How consistent email marketing nearly doubled click rate for Ellerman House.

Ellerman House is one of Cape Town’s most prestigious hotels, known for exquisite experiences and uncompromising standards. The email programme needed to reflect that same level of excellence, consistently, send after send.

With a small in-house team, finding the time to plan, design and optimise campaigns regularly was the bottleneck. Results had remained roughly the same for several years. The brand voice was strong; the operating rhythm wasn’t.

The brief: bring structure and creative discipline to a luxury hospitality email programme without diluting the brand or burning out the internal team.

We partnered closely with Michellene to bring strategy, structure and creative consistency to the Ellerman House programme.

Four pillars: monthly planning sessions to align on messaging and seasonal priorities; consistent design and copy that reflected the brand’s luxury tone; regular performance reviews and structured A/B testing; and honest feedback loops with collaborative decision-making.

The model was deliberately calm. No noisy promotional cadence. No discount-led shortcuts. Just a steady editorial rhythm built around what guests actually want to hear from a hotel of this standing, seasonal experiences, chef-led moments, and reasons to return.

Monthly editorial calendars replaced ad-hoc sends. Every campaign went through the same gate: does it earn the recipient’s attention at the standard the brand sets? If not, it didn’t ship.

Design and copy were tightened to a single editorial standard, so every send recognisably belonged to Ellerman House. A/B testing focused on subject lines, hero imagery and lead-in copy, never on discounting or urgency, which would erode brand equity.

Performance reviews ran on a structured rhythm: what worked, what didn’t, what to test next. The conversation moved from anecdote to evidence, and the next month’s plan was always informed by the last month’s data.

By showing up regularly in inboxes with high-quality, relevant content, engagement moved meaningfully: open rate is up 10% and click rate has nearly doubled against the pre-engagement baseline.

These aren’t vanity numbers. They’re a sign that the right guests are paying attention and taking action, bookings, enquiries, return visits to the website. The lift didn’t happen overnight, which is the point. Email is a long game, and Ellerman House is proof that when you stick with it, it pays off.

The programme now operates on a four-week rhythm, with a documented playbook the in-house team owns. Inboxd handed over a system, not a dependency.