EFT Sales and Marketing in Travel USA 2007With increased competition for a finite amount of a customer’s time, you need to deliver relevant content upfront when it comes to email marketing.

Published: 14 May 2007

EFT Sales and Marketing in Travel USA 2007

With increased competition for a finite amount of a customer’s time, you need to deliver relevant content upfront when it comes to email marketing.

And the easiest way to be relevant is to segment email lists, says David Shim, Director, Digital Marketing, Farecast.com.

The relevancy factor is critical in getting valued time or attention from online readers in the context of email marketing especially with the explosion of video, social networking and user-generated content on one hand resulting in more online editorial options and on the other it is being felt that consumers are spending less time and giving less attention to emails.

Citing an example, Shim said, “If you know your customer’s home airport is Seattle don’t send them deals about flights from Boston, rather send them deals from Seattle. With so many outside forces trying to capture your customer’s attention, you can’t open with untargeted messaging (especially when you have the data to make it targeted).”

While devising email content, Farecast ensures that it answers questions that are meaningful for consumers.

“When is the right time to travel? Is this a good price? Keying in on the consumer’s perception and why they came to the site also helps. They came to find a low price; therefore our messaging should skew towards being price focused, etc,” said Shim.

“Being in the travel sector, we do insert targeted links and content wherever we can - it’s expected of us. The approach, even when a blanket message goes out, is to have targeted content included as well. An example would be Farecast’s Deals launch. Everyone saw the same message, but when they clicked on the links to view it, if we had their home airport, we landed them on a deals page for their airport.”

Considering the core offering of airfare prediction website Farecast.com, how do it go about the frequency? Does it send consumers a consolidated data via email or sent emails every time there is a new development?

On this, he said, “Currently, we use our email channel to update our customers about new site enhancements whenever there’s something that applies to them, usually every two months or so. Aside from that, there’s a fare alert communication that consumers can sign up for where they specify the frequency.”