Travel Trends - TripAdvisor, Email, Weekend Sherpa, ChaCha

TripAdvisor - Travel review giant TripAdvisor has acquired another travel website in VirtualTourist. While VirtualTourist has a slightly different audience than TripAdvisor, the basic concept behind both sites is similar. At this point, it appears that TripAdvisor will let VirtualTourist continue on its own path. As we have stated previously on the Travel 2.0 blog, consolidation within this space has only been a matter of when, rather than if. And with so many new, niche online travel sites launching (what seems like) daily, we should continue to see further consolidation for the near future.
http://www.boston.com/

Email - A new survey from Direct Partners shows that email is the most popular form of direct response marketing. E-mail is used primarily by 35 percent of companies compared to 25 percent that use traditional direct mail and 21 percent that use promo packages, statement stuffers or freestanding inserts. Certainly not a surprise, but confirmation that you are receiving more junk mail via your inbox than your mailbox.
http://www.adweek.com/

Weekend Sherpa - Last week, I received a call from Emily at Outside Magazine for a piece about new technology / websites for travel planning. During our call, she brought two new websites to my attention, Weekend Sherpa and ChaCha. Weekend Sherpa takes a simplified look at a travel recommendation website by getting back to basics...the site is simply an email / email sign-up form to receive a weekly email about what to do in Northern California. No more, no less. Simple, easy and straight to the point.
http://www.weekendsherpa.com/

ChaCha - Again, another site that is so simple, but so useful. Send a text to the ChaCha service, receive a text answer. Near a hotel, looking for a specific restaurant or attraction, text and receive the answer. The service is meant for any question, but the applications for travel specific questions and information are very intriguing.
https://www.chacha.com/

Travel Trends - Staycations!, Soundwalk

Why go to Florida? Buy a TV instead! - Everyone in the travel industry is currently cringing at the word 'staycation'...blame it on the media, I suppose...now industries outside of travel are jumping on the staycation bandwagon. Check out this recent email I personally received from Circuit City:

Subject Line: city life: Great staycations + an exclusive Wii Fit tell-all

And a shot of the email:


And, for your reading enjoyment, the entire article...A great escape is closer than you think.

Come on Circuit City, don't make the travel industry come down to your store and start roughing up the teenage employees. Drop the staycation line before someone hears you.
http://www.circuitcity.com/

Soundwalk - I remember seeing the library of Soundwalk audio tours at Barnes & Noble a while ago, but completely forgot about the product until Techcrunch featured the company again because of their new Louis Vuitton Soundwalk of China series. Soundwalk is 'a cinematic experience, a way to explore and understand a new culture and others' with a 'mix of fitting music, sound effects, interviews, and sound clips'. To say this is a simple podcast would be an injustice. Soundwalk is an impression collection of phenomenal narrators...my favorite is the Original Jazzy Jay on the Bronx Hip-Hip Walk...music, lyrical storytelling and soundeffects that are so perfect, you could just as easily enjoy the walks from home, rather than the corner of 46th St. and Broadway. Now, the Louis Vuitton series talks the Soundwalk to a whole new level, with a very rich (no pun intended) website experience featuring the luxury that is LV. Check out both the sites and delete those old podcasts of Paris you have sitting in iTunes.
http://www.soundwalk.com/

The Open Rate Must Die

The email open rate is simply a tired, inaccurate and irrelevant metric that no longer measures what it was originally intended to. As a result, it gives you the wrong picture of your subscribers’ interest in and involvement with your mailings. (”Engagement,” if you want to use the buzzword). >>Full Story

Thoughts// Frequent readers of this blog are all too familiar with our opinions on the collective reliance of the "click rate" as a measure of success in online campaigns. This thought provoking blog by MediaPost's Email Insider extends this argument to e-mail. The author makes the valid point that using the default "read rate" as calculated by your e-mail platform is a flawed metric, akin to the music industry "measuring sales based on the number of CDs sold."

In most e-mail clients, the read rate is based on the display of a tracking image on each e-mail displayed. The author lays out the following scenarios of why there are inherent flaws with this method of tracking.

1. The e-mail is “opened” (launched), but images are blocked: not counted as an open.

2. The e-mail is not opened (launched), but images are enabled and is read in the preview pane: counted as an open

3. The text version of a message is read on a BlackBerry. The HTML version (with images blocked) is later opened in Gmail (or other email service/client). The email has been opened and read twice — but zero opens are recorded.

4. A text version is opened and read but not clicked: not counted as an open

5. A text version is opened and read, but the user clicks a link: not counted as an open with some email software. Others assign an open because the email was clicked on, which assumes an open.

To the author's point, consumers engagement with your e-mail could be tracked by measuring clicks on actionable calls to action...but as illustrated by the examples above, you don't necessarily have to click to be involved.

As an example, the image above is a rendering of my May Colorado e-newsletter. While I didn't enable images or click on any links, I did get the message that "May is archaeology month in Colorado" and that there is "no better place to celebrate than Mesa Verde Country."

Engaged? Yes! Tracked? No! My privacy intact? Most definitely! :)

We're curious... how are you measuring the effectiveness of your e-mail newsletters?

E-Mail Marketing Still Works

E-Mail marketing still works...but consumer standards of relevance are high. First, the good news: permission-based e-mail is great at getting consumers to buy. Half of US adult e-mail users surveyed in April 2008 for Merkle's "View from the Inbox" study, conducted with Harris Interactive, said they had made an online purchase in the previous year as a result of permission-based marketing. In addition, e-mail was second only to customer reviews on Web sites for influencing online purchases...and e-mail was roughly equal to search results in terms of influencing online purchases. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Sometimes a little reinforcement is a good thing. This new Harris Interactive study is really no surprise. In fact, we've written about e-mail's adaptability and our addition to it before. Despite the proliferation of social networking, IM and texting, e-mail remains an integral part of our daily communication routine and doesn't appear to be a dying breed. In fact, feeds via e-mail (and not direct to reader) happens to be how the majority of you subscribe to this blog! But consumers expect some respect from marketers. Consider: Some noteworthy insights from the study:

• About one-third of respondents in the study said they "had stopped doing business with at least one company" as a result of poor e-mail marketing practices

• 53% of e-mail users said that they were only willing to get marketing or promotional messages e-mails if the offers were relevant to them

Another noteworthy story from this survey is the fact that online ads (atleast sales related ones) perform poorly —almost universally—across all age groups. It will certainly be interesting to see how these trends transform over time as the "MySpace Generation" starts to mature.

How Netflix Made Me Smile

Have you made your customers smile lately?

A few weeks ago, I told you about an e-mail snafu at Travel Oregon that resulted in us issuing a tongue-in-cheek "mea culpa" that resulted in phenomenal "love" from our consumers. This week, I was on the receiving end of such an e-mail that reinforced my love for Netflix.

Thoughts:// I was pleasantly surprised when I found this e-mail from Netflix last week. Turns out a shipping error on Monday caused a slight delay in the shipment of our next movie ("The Wind the Shakes the Barley") by two days. Granted, my wife and I are movie fanatics and we did notice the slight delay; but we shrugged it off and chalked it up to some Netflix algorithm that's gently holding back our que.

But as the e-mail mentions, it turns out it was just a "shipping system" outage. Netflix could have definitely let it slip by in the hopes that we wouldn't notice; but the fact that they not only issued a personal apology in addition to a small discount on our next bill is just astounding.

In an age when many big brands simply call a "website" or a rote "monthly e-newsletter" interactive marketing, Netflix's approach is remarkably refreshing.

Travel Trends - Oregon #1, Luv From Southwest

Oregon Is #1 - In honor of the great American road trip, our friends at the IgoUgo blog have selected, in an unscientific way (honestly, we are not sure how they picked them), the top ten 'most dynamic tourism websites'...and look who claimed the top spot, Travel Oregon. Congrats to Mo and the team at Travel Oregon. I am currently placing a request for a recount as we speak.

The top ten are:

1. Travel Oregon
2. Visit Florida
3. South Dakota Tourism
4. Utah Travel Council
   (IgoUgo reviewed the '.com' version, not the 'official,' official '.travel' version.
   
5. Wyoming Tourism
6. Arkansas Tourism
7. New York State Tourism
8. Minnesota Office of Tourism
9. New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism
10. North Carolina Tourism Services

Certainly a singular look at the sites, but still an interesting commentary on what some users are looking for in a travel site.
http://www.igougo.com/

Luv From Southwest - Well known for there 'Luv' campaigns, Southwest sent along a little Valentine's Day card last week to it's Rapid Rewards customers. Honestly, what other airline could get away with such a thing and not look like hypocrites? The email was pretty simple, but included a fun little, brand-hypnotizing, fly your jet through the clouds of love game. Silly, sure, but I still played it.
http://www.southwest.com/

IAB Issues New Lead Generation Policies

The IAB, Interactive Advertising Bureau, has just completed a pretty thorough best practices report on lead generation for B2B and B2C businesses. The report, which is the closest thing to an industry-wide policy on this often abused practice, lays out several guidelines for organizations to follow.

I have been watching this report develop for a little while and would encourage anyone who is gathering leads (names, email, data) online to review the recommendations.

Here are the highlights:

• Complete, accessible, and straightforward disclosure of all parties’ intent regarding data collection and usage is essential

• Data should not be brokered or sold without consent (or notice and choice) of all parties involved, including the consumer and the advertiser

• Both the consumer and the advertiser should be made aware, through clear notices, of all parties involved in data collection and sharing.

• All parties should be educated and aware of current regulations regarding consumer protection and privacy.

Quick Case Study: When Life Hands You Lemons...

Like many of you, Travel Oregon publishes a monthly e-newsletter to keep Oregon "top-of-mind" and build a long term relationship with consumers. We were especially proud of our January issue which was chock full of fabulous getaway/fitness ideas and special events. The edition with the subject line of "Happy New Year from Oregon" was scheduled to go out the week of January 7th.

After the usual "pre-flight" preparations with the editorial team on spelling, punctuation, voice and all that good stuff the edition was ready to go. So imagine my horror when we noticed that the first batch of 40,000 e-newsletters went out the subject line "Step into Spring!"

Upon investigating, we discovered that a "snafu" in the send process resulted in the first batch of consumers getting our April 2007 edition! Yes, 40,000 people received a "spring" message in January when the snow was pilling high on our mountains! If there was ever a moment where I wished I was in one of those "wanna get away" Southwest commercials, this was most definitely it.

Thoughts// One of the core values of marketing that Troy and I have repeatedly talked/written about is "honesty" and "transparency". In an age when brands can be elevated or torn down in an instant by the community, being authentic and true about yourself and your products is the only guaranteed recipe for long term success. So we embraced our mistake and made lemonade; we issued an immediate apology while poking fun at our woeful selves with an irreverent message that read:

"Happy New Year! It's 2008, right? Yeah, we thought so…

While we were getting ready to send you the very latest from Oregon this January – 2008 – it seems "spring fever" hit us early and we mistakenly sent you April's edition – 2007 – instead. Call us sentimental. We love April. Really. No slight to January, of course. We like January in Oregon too. And November. And, well, July is GREAT. But April… oh that April… we're very fond of April.

But, we think you should really get to know Oregon in January… cool, snowy, fluffy, festive, … January rocks in Oregon! So watch your email box for our exciting adventures to be had in January… January 2008. Yes, 2008. With snow levels above normal and Oregon's mountains covered with snowy adventure, it's definitely not spring in Oregon. Is it? No. We're pretty sure it's not.

Anyway, sorry for the mix up… you can come back in April if you like. Did we mention we like April? Have a wonderful 2008… get out and enjoy the snow!

The Editors"

The price of transparency? LOVE (or sweet lemonade). We actually got more positive feedback on the apology than response to the original "April" email or the typical monthly e-newsletter! Here is a sampling....

• That was, by far, the most entertaining e-mail slip-up apology ever. Well, maybe not as bad as the time I tried to weasel out of insulting my father-in-law by way of the "reply" button instead of "forward", but... bravo. :) - Cara S.

• Too cute. Loved the email! - Bonnie & Dan H.

• Very cute! I LOVE everything you do no matter what the month or year. Even the mistakes. Did you know you’re even more lovable when you can admit your mistakes and laugh at them? I love a great sense of humor! You made me smile. I’ll be with you every month and year in Oregon. - Lori P-H.

• I love an organization where people have a sense of humor and don't take themselves too seriously. We are all human! And don't worry, I won't cancel my (free) email subscription! :)- aerosmithchik

To be fair, we did have one really negative comment and had a few folks who unsubscribed. But the overall responses was so positive and supportive that we were absolutely blown away.

Lessons learned? 1) Embrace mistakes faster; 2) Keep sending wrong e-mail editions to keep 'em guessing (just kidding!)

Happy Friday!

Quick Case Study: Email Appearance

For those of you sending emails...which I would imagine is most of you...make sure you take the time to test the appearance of your email messages in a variety of browsers and ISPs prior to sending the message.

For instance, take a look at the example I received today from South Carolina.

Here is what the email looked like when I viewed it in Outlook (via the Reading Pane option):


Not that appealing.

As you can see, Microsoft Outlook (which we all know is just trying to protect me from people like that guy in Africa with the $5 million dollars) has decided to block all of the images within the email. Which, in this case (due to the HTML coding) makes the email nearly impossible to decipher.

At this point, I think you can safely assume that most users reach for the delete key.

Here is how the email is suppose to look:


Ah, that is better. And a pretty good looking email, too.

Now, I should not pick on South Carolina too much for this mistake, because I know (like many of you as well) I am guilty of the same error.

However, with the amount of advertising clutter the average traveler wades through each day, you need to ensure that they can quickly recognize your message.

Travel Trends - Mobile, Email

ESPN Sees Huge Growth From Mobile Site - Some intriguing stats from sports-industry giant ESPN on the use of mobile internet. According to reports, the NFL section of ESPN.com received 4.5 million visits over a 24-hour period, while during the same period the mobile version of the same section received 4.9 million visits. As mentioned in the article the sports, news, email and weather categories are intuitive resources for mobile phone users, however the fact that this threshold has been crossed in still quite astounding.
http://adage.com/ (re-post by RCR Wireless News)

2007 Consumer Email Snapshot - Great stats from EmailLabs / Jupiter Research on consumer email usage in 2007.

Email statistics presented by JupiterResearch vice president David Daniels, at the Email Insider Summit in Park City, Utah, Dec. 2007:

How Do Online Consumers Spend Their Time?

87%: Read email
70%: Search for information
64%: Do search
60%: Shop
37%: Use instant messaging

Email Usage

274: Average number of personal emails weekly
304 : Average number of business emails weekly
26%: Opt-in email campaigns as percentage of total inbox email
74% : Email users with 2 email accounts
18%: Email users who use mobile devices to sort email

Unsubscribing Behavior

53%: Say email is irrelevant
40%: Say email comes too often
26%: Unsubscribe using spam button

http://www.emaillabs.com

You've Got Mail 2.0

Ignore Orkut, OpenSocial, Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360. Google and Yahoo have come up with new and very similar plans to respond to the challenge from MySpace and Facebook: They hope to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services (iGoogle and MyYahoo) into social networks.

Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph — the connections between people. That’s why the social networks offer to import the e-mail address books of new users to jump-start their list of friends. Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Saul Hansell at the New York Times gave readers a glimpse into some potentially big plans for internet giants Yahoo! and Google via the Bits blog. While the story is quite in-depth and a good summary of what these two companies might be planning, the subtle hint for any email marketer comes in this line from Yahoo!'s Brad Garlinghouse:

First, the e-mail service is made more personal because it displays messages more prominently from people who are more important to you. Yahoo is testing a method that can automatically determine the strength of your relationship to someone by how often you exchange e-mail and instant messages with him or her.

Makes sense, I would rather see the emails from my family and friends before emails from HP or AT&T. And there is the problem for marketers...displays messages more prominently from people who are more important to you...read, your email about a fare sale on airline X is going to be visually less important than an email from Aunt Ruth.

Granted, this type of program is not going to happen overnight...no need to start canceling your email campaigns...but as a good marketer it is something you should be thinking of. And more importantly, start thinking about how you are communicating with your email database currently. Is your database a loyal collection of consumers who want and enjoy your emails or is it a huge list of names that you blast correspondence to every once and a while?

Engage your email database and create a relationship with them. So that your email is not discarded to the bottom of the pile.

Travel Trends - Email, MySpace, Tacoda, AOL

Addicted To Email - According to a recent survey, the typical user checks their email an average of 5 times per day. In addition, 15% of those surveyed consider themselves 'addicted' to email. And most users have more than one email account...half (52%) have two or three accounts, while 22% have four or more.
http://www.mediapost.com

29,000 Sex Offenders Identified On MySpace - While certainly not a shock to anyone familiar with the ease of registering on MySpace, the news that the company has identified 29,000 sex offenders that were members of the site does cause a great deal of concern for companies using MySpace as a promotional tool. As with any ad campaign or marketing effort, attention must be paid to how the medium will affect the consumers and in this case, the repercussions of using such a public forum to deliver a brand message. The scary part of this story is that these 29,000 are only the users who registered with their real names.
http://www.adage.com

AOL Buys Ad Firm Tacoda - AOL has purchased behavioral targeting ad firm Tacoda. The deal, which brings AOL into the ad network buying frenzy, could mark an important turning point for behavioral targeting. In the past, most major portals steered clear of such ad delivering methods due to consumer privacy concerns, but with AOL clearly supporting behavorial targeting, the technology may finally clear the privacy hurtle once and for all.
http://www.cnet.com

Email Defines, Not Defies, Innovation

At least once a year, I have the same old conversation with people who want to zero email out when dividing up the marketing dollars by claiming it’s a stale technology that can’t keep up with innovative digital applications like RSS, social networking, SMS marketing and microblogging (Twitter, for instance) >>Full Story

Thoughts// Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same! As "clutter-prone" as email is, the writer argues that email's adaptability—it's ability to "reinvent itself, overcome performance challenges, integrate with other technologies and channels"—makes it an "innovative" and attractive over "new" and "cool" platforms such as Twitter that don't have real world applications.

Email Experts on the new Outlook

Microsoft caused a stir in the e-mail marketing world when it was learned that its Outlook 2007 e-mail client would not support cascading style sheets, flash or animated GIFs, JavaScript and forms. While many experts are pessimistic about the effects of these changes on deliverability and user experience, others suggest that the rendering issues will impel marketers to create simpler and more uniform e-mail products. >> Full Story

Thoughts// The new restrictions of Outlook 2007 should be taken into consideration in our email marketing campaigns, however Flash, animated GIFs, forms and JavaScript elements should not be used in our email marketing to begin with. CSS (cascading style sheets) could be used, but a simple work around is available.