Customer Stories How Treetops Used Inntopia and a Major Championship to Build Their New SMS Marketing Database

It’s probably no surprise that when Beth Pittiglio landed a role at Treetops Resort in the beautiful forests of Northern Michigan, one of her goals was to play as much golf as possible. Who can blame her? Treetops’ five courses are consistently named among the best in the world. This includes their par 3 course, Threetops, which Links Magazine put alongside names like Augusta National in a recent collection of the best short courses in the country.

But with skills in both graphic design and a sharp eye for marketing, it wasn’t long before Beth made her way into the marketing department and started to help this incredible resort tell the world about the experiences they offer.

And one of that team’s priorities for 2021? Text message (SMS) marketing.

Build the Database

As an Inntopia Marketing Cloud user, Treetops was one of the first resorts to take advantage of Inntopia’s new integration with Mobiniti for SMS marketing. But the legal rules surrounding SMS are stricter than that of other channels like email, so that meant building their database from scratch.

Beth knew a contest using Mobiniti’s built-in campaigns would be an effective way to do this. And when Treetops’ Assistant GM suggested she run the contest around the then-upcoming Masters tournament, she had all the pieces she needed to get started. 

The setup was simple. Each contestant would guess three things:

• The winner
• Their final score
• The runner-up

Whoever’s prediction was closest (with the final score used as a tiebreaker) would win a round of golf for themselves and three friends. The catch? The only way to sign up was via text messaging.

How it Worked

To get the ball rolling, Beth turned to Inntopia Marketing Cloud’s bread and butter: email. The focus was golf and Marketing Cloud had all their guest data centralized and synced to their email marketing platform, so they targeted people in their database who were either:

• Interested in golf
• Had purchased golf products from Treetops during the last two years
• Were locals

When someone clicked on this email they were taken to a simple opt-in form with a mobile-first design and an overview of how the contest worked. Once the form was completed, the entrant would instantly receive an SMS confirmation.

What was the result of combining a well-designed, well-targeted email with the contest-capabilities of Mobiniti and the convenience of SMS? A quick boost of 200 excited and engaged SMS subscribers.

Oh, and did I mention they went from idea to execution on this campaign in less than a week?

What’s Next

With a nice start to the database, Beth plans to expand her efforts to capture more guests interested in the other activities they offer (spa, ski, lodging, etc.) and perhaps even build dedicated campaigns on other channels to really dial up the growth on SMS.

The goal is simple: build the database, reach their guests on new channels, and put Treetops Resort in a great position to use SMS for each of the experiences they offer throughout the year.