E-newsletters and email updates drive
travel agent bookings & media coverage from partners.
Case Studies
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E-newsletters and email updates

drive travel agent bookings and media coverage from partners.

Overview
Client
Tahiti Tourisme North America
Industry
Travel
Solution
Partner Communication
Deliverables
Email newsletters, email updates, measurement and tracking
EmailOpen has really helped us take both our internal and external communications to the next level. With amazing training and support, powerful tools, and quality analytics and reporting, we're able to get our messages out to our audiences quickly and easily.
- Jeanine Carter, Marketing Director, Tahiti Tourisme
Challenge
Over the course of many years, Tahiti Tourisme has established strong relationships with members of the media who cover Tahiti and travel agents that market and book vacations to the islands. The marketing and public relations departments needed a reliable and cost-effective way to regularly reach these contacts and provide them with potential story angles, weather and product updates, and cultural and historical backgrounds.
Solution

Tahiti Tourisme, EmailOpen, and Akalia Interactive, forged an alliance more than 12 years ago when the organizations collaborated on all things relating to Web content and development. That relationship resulted in EmailOpen being keenly aware of Tahiti Tourisme's electronic communication needs. Recognizing the importance of creating a variety of communication tools that reached important media and travel agent partners, EmailOpen and Tahiti Tourisme collaborated to create the following deliverables:

  • Partner Updates - A general, semi-monthly communication tool that provides advertising, public relations, Web and industry news updates to more than 1,000 of Tahiti Tourisme’s partners. EmailOpen created individually branded templates for each of these categories, allowing recipients to immediately know what type of update they are receiving.
  • Tiare News - Tahiti Tourisme works in partnership with several thousand travel agents whose business it is to sell the destination of Tahiti.  The organization provides a wealth of resources and training to travel agents looking to become experts on the islands.  As part of this effort, Tahiti Tourisme collaborated with EmailOpen to create a monthly e-newsletter, dedicated solely to travel agents. The newsletter provides information on Tahiti culture, history and special products or deals that may drive sales.  The newsletter is individually branded, keeping it clearly distinct from other communication materials, yet within the overarching Tahitian-branding standards.
  • Te Parau Api - To address the need of regularly recommending Tahitian story angles to media partners, EmailOpen created Te Parau Api, an e-newsletter targeted specifically at press.  The e-newsletter reaches more than 3,500 contacts four to six times a year.  To keep the piece fresh EmailOpen created a variety of branded templates that Tahiti Tourisme’s communication’s department can choose from each time is it preparing a distribution.
  • Special Updates - When dealing with such a large number of partners and an expansive tourist destination, Tahiti Tourisme needed the ability to send out impromptu updates relating to weather, media coverage or other types of breaking news.   To address this need EmailOpen designed a Special Update template that can be easily populated and sent to partners. 
Every communication tool EmailOpen designed for Tahiti Tourisme is seamlessly integrated into the organization’s Web site.  New partners can sign up for the media or travel agent e-newsletters online and be immediately added to the mailing distribution.  EmailOpen paid close attention to branding guidelines and ensured that the look and feel for each communication piece appropriately represented the islands yet also clearly conveyed the tool’s purpose.  And perhaps most importantly every communication tool can be created rapidly, allowing for a fast and easy turnaround with little draw on internal resources’ time.
Results

More than 12 years after its initial email blast using EmailOpen’s platform, Tahiti Tourisme’s communication’s department is distributing four types of regular communications to over 5,000 partners. Each mailing is targeted, branded and visually appealing.  EmailOpen’s sophisticated measurement and tracking functionality allows Tahiti Tourisme to understand the impact of its communications.  One clear example of this was in 2010 when Hurricane Oli struck the islands. Tahiti Tourisme issued a Special Update on the storm to its partners.  In total, 2,200 people received the email and it generated a 34 percent average open rate – a very strong result for electronic communications.  On average, more than 60 percent of Tahiti Tourisme’s certified travel agents open Tiare News each month.

In-person sessions between EmailOpen and Tahiti Tourisme are commonplace and new ideas for improvement are continually discussed. The simple, easy-to-learn technical interface has allowed Tahiti Tourisme to quickly train new hires over the years. And feedback from partners is consistently positive – reiterating the strong emphasis placed on design, layout and overall content.

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