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3 Top Email Strategies for Travel & Tourism
www.pure360emailmarketing.co.uk 1
3TopEmailmarketingstrategies
forTravelandTourismcampaigns
ByAbiClowes
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Welcome to our latest guide this one focuses on email marketingstrategies and advice for Marketers in the Travel & Tourism industry.
In this guide Marketing Manager Abi Clowes will take you through three of the mostsuccessful strategies that you can implement, without trouble, to improve your email
marketing activities.
Use dynamic content to talk in their language
As a marketer we should never underestimate the power of our content, you can grab
someones attention with a cheeky offer or catchy subject line but its the content that
will take them through to the all important conversion.
We all know that our email marketing messages should be relevant and targeted but
at what detail have you tried to talk their language?
You could add their name into your email for a bit of personalisation, its a good
place to start. As an extra why not also add it to the subject line? Dave its been
a while since youve taken a break treat yourself.
Taking it to the next level, you would want to send relevant holiday options toDave so you probably have separate messages for that at the moment. Why not
make it easier for yourself and use dynamic content in your actual messaging to
change content without having to set up a new email? Heres a quick example...
Hi Dave,
Its been [insert number months] since you went to [insert previous location],
surely its about time you treated yourself to a break?
The timing is great because weve just launched a special deal on winter
breaks to [insert relevant location], saving you 25%!
Contact your local branch on [insert local branch number] and [branch
manager name] can get you booked on your next amazing holiday before the
offer ends.
Now you can use the same email message to cover off loads of different
holiday types and theyre all super targeted at each recipient.
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All you need is a bit of segmentation from buyer behaviour or attributes and some
html tweaking and youre suddenly appealing to the masses but in a very relevant
way.
Make the event last a whole month
Taking a holiday is an experience that many people try to make last much longer than
the actual holiday itself. Why wouldnt they? Its great to build up excitement and have
something to look forward to and when theyre back, try and savour it and share the
experience to keep it fresh in their minds.
This provides a great opportunity for marketers in the travel and tourism industry tokeep their brand and services fresh in the minds of their target audience for even
longer with some clever email marketing.
Take a look at the calendar below from the moment the holiday is booked you can
start planning in totally relevant and useful emails that build the relationship with the
customer. And it doesnt end after the holiday, then is the time to get feedback and
reviews for your website and marketing collateral, cross sell with other products and
upsell with the next holiday after all if they had the time of their lives then theyll be
chomping at the bit to go again.
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Nice example from Holidayextras.com
These guys have got it right with their email marketing, once a holiday is booked then
they will push their other services such as airport parking, car hire and insurance.
They also make great use of adding weight to their call to action by telling people that
they can get an extra 10% off but only if they click through from that particular email,
so theres no time spent thinking about it, use that email or pay more elsewhere.
Finally theyre spreading the reach of their email message by asking people to
promote it via Facebook and forwarding to a friend. Social media can be very
powerful when used in conjunction with email marketing as both are pushing trafc
back to the website and promotions alongside educational content are very popular
on social sites.
Get automated
Make sure youre well planned for holidaycampaigns and know what emails youd like to
go out at which key points around the booking
and holiday.
It doesnt have to be hard and you dont need
to remember for each person your email
software provider should have anAutomation
feature that allows you to set up a series of
emails that automatically go out on specieddays after an event or a web conversion. All you need to do is set it up once and
youre done.
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For example...
Bob buys a holiday to Egypt online.
With the automation set up he will receive an instant conrmation email and then 7
days before his holiday he receives an email telling him the weather forecast in Egypt
so he knows what to buy. Five days before his departure he receives a reminder to
purchase travel insurance, then 2 days before he gets an email with the weather again
plus how is he getting to the airport?
Bob feels very prepared and happy with his holiday provider and gives glowing
reviews when he receives an email a week after his holiday asking him how it went
and reminding him to give a review.
You can also set up automated emails based on a date eld in your distribution list for
example a birthday or holiday date.
This means that you can send
emails automatically based around
this date without having to think
about it!
STA Travel did this based on a
birthday and they even added
additional personalisation with the
persons rst name using dynamic
content to make it extra targeted.
Recap Checklist
So to quickly recap on the best way to make your
event last a whole month...
Decide what emails should go out around an
event
Plan in when they should go
Design the emails (are you including social share features?)
Plug them into the Automations feature in your software
Measure the results after a month to see what is working and what needs tweaking
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Retargeting your database
Retargeting your existing database is a really easy way to keep your email marketing
costs down, reconnect with inactive customers and upsell to active customers.
You could split your database into the themed categories and then send a targeted
email to each, for example:
Customers by email activity
The opens entice them to click with a special promotion
The non opens change up your subject lines and test different days/times to
get that click through
The clicks you know theyre interested but perhaps the price is putting them
off or the holiday isnt quite suitable? We saw you looking at x and thought wed
offer you some alternatives or Today only an extra % off x
The converted these guys are prime for either post purchase feedback (if you
have holiday reviews on your site then link to that and ask them to leave one)
or an upsell with connected product Enjoy the snow in Whistler? prebook for
next year before the end of month and get 20% off.
Customers by purchasing activity
Purchasers by type of holiday If it was a school holiday break they took then
retarget them for the next upcoming school holiday offers or if they took a winter
holiday then they must be due a summer one...
Purchasers by holiday frequency- If theyre only purchasing on holiday a year
then perhaps they can be enticed with a weekend getaway instead of a fully
edged second holiday. For those people who go on a couple per year then
instigate a loyalty scheme so you make sure theyre all booked with them and
are they referring you to friends? Have they left glowing reviews?
When youre retargeting, think about what information you already hold about them
and use it to personalise the subject lines. Even if you dont have their name you can
still use information you do know such as the products they were looking at or the last
time they responded to an email.
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Re-engaging with your database works especially well when you are more
personalised with them and show you know what they want, so make sure youve
armed yourself with insight as we talked about in the previous two sections.
Topdeck Travel
Topdeck Travel recently did a great email campaign
retargeting their database by geographic location
such as New Zealand and Australia.
They then sent out news that their latest European
brochure was live and provided a time-limited offer
to push sales from the campaign.
A nice touch was that they added urgency to
their campaign with an early bird discount and
gave a clear deadline for bookings. They also
incorporated their social share channels and not as
an afterthought at the bottom of the email!
Truprint
In this example one of our customers Truprint wanted to increase the numbers of
purchases they had during an Easter promotion. Not travel related I know but they did
well using seasonality as a theme.
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They sent an email to previous non-purchasers which was designed to drive
them to purchase
They then analysed the results and sent a second email to the non-openers ornon-clickers offering them a further discount
They found that by retargeting their current database they turned a vast number
of their non actives into actives who continue to engage with their email
marketing campaigns. They also saw an
increase in their purchases, so much so
that they are now looking at new ways
to segment and target their distribution
list.
Park Holidays UK - Lifes a beachwith targeted email campaigns
ParkholidaysUK has 25 parks stretching
from Devon to Suffolk and is the largest
operator of holiday parks in the whole of
the South of England. The company offercaravan and camping holidays and also
feature a caravan home sales page on their
website. Park Holidays UK started working
withPure360in 2008.
Stacey Long, Marketing Executive explains: We felt that Pure360 were a very cost
effective email solution with an easy to use interface. We needed to be able to target
different areas of the business with selected different email content each month.
One size doesnt t all, effective targeting is key
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Park Holidays UK has segmented its database in order to send emails to ve different
groups of recipients each month. The content is specic to the recipient depending
on what type of customer or prospect they are. The fabulous ve are:
Holiday offer mailers: Retargeted at previous customers and potential customers
to encourage them to visit the website and purchase a holiday
Holiday post purchase mailers: Regular mailers to existing bookers to try and
enhance their holiday experience. These emails give them the opportunity to
make additional purchases and also provide helpful customer service information
Sales mailers: Used to target potential holiday home owners, detailing special
offers and encouraging recipients to click through to the site and make an
enquiry
Touring mailers: These emails go to potential bookers and are used to sell
touring pitches
Owner emails: A weekly emaill newsletter
Stacey comments: The weekly newsletters are particularly useful as they help enable
us to keep a feeling of goodwill amongst the owners, so they know what is going on.
It also encourages them to pay more frequent visits to the parks.
Stacey continues: We have worked very hard on creating regular communication
between ourselves and our owners. We wanted to create a community spirit and
show customers we still care about what they think even after they have made their
purchase. This helps us with our customer retention.
Using Automations
In the last year Park Holidays UK has made some dramatic changes to the way in
which they communicate with their customers. These changes include introducing
an email template to all emails and increasing the customer lifecycle. Park Holidays
UK is very savvy when it comes to their customer lifecycle. They communicate with
the customer not only when they book their holiday but also in the 8 weeks leading
up to it... and on the day they return. Want to know how? They use anAutomations
feature.
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With 25 holiday parks it would be near on impossible to send pre-arrival and welcome
home emails to every single customer, but the Automations feature in PureResponse
allows Park Holidays to do just that. They can even go so far as to send out emails
based on their customers arrival and departure times. Perfect.
As if that wasnt enough, Park Holidays UK also use the Automated Import feature
and re-occurring deliveries to send emails to save even more time. Rather than
send 25 emails on a weekly basis they just amend the content on the URL and
PureResponse takes care of the rest.
And the all important results?
Park Holidays open rate is 16% and click-through rates really give them something
to shout about, they gain an average of between 27-32%, an increase of 9% from
last year.
Stacey comments:We want to grow our email campaigns to make them even more
targeted. We have started to do this but we know there is more that we can do. We
want the Pure360 system to grow with us and help in our ongoing mission of being
more intelligent with our emails.
To sum up
The Travel & Tourism industry is one of the most fun and easy industries to get some
creative and effective email marketing campaigns going in. There are plenty of tools
readily available that can make your lives much easier
and by using the strategies Ive outlined in this guide,
you should nd your bookings increase and your
client-base much more likely to rebook again.
Want to know more?
Author of this guide,Abi Clowesis one of the many
talented and experienced people who make up the
team at Pure360.
Pure360 provides the best email marketing servicesto customers such as innocent drinks, Seatwave,
The FT Group, Rightmove, Zoopla and LA Fitness.
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Pure360 dont tie customers in with a long contracts, instead we maintain a high
customer retention rate of 98.6% by making sure marketers are getting the best
possible results from their email marketing campaigns. Members of the DMA, we
have recorded a 10% higher open rate for our customers than the DMA average,leading to higher clicks and conversions.
You can nd the team working to improve over 2,000 marketers email campaigns,
down in Brighton. If youd like to talk to one of us then call or email us at
Were also on Twitter (@pure360) or sign up for our newsletter online.
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