How To Grow A Tourism Business With Email
Case Studies - Justin Premick - April 17th, 2007 - Permalink
I love travel. Pretty much everything about it… hitting the road (or air), visiting new places, seeing and meeting people who I may have little to nothing in common with, trying out new food…
And I’m not alone. International tourism alone accounts for nearly 30% of worldwide exports, and its share continues to grow1. People like to get out and “see the world” (just think about how many times you’ve heard that phrase).
In such a lively market, it seems that opportunity must abound. Of course, like any opportunity, not everyone takes advantage of it.
Gerry Kerkhof did. And he’s using email marketing to grow his tourism business - helping people discover one of the world’s most popular tourism destinations, Spain.
Background
While working in Madrid about a decade ago, Gerry decided that he wanted to start a travel business.
With the popularity of football (soccer for us in the US) in Spain and the UK, a logical first market was people who wanted to see a Real Madrid game.
| “From adverts in football magazines I got my first clients who I collected at the airport myself, took them to their hotel and arranged the match tickets for them.” |
Going Full Time
As the business grew, so did its demands on Gerry’s time:
| “After a while it became clear that it would be impossible to maintain a full time teaching job and develop the business so in 2001 I resigned… and put all my efforts into the business and the website… I got down to the job of learning what the internet was all about.” |
| “Affiliate marketing… slowly became an important line of income… then came Google Adsense. We also have contacts in every field throughout Spain so whenever we can’t offer a service ourselves we are able to refer it to a trusted partner.” |
Marketing Offline
Initially, offline advertising in football magazines helped build a client base and a small mailing list.
Gerry tried to market to his list via a brochure with a match schedule that he mailed out at the start of each season. However it simply did not get results, which mirrors Gerry’s overall experience with offline ads:
| “I’ve tried some offline advertising… it proves very expensive for very little return. There is so much more potential to working exclusively online.” |
How AWeber Fits Into Gerry’s Business Model
As much of Gerry’s revenue derives from ad clicks (both for his affiliate links and AdSense), it’s in his interest to drive people back to his site (where they can click again). And since the other main earner for his business is arranging tours, he’ll benefit by establishing himself as an expert who can deliver the best value to travelers.
He uses a monthly newsletter to do so. In it he discusses Spanish culture and travel topics such as:
- Upcoming Spanish Festivals
- Destination Reports
- Typical Spanish Recipes
- Travel News and Offers
Gerry sends his newsletters in HTML and plain text, using a simple format for his HTML message: a header graphic that includes his logo (like the one on his site), and then a single column with 3-4 sections (which are easy to identify/distinguish because he uses an image to start each one).
To get subscribers on his list, Gerry uses a Newsletter page, with a simple opt-in form on it:
He links to that page from the sidebar of his website:
The sidebar is available on all pages of his site. He also uses a popover form that appears once per visitor on the site.
Results To Date
Gerry’s been pulling in a good number of subscribers daily, and remarked to me that he wishes he started building his list years ago.
He didn’t have a lot of statistics available as he’s simply so busy with other aspects of the business:
| “I know I’m supposed to test, test and retest according to so many so called marketing experts but to be quite honest I don’t do it. I simply don’t have the time… [b]ut I do like the idea of developing relationships with the members of the list so they come to trust me then when I feel like recommending a service in the future I’ll be in with a good chance of high conversion rates.” |
My Suggestions
I was impressed with the newsletter. It uses a simple, clean design and contains plenty of great, relevant content. Gerry’s writing tone strikes me as friendly and slightly formal — he talks like a college professor at a barbecue, expert yet approachable.
At first I thought that the length of some of his paragraphs would suppress response, but his audience seems to eat it up. He regularly gets clickthrough rates — not opens, clickthroughs — above 30%.
So what did I have in mind for him?
1. Opt-In Forms: Get One On The Home Page!
Gerry already gets a lot of subscribers every day from the “FREE Newsletter” link on his homepage.
But I can’t help thinking that he’d get even more if he replaced that link with an inline form:
- Between a short headline, the text boxes and the submit button, a form should grab more attention than the text link being used now.
- Enabling people to opt-in directly on the homepage removes that extra click and extra page that has to load for someone to sign up. As we’ve talked about before, making signing up easier yields more subscribers.
So, I suggested that he put an inline form along the right side of his pages, similar to what he’s doing now with the text link to his newsletter page, and to use Ad Tracking to see how well that form pulls.
2. Autoresponders: Add Some!
In his responses, Gerry indicated that he knew he should be complementing his newsletter with an autoresponder and follow up sequence, but said he hadn’t had time to plan it out and implement it.
Of course, there’s no time like the present to get started!
Over the course of several emails, Gerry talked out a plan for a message sequence.
I made several suggestions, but to be honest, he came up with the content and scheduling on his own. I think the biggest benefit I gave him here was reaffirming that he needed to get something written and out there via autoresponders and follow ups. Even one or two messages is better than nothing — just keep yourself in front of your subscribers!
He came up with seven messages, and since implementing them recently has seen a spike in traffic and “buzz” on his site. A language program that he’s an affiliate for contacted him to inform him that he was their “Affiliate of the Month,” driving more leads to them than any other affiliate!
3. Thank You Page: Walk People Through Confirming
This is a topic you’ll probably see us revisit in every case study.
Give subscribers as much guidance as possible on the Thank You page so that they know what’s going to happen next, and what they need to do to confirm their address.
The Thank You page is an oft-overlooked part of most people’s email marketing campaigns, but it’s absolutely essential. After all, if someone forgets or doesn’t realize how to confirm, they won’t be active on your list, and no matter how great your follow ups and broadcasts are, that person won’t see them!
Here’s the Thank You message as I first found it on Spanish-Fiestas.com:
Gerry did a good job of telling subscribers about the confirmation, but his thank you page didn’t show them the message with the link to click on. I strongly recommend showing the message so that people get an idea of what it looks like and can more easily recognize it when they see/open it in their inbox.
It also didn’t provide any other information to help subscribers identify it, such as:
- The “From” Line on the Message
- The Message Subject
So subscribers were left to try and figure out which message in their inbox was the confirm one. This sounds easy enough, but for someone with dozens or hundreds of messages, picking out an email that they aren’t already conditioned to recognize can be difficult.
Gerry updated his Thank You page and put a copy of the confirmation message on there:
While it still doesn’t show the message subject, it goes a lot further toward walking people through the confirm process than the previous Thank You page did.
4. Other Confirmed Opt-In Suggestions
I also recommended swapping out the pre-approved subject with a custom one. Referencing the website or Newsletter name in the subject can help drive recognition and more opens of the confirm message.
Gerry changed that, and also added a Confirmation Success Page, so that instead of seeing a page on our site after confirming, subscribers were taken back to Spanish-Fiestas.com where they got a custom “Thanks” from Gerry:
Until Next Time
We’ll touch base with Gerry again later on in 2007 to find out what effect the changes on his site and campaign have had.
Be sure to check back often as we’ll be publishing more case studies to the blog!
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See Gerry’s campaign in action at Spanish-Fiestas.com
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1 Source: UN World Tourism Organization.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 7:59 am and is filed under Case Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment response, trackback from your own site, or permalink.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Good post - I love the detailed step by step process idea!
Thanks
April 18th, 2007 at 3:53 am
Great post and a helpful reminder I need to add an image of opt-in verification email to make my thank you page. I think I’ll customize the emails subject line too.
Thanks
April 18th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Actually I forgot to mention, Gerry if you’re reading this, there appears to be a problem with your dynamic fly-in subscription box on your home page. It appears behind your map of Spain. This is both IE7 and FF.
Hope this helps
April 18th, 2007 at 11:31 am
I’d like to be able to do something similar on my website, I have inline opt-in and a pop-over but I am getting mails though a webmaster mail service instead.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:13 pm
This is a brilliant production and I am taking tips from it.
It is a helpful guide to and gives me ideas on how to start a blog
that I’ve been contemplating but just can’t seem to get it started.
Except my idea is to start a blog on home decor; using cultural styles.
May 1st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Thanks… especially the tip on writing the "thank you" message.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Job well done. This post contains a lot of good tips that work well on a blog or a Website.
Thanks very much.
May 8th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Thank you for making this available. I like the step by step suggestions for improvement. There is always room for improvement!
May 8th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Great post. My favorite way to build relationships
with my prospects customers is through email and
blog post, like Aweber is doing now.
I also like to send some direct mail pieces because
of the high rate of conversion. Anyway, thanks for
the info.
May 10th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Telling the reader what to expect for the subject and from fields in the confirmation email is a great idea. I know they can get lost in the toooooooooo many emails most people get very day.
Great post!
June 20th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Will try the optin on homepage without going to another page, I think this will improve the rate much better and should have known because we only have a few seconds to get their attention.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Hi,
I have been searching on the internet for tourism email marketing, as i was designing a newsletter for one of my client. Thanks for the excellent information and tips provided for effective tourism email marketing.
December 10th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I found this article/post really instructive and will be making a few chnahes in my own campaign in view of this.
Thanks a lot and please keep these type of posts coming.