Digital Marketing - Travel Agency Newsletters
A newsletter is one of the best vehicles for building long term relationships with your existing customers and for marketing to potential clients. A newsletter reinforces your company brand and gives you many opportunities to market both strategically and tactically. Newsletters educate, inform, but most importantly, engage your clients, helping to retain them over the long-term.
Satisfied subscribers to a company newsletter are more likely to choose your company when making a purchasing decision. A travel agency newsletter with a readership of dozens, even hundreds, of readers is a very serious and valuable asset for your company. It gives you a marketing channel by which you can reach out and touch the clients closest to you at a minimal expense. Develop an Editorial Statement Every newsletter should have an editorial statement. This rather simple and often-stated idea is also often ignored. Too many newsletters are simply produced one after the other without an underlying, consistent theme informing the content, production and distribution. One of the best ways to develop an editorial statement is to begin with your company’s brand message: a short, concise statement of your company’s unique selling point – the reason clients would rather do business with you than with a competitor or by self-booking. The focus should be client-centric: to whom are you speaking? |
For example, if your company brand is centered on luxury and high end travel, successive articles about budget travel, discounts and traveling cheaply would be a real disconnect. Likewise, if your brand is focused on a particular demographic, for example college students, articles on high-end hotel chains and luxury cruising would be misplaced. A strong editorial statement will focus on your target audience and will set natural guidelines for your content selection and editorial discretion.
In the example above, note Travelhoppers is building its brand throughout, establishing a relationship with the reader, providing interesting content in an authoritative, expert way. The tone and content, in turn, provide an avenue to then provide a tactical sales opportunity for a Fall Foliage trip in a logical and reasonable context where the value of the information provided supports the value of the trip the newsletter offers.
Whether you have a travel newsletter already or whether you are contemplating one, spend a few moments seeing if you can succinctly state an editorial mission. Are you there to inform? Educate? Sell? Reinforce your brand? Which of these aspects will dominate?
Content and Tone of Voice
Your editorial statement will assist you in your selecting appropriate content and tone of voice by taking into full consideration your target audience. The tone of voice that you use in your content will be more authentic when it speaks directly to your market. You want the voice of your writing to be recognizable and sympathetic to your readers. A reader will encounter your newsletter in their inbox – space that is very personal and into which only recognized friends are truly welcome. With that in mind, the importance of knowing and empathizing with your target audience is evident. Because your initial readers will come from your existing client list, work back and forth between your branding message the demographic characteristics of your existing readership to determine that your editorial statement and, therefore, your content and tone of voice are authentic and likely to be welcomed.
Consider the demographic of your readership and develop content guidelines. Spend time reviewing other newsletters and choose articles that appeal to your own sensibilities. If you decide to write your own articles, resources such as USA Today or Budget Travel can provide you with ideas for topics.
Adopt a publishing schedule that is comfortable for you to meet. Beginning with an overly ambitious program, for example weekly, can cause both your readership and your editorial staff to burn out. Think of your newsletter as a long-term communications tool and don’t feel compelled to over-expose it. On the other hand, if you publish too infrequently, clients will not develop the attachment to the newsletter you want to foster. For most consumer newsletters, a schedule that runs between bi-weekly to bi-monthly seems to work.
Be regular and consistent in your editorial oversight. Set a schedule and stick to it for collecting article ideas, editing and formatting your newsletter. Begin planning the next newsletter as soon as the last one is out the door. You will be more closely attuned to your topics and the rhythm of the newsletter’s voice. Try to be consistent with the day of the week or month and even the time of day you send the newsletter. Clients will respond to the consistency.
Pay close attention to the articles your readers respond to most, and then find similar topics for future editions. If your newsletter is electronic, track the hits against each story to measure popularity. If cruise stories rank high, for example, you have an excellent monitor for future editions. While allowing some variance for improvement, stay consistent with your layout once you have a good look and feel. Your readers will develop a familiarity with where to look for particular topics or specials and you don’t want to require them to hunt for important information.
Keep a notebook or a file for good ideas and information to include in future issues. Read as much as possible from consumer magazines, newspapers and other newsletter for ideas and concepts that you can borrow for your own publication. Print or tear out articles from other sources and place them in your ideas file. Watch consumer oriented travel communities online for ideas and to determine what topics matter the most to travelers like your readership.
Travel is a topic often targeted by spam filters. Keep a few free test accounts at services like AOL, Yahoo and Gmail to test each newsletter. If the spam filters in those accounts catch your newsletters, try to determine what words in your copy are triggering the spam response and re-word the articles or headlines.
If at all possible, let your newsletter sit for a day or two after it is finished and before you publish it. Step away from it and then return with a fresh mind. Look at your stories and articles, your headlines, to determine if you are still happy with them. You may save yourself some problems by a good review prior to sending your newsletter ambassador out the door.
Design Elements
One of the best places to begin developing a design for a newsletter is with the templates provided by third-party email service providers such as Travmarket. These programs provide a consistent look and feel and typically many different variations are available. You can also opt to design a template from scratch. This latter option I would recommend only for those most adept at graphic design. It is very important for your newsletter to have a professional look and feel as it is a regular ambassador for your brand.
Keep your design simple. A very popular format is to place bold headlines and a short lead-in to the article with a link to the full story. This allows your reader to quickly scan the newsletter for articles of interest.
Place your company logo in a very visible place on the newsletter to clearly identify your brand. Don’t clutter the whitespace with too many graphics and pictures. If you want to use pictures, consider licensing them from a site such as Shutterstock or iStockphoto, both of which have very reasonable rates on a large library of photographs.
A strong newsletter will retain the attention of your readership for years to come. Done correctly, your company will be top-of-mind when the reader next thinks about travel.
Building Your Email List
Building a strong list of subscribers should be a goal on which you continually work. Patience is the key as it takes time to accumulate a stable base of subscribers, but the end result is a very valuable asset for your agency. Know first that it is possible to buy and rent lists of consumers in almost any geographical market. The quality of such lists vary, but in general are very weak in comparison to lists you build yourself. In addition, purchased lists are typically of such low quality they can get you banned from third-party email service providers like Travmarket.
Far better than buying a list is the process of cross-marketing with another retailer. You provide a link to your retail partner’s newsletter in your publication and vice versa. Some of your partner’s clients will sign up for your newsletter and some of your clients will sign up for your partner’s newsletter. With proper incentives, cross-marketing is an excellent opportunity to bring on new subscribers to your list.
Your website or blog are primary tools for name acquisition. Have a simple signup form on your website to accumulate names from persons who might view your site. Don’t confine your sign-up form to only one page of your site. Put it on multiple pages and make registration easily accessible. Only request information you really need, and avoid intimate requests for information such as age or income level. Keep it simple!
Some agencies will include an incentive for signing up for the newsletter, like a free report (known as an "Incredible Free Offer" or IFO) on a timely topic – “The top 10 ways to save money when traveling” or “5 Travel Scams To Avoid“. List the benefits of your newsletters, like travel insights and tips. Keep an archive of newsletters on the site to allow visitors to see past issues. Put information about your newsletter in all of your documents when you deliver them to clients. Reminding clients of the other communications tools you have for their benefit will contribute to the overall relationship you already enjoy with them. When working with new clients in person, ask for their permission to send your newsletter to them and have an email field on your client profiles. Likewise, when attending tradeshows set up a sign-up list for people to subscribe by leaving a business card or by physically signing a form.
Many of the marketing funnels provided by Travmarket are designed to increase your email list. Be sure to use a system where your emails can be segmented by the individual preferences of the people in your database. You don't want to be sending cruise newsletters to people who don't want to cruise!
On each copy of your newsletter, include a “forwarding” option to allow the user to send it along to someone else who may be interested. Finally, if you belong to clubs, social groups or other organizations, place a sign-up sheet for your newsletter on the community bulletin board.
Again, patience is a virtue when building up a list of addresses, but the end-result is a valuable marketing channel for your agency.
Travel Agency Newsletters – Building Relationships with Clients
In the example above, note Travelhoppers is building its brand throughout, establishing a relationship with the reader, providing interesting content in an authoritative, expert way. The tone and content, in turn, provide an avenue to then provide a tactical sales opportunity for a Fall Foliage trip in a logical and reasonable context where the value of the information provided supports the value of the trip the newsletter offers.
Whether you have a travel newsletter already or whether you are contemplating one, spend a few moments seeing if you can succinctly state an editorial mission. Are you there to inform? Educate? Sell? Reinforce your brand? Which of these aspects will dominate?
Content and Tone of Voice
Your editorial statement will assist you in your selecting appropriate content and tone of voice by taking into full consideration your target audience. The tone of voice that you use in your content will be more authentic when it speaks directly to your market. You want the voice of your writing to be recognizable and sympathetic to your readers. A reader will encounter your newsletter in their inbox – space that is very personal and into which only recognized friends are truly welcome. With that in mind, the importance of knowing and empathizing with your target audience is evident. Because your initial readers will come from your existing client list, work back and forth between your branding message the demographic characteristics of your existing readership to determine that your editorial statement and, therefore, your content and tone of voice are authentic and likely to be welcomed.
Consider the demographic of your readership and develop content guidelines. Spend time reviewing other newsletters and choose articles that appeal to your own sensibilities. If you decide to write your own articles, resources such as USA Today or Budget Travel can provide you with ideas for topics.
Adopt a publishing schedule that is comfortable for you to meet. Beginning with an overly ambitious program, for example weekly, can cause both your readership and your editorial staff to burn out. Think of your newsletter as a long-term communications tool and don’t feel compelled to over-expose it. On the other hand, if you publish too infrequently, clients will not develop the attachment to the newsletter you want to foster. For most consumer newsletters, a schedule that runs between bi-weekly to bi-monthly seems to work.
Be regular and consistent in your editorial oversight. Set a schedule and stick to it for collecting article ideas, editing and formatting your newsletter. Begin planning the next newsletter as soon as the last one is out the door. You will be more closely attuned to your topics and the rhythm of the newsletter’s voice. Try to be consistent with the day of the week or month and even the time of day you send the newsletter. Clients will respond to the consistency.
Pay close attention to the articles your readers respond to most, and then find similar topics for future editions. If your newsletter is electronic, track the hits against each story to measure popularity. If cruise stories rank high, for example, you have an excellent monitor for future editions. While allowing some variance for improvement, stay consistent with your layout once you have a good look and feel. Your readers will develop a familiarity with where to look for particular topics or specials and you don’t want to require them to hunt for important information.
Keep a notebook or a file for good ideas and information to include in future issues. Read as much as possible from consumer magazines, newspapers and other newsletter for ideas and concepts that you can borrow for your own publication. Print or tear out articles from other sources and place them in your ideas file. Watch consumer oriented travel communities online for ideas and to determine what topics matter the most to travelers like your readership.
Travel is a topic often targeted by spam filters. Keep a few free test accounts at services like AOL, Yahoo and Gmail to test each newsletter. If the spam filters in those accounts catch your newsletters, try to determine what words in your copy are triggering the spam response and re-word the articles or headlines.
If at all possible, let your newsletter sit for a day or two after it is finished and before you publish it. Step away from it and then return with a fresh mind. Look at your stories and articles, your headlines, to determine if you are still happy with them. You may save yourself some problems by a good review prior to sending your newsletter ambassador out the door.
Design Elements
One of the best places to begin developing a design for a newsletter is with the templates provided by third-party email service providers such as Travmarket. These programs provide a consistent look and feel and typically many different variations are available. You can also opt to design a template from scratch. This latter option I would recommend only for those most adept at graphic design. It is very important for your newsletter to have a professional look and feel as it is a regular ambassador for your brand.
Keep your design simple. A very popular format is to place bold headlines and a short lead-in to the article with a link to the full story. This allows your reader to quickly scan the newsletter for articles of interest.
Place your company logo in a very visible place on the newsletter to clearly identify your brand. Don’t clutter the whitespace with too many graphics and pictures. If you want to use pictures, consider licensing them from a site such as Shutterstock or iStockphoto, both of which have very reasonable rates on a large library of photographs.
A strong newsletter will retain the attention of your readership for years to come. Done correctly, your company will be top-of-mind when the reader next thinks about travel.
Building Your Email List
Building a strong list of subscribers should be a goal on which you continually work. Patience is the key as it takes time to accumulate a stable base of subscribers, but the end result is a very valuable asset for your agency. Know first that it is possible to buy and rent lists of consumers in almost any geographical market. The quality of such lists vary, but in general are very weak in comparison to lists you build yourself. In addition, purchased lists are typically of such low quality they can get you banned from third-party email service providers like Travmarket.
Far better than buying a list is the process of cross-marketing with another retailer. You provide a link to your retail partner’s newsletter in your publication and vice versa. Some of your partner’s clients will sign up for your newsletter and some of your clients will sign up for your partner’s newsletter. With proper incentives, cross-marketing is an excellent opportunity to bring on new subscribers to your list.
Your website or blog are primary tools for name acquisition. Have a simple signup form on your website to accumulate names from persons who might view your site. Don’t confine your sign-up form to only one page of your site. Put it on multiple pages and make registration easily accessible. Only request information you really need, and avoid intimate requests for information such as age or income level. Keep it simple!
Some agencies will include an incentive for signing up for the newsletter, like a free report (known as an "Incredible Free Offer" or IFO) on a timely topic – “The top 10 ways to save money when traveling” or “5 Travel Scams To Avoid“. List the benefits of your newsletters, like travel insights and tips. Keep an archive of newsletters on the site to allow visitors to see past issues. Put information about your newsletter in all of your documents when you deliver them to clients. Reminding clients of the other communications tools you have for their benefit will contribute to the overall relationship you already enjoy with them. When working with new clients in person, ask for their permission to send your newsletter to them and have an email field on your client profiles. Likewise, when attending tradeshows set up a sign-up list for people to subscribe by leaving a business card or by physically signing a form.
Many of the marketing funnels provided by Travmarket are designed to increase your email list. Be sure to use a system where your emails can be segmented by the individual preferences of the people in your database. You don't want to be sending cruise newsletters to people who don't want to cruise!
On each copy of your newsletter, include a “forwarding” option to allow the user to send it along to someone else who may be interested. Finally, if you belong to clubs, social groups or other organizations, place a sign-up sheet for your newsletter on the community bulletin board.
Again, patience is a virtue when building up a list of addresses, but the end-result is a valuable marketing channel for your agency.
Travel Agency Newsletters – Building Relationships with Clients
Quality content is the heart of a newsletter. Good content can make up for poor design, but even the most exquisitely laid out newsletter cannot overcome poor content.
While you may choose to include information on your agency, your clients want information that benefits and educates them. Thus, the person in charge of writing your newsletter or choosing the content must be extraordinarily familiar with your readership. The same person should be in charge of the newsletter each publication date to ensure continuity and a familiarity of voice. Certainly a client-centric perspective is essential, and so is an authentic voice – the tone and personality of the writing style. Your readers don’t want impersonal, bland writing, no matter how perfectly crafted. They want passion, they want personality and they crave style. Each of these characteristics should flow from your own personal sense of the importance of travel in their lives. The more clearly your true personality is on display, the better you are able to form a genuine relationship with your readers. |
Like all relationships, a newsletter should never be one-way communication. From the earliest days of publication, letters to the editor and guest columns appeared as ways of further engaging readership. Speak to your readers in such a way as to invite dialogue. Never talk down with jargon filled prose, but rather talk with your readers, solicit their opinion and keep alive your own sense of inquiry.
A good newsletter will invite feedback. In some instances that feedback will be in the form of comments visible to all readers, such as on a blog. At other times, feedback may involve emails from readers. In either case, the same editor that chooses the content should also be closely involved with the process of addressing reader comments. Feedback is an opportunity to fine-tune the editorial voice and the content selection, making sure that the entire newsletter continually addresses the needs of the readers.
Indeed, you will want your newsletter to be as interactive as possible. Each interaction with a client is an opportunity to better engage that reader in your company’s brand. Inviting your readers to take short, interesting surveys or to submit letters or questions to the editor or experts in your agency is an excellent way of engaging your audience in a newsletter and to create a sense of continuity from edition to edition as you publish answers and results. Your clients will feel a part of the greater community with your agency at the center.
If you are not receiving feedback on your newsletter, there is a good chance that your content is not commanding the attention you desire. Periodically, ask clients for direct feedback on your newsletter. Ask them when you are booking travel or when you are delivering documents if they are receiving the newsletter and whether they find it useful. Do not hesitate to ask what types of articles they would like to see or what information they would find most useful. Again, involving your clients in the process of crafting your communications means a more precisely targeted and effective newsletter will result.
A good newsletter will invite feedback. In some instances that feedback will be in the form of comments visible to all readers, such as on a blog. At other times, feedback may involve emails from readers. In either case, the same editor that chooses the content should also be closely involved with the process of addressing reader comments. Feedback is an opportunity to fine-tune the editorial voice and the content selection, making sure that the entire newsletter continually addresses the needs of the readers.
Indeed, you will want your newsletter to be as interactive as possible. Each interaction with a client is an opportunity to better engage that reader in your company’s brand. Inviting your readers to take short, interesting surveys or to submit letters or questions to the editor or experts in your agency is an excellent way of engaging your audience in a newsletter and to create a sense of continuity from edition to edition as you publish answers and results. Your clients will feel a part of the greater community with your agency at the center.
If you are not receiving feedback on your newsletter, there is a good chance that your content is not commanding the attention you desire. Periodically, ask clients for direct feedback on your newsletter. Ask them when you are booking travel or when you are delivering documents if they are receiving the newsletter and whether they find it useful. Do not hesitate to ask what types of articles they would like to see or what information they would find most useful. Again, involving your clients in the process of crafting your communications means a more precisely targeted and effective newsletter will result.
Exercise:
If you have a company newsletter, it's time to give it a good "once over." Spend some time looking at every element. Are you consciously establishing a relationship with your readers? Are you encouraging a dialogue? Are you building trust? Are you inspiring people or just trying to sell travel?
If you don't have a newsletter, consider putting a program into place. Give due consideration to your time constraints and seek out assistance with any aspect of your plan with which you are not comfortable whether that be the editorial content or the technical aspects.
Monitor your readership and invite feedback!
If you have a company newsletter, it's time to give it a good "once over." Spend some time looking at every element. Are you consciously establishing a relationship with your readers? Are you encouraging a dialogue? Are you building trust? Are you inspiring people or just trying to sell travel?
If you don't have a newsletter, consider putting a program into place. Give due consideration to your time constraints and seek out assistance with any aspect of your plan with which you are not comfortable whether that be the editorial content or the technical aspects.
Monitor your readership and invite feedback!