Tips
Every year Inntopia Marketing Cloud helps resorts send more than a million, targeted text messages (SMS) to their guests. This year, especially, our account managers and clients have been working together to take bring some new ideas and innovations to this powerful, unique marketing channel. In this video we sit down with one of those talented account managers, Burleigh Sunflower, to hear how four of his clients are unlocking move value and revenue from their SMS marketing.
Don’t have time to watch the full video? Here’s a quick recap.
A newsletter via text messaging? Palmetto Dunes Oceanfront Resort has an incredible range of experiences they offer. With so much to share, they started distributing some of their great content, stories, and updates via this channel as well.
“They’ve decided to go multi-channel with their newsletter. Rather than pump their SMS list full of promotions or sales…they try to keep their newsletter audience engaged. So when they send out their newsletter via email they pair it with a link to their newsletter via SMS…and they’re seeing click rates above 20%.”
They’re asking what their audience wants to hear and making sure they use all available channels to deliver it.
After getting started with a list from a local tourism board, Shawnee Mountain has really jumped in and started doing some creative things with their own text messaging lists. They began with more operations-leaning messages, but they’ve also started to find key products that convert really well via SMS.
“They have a frequency product that is one of their best performing products and they decided to launch that product via their SMS channel. This year was their best year ever for that product in terms of folks coming in, asking about it, engagement around it, and, ultimately, revenue for it.”
With that success under their belts, they’re planning to launch their season passes via SMS as well this July.
Beech Mountain is always willing to try new things and push the envelope. The way they’re using SMS is no exception. At the top of that list is a simple strategy they’re using to grow their SMS list in ways that really unlocks some intriguing potential.
“They decide to put their text opt-in link right on their Inntopia Commerce checkout page…and when they started this process about a year and a half ago their list was in the low thousands – 5,000 – 6,000 people – and I just checked it this morning…and they’re now around 60,000 people. That gives us a lot of flexibility to utilize the texting platform with the intelligence in Inntopia Marketing Cloud and segment like the way we would with email.”
They’re able to take guests who booked one thing, segment them by that entry point, and then bring them back for other experiences using that SMS list.
After bouncing back from a devastating fire, Sierra-at-Tahoe has been extremely creative and thoughtful in their use of SMS. This year was another example of this trend as they found a way to make it super easy for their skiers to get key information only when they need it.
“They built up an automation around a keyword. Text “conditions” to Sierra-at-Tahoe and it will automatically generate a link to their snow report. It makes it so much easier for the user to get those conditions when they want. And then they’re not blasting out their snow report everyone, but just to the folks who want to know.”
It’s a clever evolution of the classic snow phone of yesteryear that makes it easy for their skiers to quickly check on how the mountain is skiing.
There are more tidbits than those in the video, so definitely give that a watch when you have a minute. And a bit thank you to all of these incredible resorts for sharing some of their experience and results. Want to see your resort better take advantage of SMS marketing? Get in touch with our team.
Start selling more of everything your resort has to offer.
Prefer to talk so someone directly? No problem. Just use our calendar links to schedule a time to chat.
