Customer Stories
Whether it’s skiing at the nearby Peek’n Peak, grabbing a bite at Oliver’s, swimming at Splash Lagoon, or spending the night at one of their area hotels, if you’ve ever spent time in Erie, PA, you likely visited one of Scott Enterprises’ many brands.
So it’s probably no surprise that when Emilee Landis joined the team in 2023 as a part-time marketing assistant, she quickly found herself wearing a lot of hats. Emilee, however, loves to wear those hats and is always willing to help anyone and everyone get things done. Before long, as needs and roles opened up above her, she soon found herself as a full time employee contributing to all sorts of campaigns she didn’t expect.
At the top of the list for this Gen Zer? Email marketing.
Emilee’s primary focus is Splash Lagoon, a fantastic indoor waterpark just off I-90, but as she started sending emails designed to get more folks to buy tickets at the waterpark and stay at the hotels, she sensed something was missing.
“At the time it felt like my emails were just going into the void. Our leadership knew email was important and I was getting emails out the door as often as we needed, but I felt like there had to be a better way.”
Luckily for Emilee, she had access to two resources that would make it easy to find that better way. First, she had Inntopia Marketing Cloud, a marketing platform built for hospitality companies like Scott Enterprises that rely on multiple systems to take transactions and run their business. Second, she had a dedicated account manager, Sarah Bertoline, who, as a former marketer for Vail Resorts, had been in her shoes and could help her grow her skills, take full advantage of Inntopia, and improve the company’s email performance.
For example…
The reservations team got frustrated when promotions went out to people who already had reservations. WIth Inntopia, Emilee had access to a clear view of who had a reservation on the books, not just as a datapoint, but a filter she could use when sending emails to suppress these upcoming guests from lodging-related offers and campaigns.
Splash Lagoon has been welcoming guests for more than two decades, so Emilee wanted to avoid sending to people that, even though they bought a pass years ago, no longer fit the mold that makes them likely to visit (such as families whose kids have grown). Because Inntopia automatically grouped transactions by guest and household, she could accurately tell who was who and segment her lists by the offers inside each campaign.
Even on a basic level, Emilee wanted to avoid sending to people who aren’t going to open her emails. With Inntopia, she has access to marketing engagement data when building lists so she can easily suppress people who hadn’t opened or clicked an email in a specific number of months. Or, on the flipside, only include people who had been engaging with her emails during a specific window of time.
One of the favorite things I learned about Emilee’s efforts was how much she’s testing and trying new things. When she finds something that works with one campaign, she takes that and applies it to the next along with another new tactic or an A/B test. The results of her work speak for themselves.
“The goal for most of our campaigns is to drive bookings. Before, our email engagement just wasn’t great. Now, open rates on some of our offers are in the 40-50% range and we’re seeing a lot of revenue from each one.”
Inntopia clients work in competitive markets so I try to be sensitive to how many details and numbers I share in these stories, but Emilee sent me a couple reports she pulled from her Marketing Cloud account to illustrate that improvement in performance. I was extremely impressed by both the revenue per email and engagement for those campaigns.
She may be fairly new to the email marketing world, but I’d argue that Emilee is doing the fundamentals better than many industry veterans. And with that foundation, she’s already starting to aim higher.
“To get people to come to Splash Lagoon I need to hit the people who actually want to buy. We are now able to do that. So I really just want to just get better at it, see a lot more engagement, and continue developing our email strategy.”
Emilee is taking full advantage of all the resources she has access to. She’s learning the best practices and technology, she’s leaning on the experience of her account manager, and she’s hungry to improve. Sometimes when I write these stories I’m more excited about what someone has done. With Emilee? I can’t wait to see where she takes her email marketing efforts from here.
Learn more about Splash Lagoon:
https://www.splashlagoon.com
Learn more about Scott Enterprises:
https://www.visitscott.com
Learn more about Inntopia Marketing Cloud:
https://corp.inntopia.com/marketing/
