Trends Q: How did 2013/14 resort transactional email performance compare to previous years?

After looking at YOY email performance for larger campaigns, this week we drilled in and did the same for transactional messaging. Specifically, we wanted to know how two campaign types – pre-arrival and post-departure – fared during the 2013/14 ski season and how that performance stacked up against previous years. Here’s how it looked.

The Goods
For the analysis we pulled transactional email performance stats for our clients over the last five winter seasons. This sample included nearly a million emails sent by thirty mountain resorts. Normally we try to condense our results into one chart, but with two types of messages under the lens we made one for each to keep it simple. Let’s start with pre-arrival:

And post-departure:

Again, we see a similar trend of consistent or climbing open rates but dropping click rates. Like newsletters, we saw the highest average open rate ever for post-departure messages. Pre-arrivals open rates are much higher than last season, but almost even with 2011/12 and just below 2009/10 and 2010/11.

What This Means
I think we find ourselves in a similar place we did last week. First, averages indicate trends but do not dictate performance. Despite overall declines, some resorts saw 55% click rates. And while opens are up slightly, we saw multiple resorts with open rates north of 75%.

And the reason? The more we’ve researched and analyzed, the more both trends – increasing opens and decreasing clicks – appear to be side effects of the mobile age. Will both trends continue? Perhaps, but remember that an average is made up of points above and below that norm. Make your goal above.

119, 120, 121…
This is Stash post number 121. We haven’t missed a week since we started and don’t plan to anytime soon. Stick your email below to have future resort marketing insights waiting in your inbox on Tuesday morning.