You’ve got email...

Email marketing has changed the way, the travel industry markets its products to the consumers. finds out reasons that makes it a preferred medium of communication for the industry.

PEDEN DOMA BHUTIA Email

marketing does not just help one to update customers about various product offerings, launches or special offers but also helps in campaigns run via traditional media like print, TV or radio.

As Madhav Pai, COO, Leisure Travel (Outbound), Thomas Cook (India), rightly puts it, “Email marketing has been very impactful for the travel industry. It helps us connect directly to our existing and probable customers. It is one of the crucial aspects of travel marketing as it reaches out to a large number of people at the same time. Nowadays, most people have email configuration on their cell phones. Additionally, it is available in their mailbox; therefore people have easy accessibility to our offers from anywhere, unlike a print or TV ad flash. This helps in continuous visibility at value pricing, quick launch of special promotions and distribution to the target audience.”

Gaurav Chiripal, CEO, Quadlabs, also agrees that email marketing ensures higher product visibility for today’s travel industry. Being one of the fastest delivery systems, emails also promise a quicker turnaround of campaigns.

Chiripal adds, “We don’t just sell our products through this exercise, we also build relationships. The constant contact with our customers, gives us the opportunity to be seen and recalled by them, particularly when they are trying to make a buying decision. It also becomes easier to trace the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns through the clicks or responses we get while following this practice. We are able to customise our messages every time we market our product or we launch something new and target specific users or geographies.”

However, the spam box is a major deterrent for all. Tarun Lakhanpal, Deputy General Manager - Revenue Management and Distribution, The Lemon Tree Hotel, reiterates, “In Lemon Tree hotels we don’t use the word discount in our mails as this makes them land in the spam box. As a company, we are inclined towards digital marketing, because, here the return on investment is measurable. Email marketing helps us engage with our customers but your message has to be relevant to the consumer. It has to continuously follow the consumer. There is a lot of clutter in the digital world but you need to start with where your matrix is. Email marketing has to be targetted and driven by superior analytics.”

Talking about how companies take pains to ensure that the mail doesn’t land in the spam box, Chiripal adds, “The subject and content is made appropriate so that the message is righteously conveyed, is creative and attractive to read. In order to avoid spam repercussions, we give them an option of opt in, opt out of subscription. There are a few times when the mails are deleted by the customer without even being read. Sometimes they are deemed as spam and hence filtered or rejected, remaining undelivered. In order to avoid this we make sure that email marketing is not overdone.”

Pai too exercises a word of caution, “Sending too many emails over a short span of time is not effective. It should be sustained with uniform intervals as overloading customers with one brand information could cause negativity towards the brand, especially if it is a product or a service they do not require at that point of time.”

Never mind the disadvantages; email marketing sure seems to be catching up as a favoured medium for the industry.