Three emails, three days, around €87,000 in booking revenue. That sounds like a catch somewhere, but it is the result of a Black Friday campaign that Sunstar Hotels ran together with us and ReGuest for Black Friday 2025. The campaign ran for only a few days. It worked mainly because it did not buy new reach, but activated existing guest relationships.
What is a newsletter campaign with booking attribution?
A newsletter campaign with booking attribution is a series of emails to existing guests, where bookings can be traced back to individual sends. This shows not only who opened or clicked a message, but which send actually triggered revenue.
The starting point: a guest database that had barely sold anything so far
Sunstar Hotels operates seven properties and had a guest database in ReGuest that had grown over the years. Newsletters went out to these contacts regularly, but until then mainly served guest communication. For Black Friday, the aim was to find out what this direct contact could deliver as a sales channel. The goal was clear: additional direct bookings and higher booking revenue through the hotels' own channel.
Three emails, three angles
Instead of a single combined email, Sunstar sent three newsletters on three consecutive days. Each one offered its own reason to look at the offer. This kept the campaign relevant without wearing out recipients.
The roles were clearly divided. Sunstar contributed the brand, the offer and the guest relationships. We were responsible for the campaign logic, conceived and produced the newsletters, and evaluated the results. ReGuest provided the guest database, the sending and the delivery statistics. Through the connection to onepagebooking.com, bookings could be attributed to individual mailings. In parallel, a paid campaign ran on Meta as a point of comparison.
The result
- Around €87,000 in attributed booking revenue from three newsletters.
- Over the Black Friday weekend, the newsletters delivered roughly three times the revenue of the parallel Meta campaign, with no additional media budget for the sends.
- The third email achieved the highest open rate and was the strongest day for revenue.
- The feared newsletter fatigue did not materialise. The unsubscribe rate stayed within the normal range, and deliverability was practically flawless.
- Bookings attributable to the campaign continued to come in until mid-December. Stays could be booked up to October 2026.
Newsletter versus paid social in comparison
To put the figures in context, we evaluated them across channels, based on the ReGuest sending statistics, Google Analytics 4 and the Meta ad account. Revenue per session and the booking rate for the Black Friday campaign were each more than twice as high as the average across the channels considered. Over a twelve-month comparison, the newsletter channel generated more revenue than paid social, even though it drove only a fraction of the website visits.
A clean reading does require one caveat: Meta and Google Analytics 4 use different attribution rules. The figures can be compared and put into context, but not simply added together.
What we take away from this
The guest database is a sales channel, not just a communication channel. Every send needs its own reason, and booking attribution needs to be built in from the start — otherwise all that remains in the end is the open rate. Paid media remains an important part of the marketing mix. But it does not replace the relationship with people who already know a hotel.
Silvio Schoch of Sunstar Hotels sums it up like this: «We built our guest database over many years. The fact that three newsletters generated around €87,000 in booking revenue, with no additional media budget, showed us in black and white what it can deliver for our direct sales.» This requires the hotel, the agency and the software to work together, and the data to be evaluated consistently.
Sources
Related articles
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- Timing seasonal campaigns correctly (what booking data reveals about lead times)
Frequently asked questions
Is a newsletter worthwhile compared to paid social?
In the case described, the newsletters generated roughly three times the revenue of the Meta campaign over the Black Friday weekend. Over twelve months, the newsletter channel was also ahead of paid social. This is a single case and cannot be generalised across the board.
How many newsletters make sense for a campaign?
In Sunstar's case, it was three emails on three consecutive days, each with its own angle. The unsubscribe rate stayed within the normal range. What matters is that each send offers a new reason.
What is technically needed to attribute bookings to individual mailings?
A well-maintained guest database, a sending system with statistics, and a connection to the booking engine. For Sunstar, this worked through the connection with onepagebooking.com.
Would you like to know how much revenue is sitting in your own guest database? In a free initial consultation of 30 minutes, we will look together at where your business stands today.
