A family ski deal sent to retired cruisers
A tour operator gives you a good offer on a family ski week in February half term. You would like to tell the families who might be interested. Your options are to email your whole list, including retired couples who cruise and solo travellers, or to scroll through old bookings and pick out families by hand. The first annoys people; the second takes an evening.
So often neither happens, and the offer goes on Facebook and nowhere else. Meanwhile, your past client list sits in a mailing tool, with names and email addresses but no idea what anyone has booked, who they travel with, or when they usually plan their trips.
Why your list cannot be targeted
| Useful fact | Where it lives | In your mailing tool? |
|---|---|---|
| Travels with children, and their ages | Passenger details in bookings | No |
| Type of holiday: cruise, ski, beach, tailor-made | Booking components | No |
| Usual booking month and travel month | Booking dates | No |
| Budget range | Booking values | No |
| Marketing consent | Booking forms | Sometimes |
The information exists in your bookings. It simply never reaches the tool you use to send offers.
What untargeted offers cost
Blanket emails increase unsubscribes, which shrinks your list over time. Offers that do not go out at all are missed sales. And you lose the chance to look genuinely helpful: a message saying 'I thought of you when I saw this' works because it is true.
Consent matters too. Emailing people who have not agreed to marketing is a risk under data protection and electronic marketing rules, which your adviser can explain for your situation.
A client list that knows who travels how
- Past bookings are read from your records to build a profile of each client: party type, children's ages, holiday types, destinations, usual booking and travel months, and value range.
- Marketing consent is recorded per client, with where and when it was given. Clients without consent are excluded from offers automatically.
- You choose a segment in a few clicks, such as families with children aged 8 to 14 who have booked a ski or winter holiday before, or clients who usually book summer holidays in January.
- The segment is sent to your email tool, such as Mailchimp or your host's approved tool, or messages are drafted for you to send personally.
- Bookings that follow within a period you choose are linked back to the offer, so you see what worked.
- Children's ages move on automatically each year, so a family is not still treated as having toddlers five years later.
If you want, each offer can also create a short list of clients to call personally, such as your best past clients for a special sailing.
Sending the ski offer to the right families
When the family ski offer arrives, you select families with school-age children who have skied or booked February half term before. The email goes to a few dozen people who are likely to be interested, not to everyone. The retired cruisers receive the river cruise offer instead, a month later, when it suits them.
Over time, you see which types of offer bring bookings for which clients. Your list grows healthier, because people stay subscribed when what they receive is relevant.
This builds on client profiles: preferences and dates for individual relationships, segments for sending the right offer to the right group.
Is your client list working for you?
- Offers go to your whole list or to nobody.
- Your mailing tool knows names and emails only.
- You pick clients for offers by scrolling through old bookings.
- Marketing consent is not clearly recorded.
- You cannot tell which offers led to bookings.