Customer specific e-mail campaigns for travellers
Encouraged by its recent customer specific e-mail marketing results, US-based travel operator Carlson Wagonlit Travel is to equip almost 1,000 of its US franchise offices with a customer-specific, graphically rich e-mail marketing system, provided by ExactTarget.
The e-mail system, ChannelConnect, will allow the travel firm's franchise associates to incorporate local promotions, messages from local agents, exact airfares from the local airport, and other local content into e-mail messages for specific customers.
The customised marketing campaigns, orchestrated by the franchise offices themselves, targets clients with specific demographic profiles and interests (such as cruises, family holidays, or Hawaiian holidays) by segmenting customer lists accordingly.
Integration ChannelConnect has already been integrated with Carlson's CRM database, building up e-mail tracking data on customer interests to help build customer profiles for future segmentation.
The franchisee rollout follows a successful trial by Carlson's marketing department, which has used the system to design, deliver and track e-mail communications to an opt-in list of nearly 90,000 customers since July 2002.
The system automatically monitors and records e-mail delivery and 'click-through' rates, allowing marketing personnel work without assistance from technical staff.
Multi-stage branding The software uses what ExactTarget calls a "lock and publish" feature, which allows local franchise offices to insert the text and images of their choice into corporate templates, which also lock corporate branding into place for a consistent look and feel.
The names, photographs and contact information of individual office associates can also be dynamically inserted for a truly personal feel to each e-mail message.
"The system has dramatically improved our e-mail promotion efforts at the corporate level, and we expect it to do the same for our local agencies," said Roger Block, executive vice president for Carlson Wagonlit Travel's associates division.
Peter McCormick, ExactTarget's vice president of marketing, added: "Corporate marketers can deliver branded content with the assurance that it will remain intact, while franchisees can localise the message and personalise the e-mail."
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