Effective Email Case Study – Expedia
Checking my email last night I noticed some ingenious, personalized email marketing campaigns that I think more businesses should consider (including my own). I felt the need to share these as case studies. There’s a lot to cover, so I’ll split them up. Hopefully I can continue to do these case studies to give props to what works in marketing and why.
The Company: Expedia.com: I’ve always had great service and luck with Expedia
, so they’re my go-to travel site when referencing flight prices, hotels, etc.
The User History: a few days ago I booked a cruise vacation with some friends out of Port Canaveral, 60 minutes or so outside of Orlando. The trip isn’t for almost a full year, so I wanted to just get an idea of flight prices from Oakland to Orlando. I headed over to Expedia to just check out the price ranges and get a feel for how much I’ll have to put aside for a flight. Since the trip is next February, I don’t plan on actually making this purchase until sometime this summer or next fall.
The Subject Line: Find your flight to Orlando backed by our Best Price Guarantee.
The E-Mail:
The Effectiveness: It’s directing a sale that they’re already running to me, a person who has already shown that they are interested in this particular destination. The email contains just enough text to show that it’s paid attention to my user habits and is offering it’s help without trying to make a super hard sale. The links are targeted and there’s not much in the email that’s off topic (see the Seattle to San Francisco rates in the yellow box – unrelated but I don’t blame them for throwing it out there). I do acknowledge that this may be a total coincidence that I happened to be in the market for a flight to Orlando and this routine email may just be perfectly timed, but at least it shows that they do know their audience.
The Result: I honestly think that I may be a bit more likely to make this purchase sooner than I had anticipated because of this email. I am a little bummed that the sale advertised doestn’t lower the price any more than I’d already found on the website (which was probably a sale price in the first place). I will definitely keep an eye out in regards to their Best Price Guarantee, a service that I never realized they offered until receiving the email.
So in conclusion, email marketing can be effective, even when sending to other marketers. It’s always a great learning experience to pay attention to the emails you get and think to yourself, “What can I learn from this?” and apply what you’ve learned to your own job. It’ll improve your performance and you’ll be better off.
Read MoreLink Glossary: Citation
Citation:
- A citation is a reference to an entity. Citation: quote, mention, reference. Citation in the context of the web usually means a HREF link to a location. A Citation count is the count of references to a page on the internet.
I use a lot of citations on my websites, and the reason is really two-fold. There are some theories that this does help your page rank, so I do it. But the MAIN reason I link is just because I want to make references that are easy for my readers to see where I got my information and go straight to the source if they want more information than I provide. It’s just some extra validation to what I throw out there.
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Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin
Link Glossary: One Way Links
One Way Links:
- Links that are not reciprocated by your website. Incoming links to your site that are not returned. These are the best links to have from a search engine optimization point of view.
As they say, there are many ways to skin a cat. You can go out there and comment on blogs or you can add your link to a lot of directories. Most directories require a small fee to give you a one way link but in the end it’s worth it for building your website’s page rank.
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Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin
Dealing with Email Solicitations
More and more lately I’ve been receiving unsolicited business emails. Not spam, just emails from representatives of various companies offering their services to our company. I’m getting a bit more adept to answering these emails when we’re not interested. But it’s still an awkward situation.
So how do you address these things? Is it best to get straight to the point and tell these people politely that you’re not interested? Or should you fill the email with pleasantries and tell them you’ll get back to them if you’re interested? It’s a tricky situation.
My approach lately has been to get straight to the point. Thank them for taking the time to reach out to you, but politely let them know that you’re not in the market for their product or service. Of course if I am interested, I’ll ask for more information. Every time I send a response though I’m always conscious of what the person receiving the email will think. I don’t want them to think that I’m blowing them off, but I also don’t want to lead them on if we’re just not interested in the product or service.
So how do you approach this situation? I’m really curious to hear opinions. Talk back to me!
Read MoreLink Glossary: Off Page Criteria
Off Page Criteria:
- When a search engine ranks pages by using data that is not present on the web page itself. This could be the presences of a directory listing, or the number and quality of inbound links to a page.
This just goes to show that you need to build your link profile with more than just the links on your page. A great way to do this is to get out there and respond to blog comments. But don’t just spam them with your link – join the conversation and really participate. It won’t take that long out of your day and will be worth it in the long run.
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Glossary Definition From The Definitive Guide to Link Buying by Patrick Gavin
Where Online Meets Offline
I should talk about this topic more, but online is just SO fascinating and I’ve been immersed in off line for the last 4 years so it’s routine to me. Since we discontinued our old poorly performing affiliate program at the beginning of February, I’ve been focused on growing our new Reseller Program and much more improved Affiliate Program. We decided, as I’m sure we’re legally bound, to pay out all pending commissions, regardless of whether or not they met our minimum threshold. This meant 400+ checks being processed by accounting, then printed, then signed, then put into envelopes, then posted, then actually put into the mail. This took about a month to get through the internal systems and the checks were sent out a couple weeks ago.
Since many of our affiliates in the old program had long abandoned the program, a lot of checks are coming back unable to be delivered. I’ve been contacting people and resending the checks as I get new addresses, and with every check I’m re-sending I’ve been throwing in one of my business cards. I realize today that this is the epitome of online marketing (affiliate payments) meets off line marketing (business cards).
It just goes to show that you can’t keep exclusively to one medium or another. There’s such a vast audience out there for your product or service – and they’re not all going to be able to be found in one place. It’s important – maybe now more than ever – to integrate your direct mail marketing with landing page testing. Put your produced commercials for television onto the web and get a piece of the viral marketing cookie. Remember the old adage “don’t put all your eggs in once basket” and don’t put all your money into PPC or direct mailing.
Diversify your marketing efforts and remember that just because you’re an internet geek, not all your customers are.
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