back to emailing my list again”

You’ve read the stats. You know email returns £36-42 for every £1 spent. You’ve seen other tourism businesses building engaged lists and filling their bookings through regular emails.

But you’re still waiting.

Waiting until:

You’ve figured out which email platform to use
You know exactly what to say
You’ve got your welcome sequence written
You’ve set up all the automations
Your website’s finished
You’ve got more time
Everything’s perfect

Meanwhile, every week you don’t email is a week you’re not building relationships with people who’ve already shown interest in you.

You’re not staying top of mind when they’re ready to book. You’re not demonstrating your expertise and personality. You’re not moving people from “maybe someday” to “let me check dates.”

You’re not just delaying bookings. You’re handing them to competitors who started before they felt ready.

So what’s stopping you?

I think I may know the answer to this question. Let me tell you about my own bout of perfection paralysis.

About a year into running my copywriting business, I casually revealed to my business coach that I hadn’t got round to setting up a mailing list yet. If I remember correctly, during the same conversation I’d been bemoaning the fact that clients weren’t falling into my lap in quite the steady flow I’d been expecting.

And she seemed surprised, as well she might. After all, why on earth wouldn’t a copywriter – someone who made words her business, someone with stories up her sleeves a-plenty – toss off the odd weekly email?

Just seeing the look on my business coach’s face, made me realise I’d been daft. So I decided to get to grips with email. I spent hours faffing around on MailChimp, creating the obligatory automated welcome sequence.

Writing emails 2-5 flowed from my fingers. In fact, the sequence got stronger the further I went.

But that first email was HARD. Hours later, I was still no further forward.

And, of course, I had work to do. So I gave up.

I know now what was keeping me stuck. And I see the same things trip up every small tourism business owner I work with:

You’re stuck on the tech. Which platform? How do the automations work? What if you break something? So you spend hours researching platforms instead of writing a single word.

You don’t know what to write. You sit down with good intentions and your mind goes blank. What could you possibly say that people would want to read?

You’re overwhelmed by everything you think you need. Welcome sequences. Nurture sequences. Lead magnets. Automations. Segmentation. It all feels enormous, so you don’t start any of it.

You feel guilty about the subscribers you’ve already got. You collected email addresses months ago and never sent them anything. Now it feels cringey to suddenly appear in their inbox. So you don’t. Vicious cycle.

You think you need everything perfect before you can start. The full funnel. Five automated sequences. A lead magnet. A perfectly crafted welcome series. All the bells and whistles working flawlessly.

I get it. I’ve been there. Most people have.

Escaping the perfection trap

So how do you escape the perfection trap and get started?

Here’s my take in it.

Start with ONE email, not a full funnel

Forget the five-email welcome sequence. Forget the nurture campaign. Forget the sophisticated automations.

Write ONE welcome email. That’s it.

Just: “Thanks for joining. Here’s who I am, here’s what I’ll send you, here’s why I think it’ll be useful.”

Done. You can add the fancy stuff later.

Pick your tech and move on

Mailerlite, Mailchimp, ConvertKit all do the basics pretty well. Pick one (I use Mailerlite), set it up, and stop researching. You’re not marrying it. You can always switch later if you need to.

Start an email writing habit

Email marketing is a long game. Sending three emails then stopping won’t cut it. But you don’t need to write War and Peace every week.

Pick a day. Pick a time. Write something and send it.

A story from your week. An observation about your guests. A lesson you learned. A mistake you made.

It doesn’t have to be profound. It just has to be regular.

Remember: your personality isn’t a liability

When stakes feel high, it’s tempting to go into flight mode and to hide your personality. Perhaps it feels safer to look around and adapt what you do to fit someone else’s mould.

But that’s exactly when your own voice matters most. Your personality isn’t a liability to manage. It’s your greatest asset.

The quirky observation about your guests. The honest admission that you’re still learning. The story about the thing that went wrong. That’s what makes people trust you.

Accept that “good enough” is actually good

What does “good enough” look like for a tourism business email?

A subject line that gives people a reason to open (doesn’t have to be clever)
A story or observation that’s actually from your life (doesn’t have to be profound)
Something useful or interesting (doesn’t have to change their life)
A clear next step if they want to take one (doesn’t have to be a hard sell)

That’s it. That’s a good email.

Deal with that guilt

Got subscribers you haven’t emailed in months? Years?

Send them something now. Today.

Tell them what you’ve been up to. If you’ve been dealing with life stuff, tell them.

Most people will appreciate the honesty. Some will unsubscribe, and that’s fine. Better to have 50 engaged subscribers than 500 who’ve forgotten who you are.

Send it now, improve it later

Every email you send teaches you something about what works. But you only learn by doing.

My first welcome email wasn’t great. But if I’d waited until it was perfect before sending anything, I’d still be waiting.

What I’ve learned about email for tourism businesses

Nobody’s waiting for your perfect email. They’re waiting for you.

The tour guide who shows them the hidden corners of your city. The host who knows exactly which room suits which guest.

That person (the real you!) is interesting enough. Your stories are interesting enough. Your perspective is interesting enough.

You don’t need five automated sequences and a sophisticated funnel to start building relationships through email. You just need to email regularly and sound like yourself.

In summation: wear the expensive mascara, use the extravagant face oil, and write the damn email.

Because if not today, then when?