When did they add that? | Travel Research Online

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When did they add that?

Back in November, I suggested that when it came to social networking, we all should take the advice of Ferris Bueller and just look around a little bit.  That is pretty good advice for almost anything you do. “Be aware of your surroundings” is something we tell our clients all the time. But are you aware of your surroundings? I am not talking about your physical surroundings necessarily, but more

along the lines of the tools in your business arsenal. I learned a lesson last week—I need to look around a bit more.

The week started off with an argument on an online forum; and believe it or not, it wasn’t about MLMs this time around. A colleague was upset

at a piece of software that would not do what he wanted. I knew that the program did. We went back and forth trying to solve the issue and we both probably got a little irritated at one another. Ultimately, he was able to have the developer work with him and lo and behold the program did work as he wanted. I suspect that the problem was that he did not take the time to investigate the program’s capabilities.  But later this week, I learned that I had also fallen into the same trap.

I have a group of single parents heading on a three day trip next weekend. All payments (by now) were non-refundable when disaster struck. Two of my families had to cancel—one for an injured kid, and the other for a talented one who earned a spot in a statewide competition that weekend. Based on my relationship with the resort, I knew I could swap out names, but I needed to find the replacements. And at this point, it needed to come from a drive market.

Whenever I send out an email broadcast, I always will get results. Many turn into bookings. But having just sent a broadcast, I hesitated to flood my readers with another message—which more than likely would not be of interest to them.

Before sending out an announcement for two open spaces, I decided to poke around in the documentation for AWeber Communications. I have used AWeber to manage my mailing list for several years and I can’t operate without it. As I was poking around, I discovered exactly what I needed. Apparently, I can create a list segment based on IP location. Who knew? Certainly not me! So, instead of sending out a message to 15,000 people across the U.S; I was able to send out 975 to readers in New York and New Jersey. I had my two replacements in about two hours and was able to refund the canceling parents in full. We all win–they get their money back, I look like a superstar, the resort still stays full, and two people are able to experience our product!

But this lesson got me thinking. What else don’t I know? What else have I missed because I have not taken the time to look around? Just this one feature has so many uses. How many times have you seen a great deal with a residency requirement? With this feature, you can send it to only the people in the area.

This lesson, learned the hard way as most are, will have me poring over the features and benefits available to me in my AWeber account. Just this one feature has my head spinning and picturing how it can improve my travel business.

Don’t get complacent with yourself and think that you know it all. Look around, dig, poke, and prod—you might be surprised!

If you are interested in AWeber, you can check them out here. And in the interest of full disclosure, if you use that link and end up signing up, I am pretty sure I get a discount on one month’s service.

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  One thought on “When did they add that?

  1. Laura says:

    Thanks John for reminding me that we can always learn something new!

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