How Email Marketing Increased RFPs for One DMO

You may have heard that email is dead, but we’ve found that nothing could be further from the truth. According to a survey from the Professional Conventions Management Association, email marketing is the most effective way to communicate with meeting planners. Meeting planners want to see meeting-relevant destination news, updates on new meeting properties and amenities and information on key industries within the destination. Despite popular belief, emails can still drive high open rates.

It’s important to send regular emails to your databases so you can get people to your site on a regular basis. Unlike a Facebook update or a tweet, which could disappear from newsfeeds in seconds, emails sit in your customers’ inbox for their reference. In fact, Direct Marketing Association has reported that email conversion rates are three times higher than social media conversion rates.

Email marketing gives Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) a platform to prove that they understand meeting planners’ problems, and an opportunity to showcase how booking a meeting at their destination can provide a solution to that problem. It also gives DMOs the chance to showcase their value proposition. DMOs can use email in conjunction with their other marketing efforts to promote special events or offers, and stay on their customers’ minds.

If someone has given you their email address, they’re ready to engage with your content. Email is a great way to make sales/conversions with new customers and build deeper relationships with existing customers.

For example, we send promotional emails to Visit St. Petersburg/Clearwater’s database of meeting planners. The emails contain destination updates, new hotels coming to the area, ease of access and incentives the DMO offers to encourage planners to book their meeting in St. Petersburg or Clearwater. The emails include dynamic features like gifs, videos and social media feeds.

After sending the initial email for Visit St. Petersburg/Clearwater, we resend the email a week later with a new subject line to reach those who didn’t open the original email.

Over the span of three months, our email campaigns have averaged the following statistics:

Open Rate: 17.35%

CTR: 6.37%

More importantly, each email we send results in RFPs submitted to Visit St. Petersburg/Clearwater.

“I could not be happier with the partnership I entered into with Digital Edge Marketing,” said Suzanne Scully, Director of Meetings and Conventions at Visit St. Petersburg and Clearwater. “The team’s vast knowledge of the CVB world, as well as meetings and conventions, coupled with their marketing skills is unbelievable.” 

Contact us to see how we can help you take your DMO email marketing over the edge.