As customer travel expenditure starts to slowly bounce back, travel marketers are moving more of their advertising funds toward interactive channels like email marketing so as to maximize ROI and interact travelers carefully researching for those best deals. Because of this, NGR, the world's only provider of both email marketing and marketing automation solutions particularly tailor-made to the unique needs of B2C and B2B marketers, has helped new and existing tourism clients expand their programs and much more effectively engage with their audiences.
Based on a recent survey conducted by Ypartnership along with the U.S. Travel Association, 53% of U.S. adults plan to consider not less than one overnight, leisure trip before August 2012. 58% of those surveyed will look for deals in the Internet before booking their travel.
Tourists have more alternatives and much more sources of information about those alternatives than ever before. Tourist-oriented marketing packages require constant monitoring and tweaking to stay effective, and that is the reason much easier to accomplish with email than with other marketing channels.
Among tourism companies now taking benefit of email marketing's power to interact with customers is eBrains, a web-based marketing firm with a spotlight on travel and tourism. 60% of eBrains' travel-industry clients increased their email marketing budgets in 2011, with similar numbers expected in 2012.
"Email marketing delivers the best ROI for our travel and tourism clients," said Matthew Gordon, chief online brain at eBrains. "It really is a flexible channel that is commonly used strategically for brand building and tactically to promote special deals and events."
Successful tactics for eBrains' clients have included the distribution of frequent however highly relevant newsletters in addition to targeted promotions and special offers. Both techniques have helped organizations improved engage with customers and prospects, and also have yielded impressive results. For instance, an exceptionally successful promotion for the "2011 Festival of Blossoms" developed by eBrains for Door County Wisconsin's Convention and Visitor's Bureau included a unique eCard that generated a click thru rate of 39 percent.
"In such an economy, spontaneous weekend getaways had been replaced by excursions which are well thought out and thoroughly researched so as to secure the best deal," added Gordon. "This makes email an even more essential tool for our tourism clients as they are surely capable of making vacationers' jobs a little easier by offering them with well timed updates about special offers that would possibly attract them to move ahead and book that trip."
Another NGR client, Atlanta-based Georgia Aquarium, drives 1/2-a-million dollars in online ticket sales annually via email. It sends monthly e-newsletters, news and event updates, and special deals to its more than 620,000 Aquarium aficionados. During the last couple of years, the Aquarium has worked closely with NGR's Services on both general email strategy and particular campaigns to develop its email marketing program.
"When the Aquarium first opened, the process was to deliver as much information to as many individuals as possible quickly," said Kristie Cobb Hacke, vice president, development & membership, Georgia Aquarium. "After the initial rush of excitement, it became essential to start crafting and delivering targeted messages to maintain people engaged."
To expand the influence of email marketing, NGR also worked with East Coast, a leading UK rail company who service the travel needs of more than 17 million passengers in England and Scotland, to support spread this company's message through social networks.
"Merely inserting social network links in our emails allowed us to succeed in an entire new set of potential customers," said Sara Borland, brand and communications controller East Coast. "In a recent ‘one-way fares' campaign, hundreds of consumers shared the offer on their social networking pages on Digg, Facebook and MySpace. 17% of posted links garnered not less than one open, and 33% who opened a post then clicked. They are people we may possibly never have reached otherwise."
The Society of London Theatre, the trade association that represents the producers, theater owners and executives of the main commercial and grant-aided theaters in central London, has also had enormous success by utilizing targeted email campaigns for subscribers in distinctive age groups. "Applying an age-centric subject line, we managed to double average open rates for subscribers within the 16-to-26 age group," said Philippa Salvoni, head of publishing, Society of London Theatre.
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