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E-marketing is the best way to stay ahead in today’s highly competitive business world.

No initial investment: How much would it cost you to create an account on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and post some updates on those accounts? This is one of the major benefits of e-marketing; you can easily reach millions of potential customers without burning a hole in your wallet.

Extensive reach: By renting an advertising banner beside a highway, you can only count on people who drive on that road to cast a glance at it.

Consumer marketers will often send emails out about abandoned shopping carts, offering discounts and upsales based on Web behavior. These emails often prompt customers to complete their orders. B2b marketers can do the same and gain similar results.

use failed internal search terms to dictate email offers

use simple browsing data to add content to regular emails related to whatever the last thing your customers were browsing for, he said

that simply look good, but are

simply look good, but are totally

sites that simply look good, but are totally dysfunctional

GrandStay® Hospitality LLC, franchisor of the GrandStay® Hotels and Crossings by GrandStay® brands, is growing by leaps and bounds. With 24 extended-stay and select-service hotels in California, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, and an additional 10 hotels scheduled to enter the system in the coming months,

GrandStay Hospitality selected ZDirect and its ZMail® electronic communication platform.

Direct has been providing hotels with eCRM solutions since 2002. The company's hospitality portfolio spans six out of seven continents, with more than 2,000 hotels and resorts using ZMail® and its Mobile suite, including: Mobile Passport, SMS Messaging, Apple Passbook and Responsive Email Design.

Policy Patrol Disclaimers is very easy to operate and we have to do very little to maintain it,”

consistently brand their e-mails and customize them with information from the marketing department quickly and easily

We chose Policy Patrol, due to its close integration with Exchange Server and Active Directory. This allows us to configure one template that is automatically personalized with the sender’s contact information

NORTHWIND has expanded its Professional Services offering with the addition of Management Strategy Services to ensure hotel owners and managers are using the powerful capabilities of the Maestro hotel management system to maximize their operational efficiencies and productivity levels as well as reduce costs and drive revenue.

HeBS digital Blog Archive for the ‘Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)’ Category The OTA Billboard Effect or the Lazy Man’s Approach to Hotel DistributionMonday, August 1st, 2011 The following article is Max Starkov’s latest contribution to the “Successful eMarketing” blog on HOTELS magazine’s website The existence of the so-called billboard effect is not a new marketing phenomenon. It has existed long before the online channel became a reality. As confirmed by many studies, any marketing exposure by a hotel produces a billboard effect:  when you launch a banner advertising campaign; when you purchase a full-page ad in the New York Times travel section; when you launch a paid search campaign on Google, etc. The OTA Billboard Effect Lately Expedia reps have been aggressively using a new Cornell Hospitality Report, namely “Search, OTAs and Online Booking: An Expanded Analysis of the Billboard Effect” to convince hoteliers that they should use Expedia in order to generate more bookings from the hotel’s own website due to the so-called “Billboard Effect.” The Cornell Report, based on data from Expedia and InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) from 2008-2010, is a continuation of a previous report on the subject, heavily supported by Expedia. The report’s analysis determined that when an IHG property was listed on the first results page of Expedia, this created an increase of between 7.5% and 14.1% in bookings for the same property on IHG’s own brand website. In other words, this is a confirmation for Expedia’s billboard effect, which hoteliers should take into consideration when griping against the 25% plus merchant OTA commission. When these “billboard effect bookings” are taken into consideration, Expedia’s commission “would effectively be reduced to single digits,” states the Cornell Report. Hoteliers, rejoice! We have found the perfect recipe for success: we do nothing as far as marketing the property website is concerned. Instead, we plaster Expedia with our sales promotions and wait for the travel consumers to come to our own website and book. As discussed, the billboard effect is not strictly an OTA territory. In my view, the Cornell Hospitality Report is a one-sided research project, very proactively supported by Expedia, similar to the first report on the billboard effect published in 2009. Cornell, the finest hospitality institution in the U.S., should know better than to come up with this half-baked “scientific” research, which does not account for the complexities of hotel distribution as well as the “digital information cloud” we all live in and the resulting marketing and distribution channel convergence which directly affects the purchasing habits of today’s hyper-interactive travel consumers. This report makes conclusions that do not take into account, among many other things, the following: Complex Travel Planning Patterns in Hospitality Many surveys show that people are shopping around on a number of hotel and travel websites before narrowing down their search. Typically in hospitality, these sites include a hotel search on a search engine e.g. Google (65% market share), an OTA website, TripAdvisor, the hotel’s own website, etc. Therefore jumping from an OTA website to a hotel branded website and vice versa is at least partially due to particular travel research patterns unique to the users and not due to the so-called billboard effect: Step 1: “I always search on Google first where I identify a property I like” Step 2: “I go to Expedia and see what the rate for this property is” Step 3: “I visit TripAdvisor to read my peer reviews for this hotel” Step 4: “I visit the hotel website and book if I like the location, rate and what I have read and seen about this hotel”

A new relationship between the hospitality industry’s hotel marketing automation provider ZDirect and global travel technology company Sabre Hospitality Solutions is helping to make eMarketing as simple as possible for Vantage Hospitality Group. The 8th largest hotel company in the world with more than 1,000 locations has relied on ZDirect and its ZMail® electronic communication platform since 2007

ZDirect’s patented dynamic content engine uses guest behavior and preference data to create individualized confirmations, pre-arrival emails, customer satisfaction surveys and more to up-sell a hotel’s profitable amenities.

The 8th largest hotel company in the world with more than 1,000 locations has relied on ZDirect and its ZMail® electronic communication platform since 2007 to deliver dynamic, real-time profiles of hotel guests and streamline and centralize each property's eMarketing initiative by tracking guest behaviors and preferences.

Together, these two companies are giving our brands superior online and mobile communication tools that are proving to increase bookings and improve two-way communications.

ZDirect's patented dynamic content engine uses guest behavior and preference data to create individualized confirmations, pre-arrival emails, customer satisfaction surveys and more to up-sell a hotel's profitable amenities.

his year over 20% of all revenues in hospitality will be generated from the Internet (15% in 2003). Another 20% of hotel bookings will be influenced by the Internet, but done offline (call center, walk-ins). In 2004, for the first time Internet hotel bookings will surpass GDS hotel bookings. Two years from now the Internet will contribute over 27% of all hotel bookings (PhoCusWright). 53% of all Internet bookings in hospitality will be direct to consumer (i.e. via hotel-owned websites).

Direct online distribution cuts costs, attracts affluent customers and lessens the dependency on intermediaries and more traditional and expensive channels. Over 205 million Americans are active Internet users (Nielsen) and close to 50 million of them will purchase travel online this year. Many hotel clients already generate 30%-40% of their bookings from the Direct Internet Channel.

Hotel du Collectionneur in Paris faced a big challenge - it became the largest independent hotel in Paris at 408 rooms when it parted ways with Hilton.

"Flip.to helped us accomplish both things. First, they enticed thousands of unique visitors to the hotel's website through 72,000 guest connections. Secondly, they increased the brand awareness of the hotel on social networks thanks to their sharing platform.

Flip.to is the brand advocate platform that helps hotels boost brand awareness and earn new guests with the help of their most trusted, untapped marketing juggernaut - their current guests. Right at the point of booking, guests share with their connections about their upcoming trip, driving new visitors back to a uniquely personalized hotel website experience.

When Uruguayan footballer Suarez bit an Italian player during a match in the Fifa World Cup in June last year, an Indian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur used it as a marketing tool. On that day, Fierce Curry House in Bangsar offered free biryani meals to those who walked in wearing a Uruguayan football jersey. That is e-marketing for you.

In December last year, the bakery called Tommy le Baker posted on Facebook a photo of two large baskets of bread with a poster next to them that said: “Take if you need, pay if you want.” The post was shared numerous times over and within a short time the bread was all taken.

Scicom Education Group’s head of Creative Services Vernon Adrian Emuang feels positive about social media in Malaysia when compared to other countries in Southeast Asia. “Perhaps (we are) way ahead of others, in terms of widespread public engagement and intensity of online activity,” he tells The Establishment Post. “Essentially, Malaysians seem pretty clued in. The social media landscape is pretty populated which has facilitated marketing and sales efforts that ride on technology,” adds Mr Emuang.

eMarketing

Leading San Diego County brokerage Coldwell Banker West today announced it has implemented an automated marketing system that will create print and digital marketing content for all its real estate listings.

Coldwell Banker West agents can easily market each listing through the wide variety of channels that consumers use -- whether print, digital or mobile.

Hilton HHonors members can now receive an exclusive discount on room rates by booking directly through its brand websites, award-winning Hilton HHonors mobile app and reservation call centers, or through preferred corporate travel partners and approved travel agents. This guaranteed discount is available at more than 4,500 hotels around the world.