When you work with a new client, you do research on It. That's what I do too. I was hired for a cruise conference. As it was a new industry for me, I telephoned several different cruise line sales managers for insight. A question I always ask is do you know someone with a good marketing story? Every single one from Sun to Cunard to Royal Caribbean said call Bob and Beth Malcolm. So I did.
When I got Bob on the phone I said "Bob, tell me, what is your story? Why is everyone telling me to call you for a good marketing story?
Bob replied "Well Debbie, I think I know what you're referring to, but first I need to take you back 15 years. When Beth and I started our travel agency in Brisbane we weren't in a spot with foot traffic. We knew we had to do something different. We decided right from the start we were going to develop and keep a very good database. And we have. Now the story I think you're referring to was when last year our cruise wholesaler gave us only two days' notice before launching to the general public a unique cruise around Australia created with P & O lines."
I said to Beth "Honey what should we do"? Beth replied simply "let's send an email to our database." So we went and pulled out everyone that had been on a 3-4 week cruise and everyone that had been on that specific ship. We sent them a plain text email, couple of paragraphs letting them know about the opportunity, saying if they booked now they had the choice of the entire ship and offering ½ price travel insurance.
"So how did you do Bob" I asked? "Within two days we booked 60 passages. We brought in $1,000,000 from that email."
