E-Marketing boosts Holiday Shoppe brand
In the highly price-competitive travel industry, Holiday Shoppe decided that instead of a strategy based entirely on competing on costs, their brand was likely to benefit more by adding value and personalising each customer’s experience. That’s where email marketing specialists, MessageMedia came in...
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The Holiday Shoppe franchise is part of New Zealand’s largest travel group. With 77 locations nationwide, Holiday Shoppe has a presence in most New Zealand centres. The company’s motto is ‘Experience. The Difference’, and it strongly influences the way Holiday Shoppe does business. First and foremost, Holiday Shoppe believe that travel is all about providing their customers with experiences – and the opportunity to see and do new things. The company also believes that ‘experience’ is a central part of the way they do business and communicate with their customers. The travel industry is one of the most price sensitive industries in the world. And because customers have traditionally been searching for the best deals on travel arrangements, brand loyalty is quite low. Holiday Shoppe took the view that rather than compete solely on costs, customer perception of their brand was likely to benefit more by adding value to each customer’s experience. With this in mind, Holiday Shoppe approached MessageMedia in 2002 to provide an email marketing solution that fitted with their existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. MessageMedia developed an email newsletter marketing solution specifically for Holiday Shoppe that allowed for direct, customisable and informative communication with customers. The resulting Shoppe ‘N Go e-newsletter provides subscribers with information on special offers, the latest deals and destinations. Holiday Shoppe have a strong emphasis on the acquisition of email addresses and regularly incentivise new and existing members by entering them in a monthly draw for things like $250 worth of Holiday Shoppe travel vouchers. Then, when customers sign up for the newsletter, the Joining & Member Personal Details forms collect information on their travel interests & preferences – allowing Holiday Shoppe to further personalise content and target recipients relevant to their areas of interest. The MessageMedia solution is also smart. Customers that register online get a ‘thanks for registering’ message which automatically senses if the recipient can receive HTML e-newsletters and whether they can receive images in those e-newsletters. If neither, the customer gets plain text e-newsletters. If the recipient gets HTML, but no images, then that format will always be sent in future. In this way, those that can receive HTML and images do so, giving a better graphical user experience – and allowing Holiday Shoppe to better brand their communications. Further personalisation is added by making it appear the newsletter originates from the client’s local Holiday Shoppe branch (see the example below). Although the newsletter is produced centrally it automatically includes the contact details of the customer’s local franchise (and can be further customised to include offers specific to each branch). Links within the body of the email allow customers to make direct contact with their local Holiday Shoppe franchise – helping to build a relationship with staff at that franchise. As a business builder the e-newsletter generates actionable leads for Holiday Shoppe. For example, the ‘request info’ link at the bottom of each article sends an email to the recipient’s Holiday Shoppe branch, informing them of the customer’s interest, and the need to follow up. Holiday Shoppe’s Matti Koopman says that the personalised format of Shoppe ‘N Go has proven successful with customers. “Our customers enjoy receiving the newsletter and look forward to it arriving. Although we produce it centrally, it appears to the customer as if their local Holiday Shoppe has sent it to them personally, which they appreciate.” Koopman also says that the email format provided by MessageMedia is less expensive and more effective than traditional direct marketing pieces. “The entire process of producing and sending the newsletter by email (once every three weeks), and getting a response from the customer is much faster than it is by standard direct marketing techniques and we see the solution developed by MessageMedia as a powerful tool that allows us to communicate personally with our customers.” For more information MessageMedia: |
October 2004
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