‘Tis the season…travelers are figuring out how to cram a week’s worth of clothing into their 1 piece of carry-on luggage, or making sure that for their road-trip the credit card has enough available credit to survive the gas pump. Let’s also not forget about 3-day weekends, summer hours and the plain and simple fact that it’s tough to focus on work (and email) when the sunshine is calling.
Hopefully your customers’ getaways - including flights, accommodations, rental cars or cruises - are booked using your products and services. If your message strategy segments customers between good, better or best, you might see that your reporting for your best customers is exhibiting a decreased open and click through rate because they are not checking email while either out of the office or away from home. In any case, there is a good chance a portion of your regular email audience (no matter how you segment) will be incommunicado during at least some point throughout the summer.
If you normally report on campaign statistics at a predetermined amount of time after a campaign is delivered, you should look at revisiting these same campaigns again several days after your regular reporting time frame. The summer months can increase the activity lifespan of your messages so you will want to extend the reporting collection time as well.
Also, take a look at the expiration dates on your offers. If your normal email specials expire within a few days after the message is sent, consider bridging the “good through date” over an expanded period of time. Modify your subject lines accordingly to help avoid the common “select all - delete” feature of most inboxes. Customers returning from a trip might not be as interested in booking travel related services but those recipients that are just making good use of time away from the office or home computer may find value.
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