Hi

It certainly feels like the industry is looking forward to restarting... even if the media feeds us all something else and we have an email template to inspire your clients with diverse destinations this week.

In today's email:

• this week's template
• New Tutorial on creating an email in just 3 minutes using Marketing Manager
• Add some interaction to your email content with a social media survey ( images assets available in the template library)
• A podcast worth listening to
• The Adventure Travel Conference
• Maximise Value of Your Business, If you are not selling holidays, work on your business

We've been busier with enquiries for websites and CRM / Email Marketing / Marketing Tools than we have for a while, with operators and agents exploring how best to promote themselves this year and looking forward to a restart.

There is no doubt that email is far and away the best way of promoting yourself - I saw this chart below this week ( this is consumers answering the question). Look at how email outstrips other media.

Today's template

"Wish you were here? 3 of our favourite trips to cheer up January"

For users of TravelmailPro - the template has been added to your email template library and for those of you using Mailchimp - you can access the template from Marketing Manager ( link to templates in the menu as shown below

For those of you that need a quick recap on creating and sending emails in Marketing Manager, you can check out this quick tutorial where I take you through how it only takes 3 minutes to create and send an email with our template using Marketing Manager.

Watch Quick Tutorial

How to add some interaction to this weeks email?

Adding a link to your email on social media and creating a link back from your email to social media posts is a great way of engaging subscribers.

Using Facebook and Instagram questionnaires is a great way of gauging what your subscribers and followers are interested in and just creates a fun interaction to add to the week's email.

Here is some suggested wording you can use - if you don't know how to set up a survey, simply ask people to add in comments.

Suggested Facebook and Instagram Wording

January is a long old month here in the UK, with or without lockdown! Before we say goodbye to January 2021, we wanted to share 3 of favourite January escapes:

1. Skiing in the Rockies, Canada (pure powder!)
2. A ‘new year, new you’ wellness trip to balmy Kerala, India
3. A ‘Green Season’ safari in magical Botswana. 

Which one would be your favourite? Let us know where you’d like to spend January 2022 in the comments below. 

What I've been listening to?

This week marked a milestone in our family. We took our eldest daughter to London to start her first job with Proctor and Gamble as a nutritionist ( albeit remotely for her onboarding and first few weeks).

This Covid allowed journey enabled us to listen to podcasts on the way back which helped to understand some of the misinformation that the news outlets stream on a daily basis. The radio 4 programme 'More or less, behind the stats' showed up some of the misinformation we have all been fed. In particular, it highlighted that far from this lockdown being worse for illness and deaths than the first, the true stats are somewhat different ( one of which is the fact taht last March stats are all wrong and therefore any comparisons with this period are all wrong.... not something anyone ever points out when I watch the news)

Listen here to the podcast

Adventure Travel Networking Conference

Next week I'm speaking on marketing with a shoestring budget at the Adventure Travel Networking Conference

For any of you selling adventure travel, the event is a great place to update yourself on selling adventure for 2021 and beyond. Yes it's £30, but as it's online you have no travel costs to the normal live event so for a couple of afternoons it's great value and will give you some food for thought for selling adventure travel.

Maximise the Value of Your Business

The sale of Debenhams to Boohoo particularly caught my eye this week. One of my clients said to me when first signed them up...

'It was good enough to be opposite Debenhams, you got the footfall" - he was lamenting it was no longer the case and certainly not after..

Boohoo's acquisition highlights this even better, they don't need the physical shops, just the database and brand.

Of course there will always be a place for high street retail shops - and in specialist travel, some people like to talk directly with the person selling the holiday.

But the value of your business is with your database. A well managed, segmented and active database where you can prove consistent marketing that achieves sales results will not only give you a system that you can manage from a distance with staff, but if you ever do want to sell it will boost the value of the business.

So while sales are quiet, this is a great time to get your database in order and set up your marketing systems. It'll also help your energy, your business is an asset with value, you may not be making sales now, but any work you do now for the future will only increase the value of your business.

So if you are not selling holidays, work on your business to increase the value, you'll feel better and the money will come... albeit a little later.

To your success

Steve