Email Marketing

Marketing to your Database by Email

E-newsletters have only a limited role in finding new customers, through friend-get-friend and viral techniques. But e-newsletters do have vital uses:
First, they are the most useful tool to move existing customers on from their initial interest through to purchase and repeat purchase. Your CRM capabilities will determine the extent to which you can send accurate, personalised messages that do this
Second, they are invaluable as a way potentially to share with your tourism suppliers the customers you already have. You will probably want to attract revenue from this from paid-for entries by suppliers
Third, emails are the most efficient way to maintain communication after the customer has gone home, in order to:

• Help the customer to re-endorse their choice after the trip, confirm their satisfaction, and relive their holiday
• Help the customer to pass on their good feelings and information to friends and family
• Produce repeat visits, including cross-selling and upselling with new ideas that fit their profile as stored in the CRM database

Finally, any good email campaign management system will provide real-time reporting of results. This will enable to you to fine-tune the selection of customers and content as you go along.

Tips for ongoing email campaigns

• E-mail regularly enough for the recipient to get to know you and your e-mails; once a month is about right. If you have collected their intended travel date, then a series of progressively more frequent emails is desirable. Get the timing right: if the market segment takes last-minute short breaks, 10 days in advance might be right. For a long-haul trip, start a year ahead, and build up the messages. Consider sending your emails at exactly the time of day and on the same day of the week that the recipient originally subscribed: it can produce a 20% increase in click-through rates; 65% increase in conversion rates; and 45% increase in value of order.
• Achieve continuity – of emotive core messages, and of holiday planning information. Try to be sequential with information. Do not change the subject every time. Aim to include a call to action in every email that achieves new data capture and adds to your customer knowledge, progressively enabling you to personalise the relationship.
• Encourage viral effects by including odd, amusing or interesting snippets that recipients will want to share – and include the call to action: ‘Send this to a friend’
• Project your own brand and the Destination’s brand values. For example, some busineses tend to use impersonal terminology, which is not helpful if friendliness is a strong point for you and the Destination.
• Have pictures of real people, and quotes from them – the newsletter editor, a recent visitor, a resident, a local character, a celebrity, or the boss.
• Make it very easy to unsubscribe. If too many recipients add you to their spam blocker, it will trigger blocking by servers of other recipients. If you choose to automate the unsubscribe, and make it a one-click process, it is still worth providing a confirmation message, or users will not entirely believe you have done it. If you really do have good alternative services for the customer, then consider having a two-stage unsubscribe process, to allow the recipient to choose to continue to receive communications on other subjects
• Do not rely on subscribers to keep your database clean: at intervals, ask them to re-validate the enrolment and their data (with a default to ‘Continue’)