Overmarketing
Hank Schrader, USMA '71, Europe Destination & Europe River Cruise Expert
Anne Schrader, Certified Travel Counselor & Certified Luxury Cruise Specialist
We seem to be in a world of constant offers and often annoying companies pushing their products. It has become so pervasive; I started to wonder if we are violators of this phenomenon. I think not, but a little self-examination never hurts and with the Christmas season approaching, it is a good time to reflect on the year and our efforts to help you.
So, let’s examine our thoughts about how and why we contact you.
A Christmas Toast to You From one of our 28 River Cruises—we are in Tournon, France
Awareness
All businesses struggle to maintain proper contact with potential customers. We all face the same problem—not enough potential clients know who we are and how we can provide a benefit to them.
Here are some of the thoughts we have about solving this problem. We build awareness from our weekly blog, and excellent content on our website which results in high SEO results--all which helps us find new clients. We have a sign-up form so folks can sign up for the blog on our website—it is important that they op-in to avoid violating spam regulations, as well allows an option to unsubscribe at any time in the future.
Our Website
Without a doubt, this is our primary method of contact with our clients. By far our best aspect in building awareness is the excellent content on our website. Over time we have built a great SEO ranking for 2 important areas—we are #1 on Google for Best River Cruise Routes in Europe and bounce between #1 to #3 on Europe River Cruise Comparisons. SEO ranking takes time, but excellent content usually rises to the top, especially if it is unique. Two other blogs are rising quickly “Another River Cruise Rating Article—No Wonder there is so much Confusion” and “Comparing All-Inclusive River Cruise Companies—Riverside, Scenic, Tauck and Uniworld”.
Our river cruise section of our website has over 100 blogs about river cruising and 155+ day-by-day itineraries of 8 different river cruise lines. Building content is crucial and doesn’t happen overnight—adding good stuff to our website takes time and energy, as well as research to provide clients with something worthwhile. This is a win-win because we have become subject matter experts,. and you learn, so everyone benefits.
There are two items we do not have on our website—pop up ads and chat boxes.
Marketing experts love pop up ads—statistics I found on seo.co says that pop up ads have a 3% to 10% conversion rate. They would say since we have 5,000 who visit our website monthly, we would get 150 to 500 new subscribers to our blog list. This totally ignores the other 90% to 97% who are looking for good content. We would rather use the old-fashioned idea of signing up after viewing what we have to offer.
Another common idea is chat boxes. They can be with AI, or I guess with us typing a response, comment or question. According to an article published in Forbes, 44% of online consumers think a chat box is beneficial. I guess if we were selling low-cost products and had a lot of employees, it would be great, but why not just talk on the phone directly with us? Marketers would argue it provides fast answers when a customer is considering a purchase, but this is totally contrary to our philosophy—buying expensive luxury river cruises is never best when our potential clients feel pressured.
The bottom line--we will stand pat on our website and emphasize well researched and professional content.
Our Weekly or Bi-Weekly Blog
This is our primary method of contact prior to a client phone inquiry with our clients and potential clients.
We use MailChimp RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) to send to our client list our weekly or bi-weekly blog for free and do no other advertising—it goes out each time we write a new blog. Many in our business do not see the huge value of blogging—it creates a new page for every blog on our website and unlike social media doesn’t disappear—sometimes folks will contact us after reading a blog we wrote 5 years ago—amazing! Last year 54,837 folks visited our website based on the analytics from our Squarespace website. This year there are 62,520 visits (on December 12, 2024), with 73,809 page views. What this means is that folks spend some time on the website. Never will you see ads or pop-up ads—now you understand why.
We do sometimes market by email, but we use email for responses and to clearly explain offers from our vendors. It is the best way, we feel, to offer precise detailed information that is a requirement to make sure what services we provide, what is contained in an offer and to answer questions and concerns.
The whole idea of this blog came from some emails I got this morning—apparently, we have the worst website that needs immediate attention (5 emails today offering to help us), we should be selling vacations to Mexico, the Arctic Circle, and great villas on some islands (6 emails today) and we need to join host agencies who will make us a lot of money (3 emails today). These folks wasted a lot of time and energy because they violated the most important rule of good marketing—provide a service that we want or need, and we clearly don’t need any of this!
Text Messaging
We use text often, but not as a primary marketing technique. The Forbes article states text messages have 98% open rates and 45% response rates. When you compare this to email with 20% open rates and 6% response rates, the benefits of text are quite apparent. We do try to avoid lengthy text messages and will stay vigilant to make sure this is as safe as possible.
We always ask before using text as a method of communication. Respect of your time and sending too many messages just hurts us all. We never accept personal financial card numbers or data that is confidential in a text
What Needs Improvement
Sometimes our response time is too slow—in a 2-person office it is hard to get it all done and I sometimes over estimate our response time. We probably should provide a little more information about great sales, but we tend to call folks when we see something they might like based on their past travels or based on their personal bucket list. This sometimes is a good example of overmarketing—our past clients often receive email offers and ads directly from the vendors, so we may be just adding to the aggravation. Balance is important—just the right number of messages goes a long way! Also, it is important to understand some items are urgent and if your travel is 9 months ahead, it probably can wait a while.
I think our current ideas are correct. We contact our best clients just to see what is going on in their lives—seldom is our contact about a great cruise idea unless they have opened the door expressing interest from our contacts. We are never, never pushy!
Our Final Thoughts
We hope you liked this and continue to support our efforts to stay in contact with you with just the right amount of good content and are responsive to your needs.
We are travel experts, ocean and river cruise specialists, and Europe destination experts. We have first-hand knowledge of almost anywhere you want to visit in Europe. We know our products and the vendors who sell them to you. We have designed special tours for dozens of clients, led several and will continue to find just the right vacation that will exceed your expectations.
When you are spending your hard-earned money for a vacation, you want an advisor who can match you with the right trip. You want someone who will understand your expectations and fuel your anticipation (or excitement) to get you the best possible trip experience. And, you want someone who can help you with the decision making process. We think we have all these qualities.
Whatever your Dream Destinations are, we are here to help you get the best possible vacation based on what is important to you! We will provide you high quality, expertly planned travel. Please give me a call 713-397-0188 (Hank) or email me at hschrader@visitdd.com . We want to help you: Savor life…make memories…Visit Dream Destinations! Your journey begins here!
ANNE has earned a degree from the University of Houston in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Serving as the President of Visit Dream Destinations, LLC, since 2016, she is uniquely experienced professional travel advisor with over 26 years’ experience in the travel industry. Among her numerous certifications, she is a Certified Travel Counselor (CTC) by the Travel Institute, considered the gold standard in travel agent certification and she is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC) by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), as well Luxury Cruise Specialist also from CLIA. Having traveled often to Europe since 1989, she has expanded on her certification as a Destination Specialist in Western Europe (DS) with extensive first-hand experience in luxury vacations. She holds numerous other specialty designations from individual vendors. An expert photographer, she delights in capturing the true essence of destinations to share with all.
HANK is a certified Western European Destination Specialist (DS) who has been traveling to Europe for 52 years. He is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC), conferred by the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA). This recognized expert in cruise and leisure travel is a retired Army Officer, and taught World Geography for 8 years. He is a `71 graduate of West Point and has earned 2 master’s degrees. His other Certifications:
AmaWaterways River Cruise Specialist
Viking River Cruise Specialist
Scenic River Cruise Specialist
Emerald Waterways Specialist
Avalon Waterways Specialist
Brit Agent
