10 Days when you absolutely must contact your customers | Travel Research Online

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10 Days when you absolutely must contact your customers

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. More phone calls are made on Mather’s Day than any other day of the year because, well, let’s face it, we all love our mothers. But what about the clients that are mothers? Did you call to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day? I did. Sort of.  I sent them an email broadcast wishing them well. No pitch for a trip. No cheerleading for how great we are. No links to our blog. Just a simple wish.  And it paid off for me—as it usually does when I contact my clients on ten special days during the year.  So what did I get out of it?

This time I saw a spike of traffic to my site which exposed my messages to my clients once again. I also was able to take a last minute booking for a weekend group I have departing on Friday. It wasn’t much, but hey, a $200 commission for sending an email—I’ll take it. But far more importantly, I extended my good will to the 13,000 folks who have signed up for my newsletter.

This result is typical. I realize that people do not wake up and think about Single Parent Travel each day like I do. I know it is my job to reach out to them and make sure that when they do think of travel, they think of Single Parent Travel.

Creating newsletters is a hassle for me. And if the conversations on the TRO Community are any indication, they are a hassle for hundreds of others.  I wish I had a magic wand for content creation—I don’t.  But I can suggest that you contact your clients and prospects when they are least expecting it and you will reap the rewards. I have ten days when my list receives my “no pressure, we were just thinking of you” messages. Here they are:

  1. New Years. Who does not like to receive well wishes?
  2. Happy Easter/Passover. Depending on how well you know your clients or how close the holidays fall on the calendar, you might want to opt out of this, or change it to a “Welcome To Spring” message.
  3. Mother’s Day. I specialize in single parent travel so this is a no brainer and I am able to segregate my moms and dads.
  4. Memorial Day. Perfect for a feel good patriotic message to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice so we can be free.
  5. Father’s Day. See above.
  6. Independence Day. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Hip hip hooray to America!
  7. Labor Day. Welcome to fall. Back to school and reality.
  8. Halloween. Boo!
  9. Election Day.  Remind them to vote and give them a link to find a polling place.
  10. Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa or just Happy Holidays.

By touching base with your audience close to every month, you are giving them a reason to remember you.  And as long as they remember you (and you haven’t ticked them off) they are likely to come to you first when they are ready to buy their travel!

How often are you touching your clients without pitching them? Is it working?

 

 

 

  5 thoughts on “10 Days when you absolutely must contact your customers

  1. Joanne Hunt says:

    Each Christmas season most people receive tons of extra mail, marketing as well as personal via postal service and email. Knowing that my message will probably be lost in the volume I wait and send out a New Year’s email (usually selected from TRO’s site). Every single year at least four MIA clients contact me as a result to book travel. Of my active clients most of them reply to the message with good wishes.
    So…yes John it does work well.

  2. I disagree – I get tired of pages of emails I get from vendors wishing me well for every possible holiday. As a mom, I only want to hear from my own children for Mother’s day. Remember your clients birthdays and maybe a first of the year update on travel. I unsubcribe from vendors who send me those silly holiday notices.

    1. John Frenaye says:

      I suspect there is a different relationship there. You have a B2B relationship and this is a B2C. I still believe you need to touch base with your clients multiple times so they remember you when it comes time to travel. Think of how many times a day they are bombarded with travel messages–television, internet, newspaper, radio, mail.

      I believe a non-pitchy hello has tremendous value. And after all if you are not interested in it, delete is a one click option.

  3. Anonymous says:

    the day i got a thank you card from the salesman at leons who sold us our washing machine set I felt absolutely like he was forced by his company to send it, I was embarassed for him; its was a standard company card; I did not feel special, I felt like I was being handled in a corporate dicated way after the sale.

  4. I love all these ideas….it’s hard to believe that there would be “10 Special Days-reasons” to contact our clients…

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