Benoit Marketing

I just did a quick analysis of the latest e-letter that went out on Nov. 21. I was curious to see if the list is tiring, producing a lower response or if the response had dropped due to the economy. This is one marketing tool that continues to get a good response and one that is trackable.

Constant Contact notes that in the hotel/travel industry an open rate of about 20% is average; your open rate is a healthy 24.4% with a click through rate of 26%. Compared to the last three months, there has seen no decrease in response through e-mail marketing.

See the chart below and I’ve included a Key with explanation of terms.

E-mail Response Analysis
November 27, 2008
Sent E-mails                 Opens               Clicks              Forwards

1132                            24.4%                 25.9%                  0.4%

Results last 3 months:
5977                           24.2%                  23.0%                  0.2%

Also to take it a step further, these are the links within the e-mail that received click throughs. This tells me your customers are very much interested in discounts, specials and are loyal customers with almost 26% clicking through to see more information.

Specials page 34%

Weather link 19%

Home page 17%

NWA or MT Travel 16%

Guest perks 10%

Special events 4%

Good web traffic is generated throughout the e-mail. We also noticed the day after this e-mail went out a bump in web site visitors. Remember that even though you may not make a sale on the day the e-mail goes out, the long term affect of e-marketing and the percentage of business booked offline is usually high.