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We launched our first web site in 1997 because we were looking for added business. There are 78,000 people in our city, and two other local agencies that we compete with, so we were looking for a way to get the attention of a broader and more geographically diverse group of customers. For the first year, we had no idea what to do with our site. Although we were having small successes with it, we knew we wanted to take it to the next level. A year later, we decided we needed better and more current content. In 1998, we integrated OnlineAgency into our web site. Since then, in spite of the fact that we maintain an ARC appointment, we have completely moved away from airline sales and into upscale and luxury cruise and land packages, which is what we've always wanted to focus on. In each of the last four years we have doubled our cruise and land package revenue. That's 16X growth! What are some of the greatest successes you have had with your web site? Although we have been selling a great deal of luxury travel for the last few years, we had never sold any Abercrombie & Kent or Silversea before this year. Since our web site has been so extremely effective for us, we decided to go for it and promote these new products although we were unsure how our customers would receive them. Soon after we began promoting these two suppliers, we booked: Prior to this year, our Agency only sold about two Radisson Cruises per year. Since the beginning of 2002, Radisson has become our second best selling cruise line. How do you qualify your Sales Leads? We receive requests for travel three ways: by email, phone, or via our web site Quote Request Form through OnlineAgency. When a client fills out a Quote Request Form on our web site, we have a pre-qualified lead right off the bat, because we use the OnlineAgency Quote Request Form we customized for our Agency's needs. The Quote gets emailed to us immediately, so we start off ahead of the game since we already have most of the information necessary to close the sale. We then call the client to discuss his/her needs, armed with that information. If the client phones us, we qualify them using the same types of questions in our online Quote Request Form. If the client emails us, we reply to their e-mail and ask for a phone number, then we call them and proceed as we would if the client phoned in. We will not provide price quotes without first speaking to a client. We believe that if a customer is not serious enough to talk to us, they're not a valid lead. Our agency does not rebate commission, so we waste very little time on clients who are looking for a rebater. What kind of traffic do your web sites receive? Our sites average about 10,000 user sessions per week. We pay very close attention to the statistics that measure which pages are accessed. We like to know what content our customers are looking at since it can help us with our promotions. How do you advertise or promote your web site? We definitely don't rely on just one method. The URLs for both of our web sites appear on everything we print (business cards, stationary, brochures, etc…). We also advertise our URLs in our yellow pages ads and on the sign in our agency's display window. A few years ago, we spent a great deal of time promoting our sites on the major search engines. Our initial promotional success can be attributed to those early efforts. We attracted hundreds of links to our sites and the number of people in our Guest Book really grew. Nearly 7,600 people have now requested to receive our weekly emails that highlight the specials we want to promote. We rely heavily on the Permission email marketing newsletter that we send out through OnlineAgency. How do you define success in web marketing as it relates to your business? When we first went on the web, we expected to attract mostly one-time clients, but we were pleased to learn that we have many repeat Internet clients and many of these clients refer friends to our web site. Because of our knowledge, and our commitment to service, we have many clients who return year after year, knowing that Travel Universal will handle all of their vacation needs. We have found that the way that we do business on the Internet is not really different than doing business locally. We have built our online clientele the old fashioned way, one client at a time (or one group at a time), and that our relationship with our clients is the same whether they are down the street, across the country, or halfway around the world from us.
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