WTM 2005 Special Report: Email marketing is a hugely under-utilised tool in the travel industry. Emails can cost less than one pence each to send, compared to upwards of 40 pence for a direct postal mail campaign, and the results are faster and more tangible, a seminar at World Travel Market has been told. Speaking at the CIMTIG and Designate co-ordinated seminar at WTM, E-mail Vision strategic consultant, David Hughes, said: "An email address is the most important thing you can gather in terms of currency." Also on the panel was Hitwise director of research, Heather Hopkins, who agreed that while email marketing was widely used in the travel industry, it is not reaching its potential. Hughes suggested that email campaigns are faster, cheaper, more personalised and more measurable than other marketing campaigns. "Email campaigns can afford to be 200 or 300 times less efficient than direct mail because of the relative costs involved," said Hughes. A benefit of email campaigns is that they can help shift distressed inventory. Says Hughes: "You can pick off pockets of prospects and sell them quickly." He added that 90 per cent of responses come within 72 hours of the email being sent. His advice to companies thinking of embarking on email marketing campaigns included, first and foremost promoting an email newsletter on their website, with an opportunity for users to fill in their email address and also preferences on holiday destinations and activities. He said that incentives were a good way to encourage people to register, be it exclusive deals, or exclusive early access to deals. Once the user is registered, this should be followed up with a personalised email thanking them for doing so, he said. Once the campaign is underway, Hughes recommends regular emails to keep in touch, with content catered to the user's personal preferences and a system should be put in place for measuring response to email campaigns. He added: "A targeted email to readers will be rewarded with higher click-through rates, greater loyalty and lower drop-out rates." He also suggested that companies carefully consider the legal issues surrounding email marketing campaigns, which can be viewed at the Direct Marketing Association website, www.dma.org.uk. Report by Ginny McGrath

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USER COMMENTS

Craig Stone Marketing Operations Director, CSI Media 21 November 2005, 10:30:42 GMT Email marketing gains importance CSI Media offer email marketing services to the travel industry and have found a dramatic increases in the uptake of our eShoutz email marketing services during the last 12 months. With online competition getting greater and greater, our clients are beginning to focus more on the use of email marketing to bolster the customer retention side of their businesses. Email marketing offers an ideal platform for our clients to capture customer details and resell products to both new and existing clients. The cost of buying email lists has also risen and as such many clients ask us to find innovative ways to capture emails from their websites in order to gain a competitive advantage through their own email lists. The sheer uptake in email marketing by our clients has led us to develop our eshoutz product further. eShoutz is now a powerful online email marketing solution you can put to work straight away, there is absolutely NO software to install or maintain and you can manage multiple marketing campaigns with ease. We have also realised the needs to address spamming issues and as such have implemented automatic anti-spamming safeguards. In essence, eShoutz allows you to create professional-looking, personalised email campaigns, manage mailing lists and finally track the success of your campaigns and most importantly the actual 'Return On Investment' once email marketing campaigns have been sent.   Jenni Martin Business Development Executive, ITG Digital Marketing www.itg-digital.com 18 November 2005, 12:10:22 GMT Digital marketing to build relationships The travel industry can certainly benefit from digital marketing in many ways. It is imperative that companies build and maintain relationships with customers as it is the most effective way to keep them. Digital marketing is the most appropriate way to build relationships as it is dynamic and can deliver the instant results needed for the travel industry to improve its services further, rapidly and efficientely. Intergrating e-mail and sms, boosts interaction with the customers and can place an innovative company ahead of the competition.   Pooja Lalji Operations, Rickshaw Travels 17 November 2005, 12:13:12 GMT Email marketing is the way to go! We at Rickshaw Travels Tanzania do at least 90% of our marketing through email and our website. It is the most efficient and cost effective way forward with less wastage of paper and other resources. We do not advertise any other way.   Les Csonge Sales & Marketing Director, www.digital-alternatives.com 17 November 2005, 10:00:05 GMT Prospects not Statistics or Hits Yes "Goldmine" is the term for email addresses and email markerting (CRM) -for too long number of hits on a website on campaigns has been the measure - is it not better to know WHO rather than how many? By putting ALL content on freeview on websites people can come look and go away and you may never reach them again - by "Exchanging" information (quickly and easily) in return for contact details (even it is just an email address) you are able to then market to enquirers and convert some to bookers - what customers are looking at when considering giving their details is WIFM - what's in it for me? Many of our clients use their digital brochures as a method of collecting customer emails by asking for an email input and instantly THEN giving immediate digital brochure viewing - the days of just enter your email address here collection and ROI based on "hits" are limited.