Archive for category General Marketing Tips

One Of Those “Duh” Reminders

If you are like most agencies–home based, brick and mortar, or Internet based; your business is off due to the economy!  It sucks and there is no two ways around it.

But with ClientBase you have one of the most powerful tools at yoru disposal. And as long as you paid your ISP this month, you can easily drum up some business.

Why not query the clients who have made an inquiry in the last six months but have not purchased and send them a reminder that you still exist and want to earn their business? If you have been following my tips, you may even have regions in the reservation cards to target it a little better.

Don’t send them a hard sales pitch. Just say hello, and maybe a link about the new Italian Village at Beaches Turks & Caicos that is currently att 65% off.  I specialize in single parents (read: smaller wallets) and the price from a deluxe room to an oceanfront suite with a separate kid’s room and concierge service was less than $600 for a week. I upgraded 9 of my clients and the end result was $870 more in commission for me!

All with one simple email sent from ClientBase!

Level 2 Res Card Query–>FILTER–>

In the RES CARD CREATE FROM DATE enter the date code  =0,-6,0 (this will look for anything six months prior to the current date)

Go to the RESERVATION CYCLE and pull down and select LEAD.

Now all you need to do is click the EMAIL icon and send a message to the results in the Res Card Manager.

Here’s what the query looks like:

noclient

Res Card Create Date From =0,-6,0 Reservation cycle= LEAD Region/Destination= whatever if you are collecting it

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Email Blasts From ClientBase Part 2

Hopefully, you have the email settings all secure and are ready to send out a blast to your clients.  This is where ClientBase really shines and saves you time!

Perform a query to get your target. It might be a query to ALL clients if you are wishing them a Happy New Year, or it may be something specific–your RCCL DSM just gave you a past guess promotion and you need to target only past RCCL guests.

Once the query is in the main screen, click on the EMAIL icon in the top bar.

From this screen you can select how yo want this email sent out and how you want to order them in the preview pane (coming up). I never change it from the default e-mail. I really don’t care/

You can select to send them to ALL results in the shown query or to SELECTED ones. To select specific profiles (say you could not query it as tight as you would have liked) hold down the CTRL button on your keyboard while clicking the profile. Easch selected profile will remain highlighted.

You can select to which email you want to send this. I reccommend that you select the primary email. If you select all, you run the risk of them feeling spammed. Unless it is an emergency–they ship sank and you will not be sailing tomorrow–stick with the primary.

IMPORTANT 99.9% of the time you ALWAYS want to have the INCLUDE ONLY EMAILS WITH MARKETING PERMISSION CHECKED checked. Marketing permission is checked by default; however if you send an email to someone that has requested you stop–you could be in some legal trouble.

IMPORTANT TOO Do NOT check the USE BCC METHOD OF SENDING EMAIL. It almost seems counter intuitive, but a BCC email is a single email and it is blindly copied to other recipients. Most ISPs will flag you as a spammer when you have a lot of BCC addresses.  Don’t worry, ClientBase will send out individual personalized emails to your clients.

Click OK

Now you are in the compose screen and while you may be sending this to a million people, you only have to create one message. The contact info you see if the first email you will be sending. You can scroll through using the ARROW icons to see the other names.

Enter the subject and compose your message. You can select the mode (and this was defaulted in yesterday’s settings). I prefer to send out a document template (I have a template created that I use all the time); but you can select plain text (boring), Raw HTML (if you have something from a supplier and it is up in the INTERNET MANAGER or if you know HTML or are copying from another source), or formatted text which many agents prefer–it gives you some creativity to insert a logo and change the fonts and so formatting.

You can customize it to your client with their first name and home town and other information if it is in the profile.

Please use the spell check first to make sure.

Preview the document and if you are happy….

SEND ALL (Send current will send the currently displayed email only)

After they are sent, you will see how many were sent successfully. If there were errors, look at the report and correct them–usually it is a comma instead of a dot in an email address or an errant space that is the culprit. Click OK and then CLOSE.

You will be promoted to CREATE A MAILER. Absolutely. Click YES and then you will see a summary of the email you sent. You can change the subject to something that might be more meaningful to you (if the subject to your clients said Great Cruise Specials, you may want to change it to January 08 Special From DSM).  Click OK again and ClientBase will attach that mailer to each and every client profile.

Now the next time you need to follow up, you can see exactly what they were sent!

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Wake Up Call!

If anyone tuned into the Travel Weekly virtual show yesterday, Mike Batt (CEO of Travel Leaders–formerly Carlson Wagonlit Travel Associates) had some pretty stern (and frightening words):

  • Expect a 20% drop in revenue this coming year
  • To build your business you will need to steal your clients

Everyone says that when the going gets tough, the tough get marketing. I definately see the logic in that concept, but from an agency owner that has lived throguh commission cuts and elimination, SARS, 911, and a war, I can tell you the wallet tends to disagree.

Well, remember to use ClientBase to your advantage. The price is minimal, and you have such a HUGE marketing tool at your fingertips.

Email is cheap. ClientBase has a great email engine to get both your targeted and general messages out. Utilize targeted marketing with your existing clients and send them relevant information when they need it. You will be a hero in your preferred suppliers’ eyes.

As for stealing clients…well, you ought to know how many (or who) is disappointed with their experience with you, so you know there are others disappointed with their web or brick and mortar agency as well. Start a blog, participate in travel forums like Cruise Critic. Get your name out there however and whenever you can. 2009 will be a year for guerrilla marketing. I hate to use a tired term but really–think out of the box!

Make a resolution that for 2009, each week you will use the program just a little bit more and learn a bit more.

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