RSS will never truly make email redundant: Farecast.com’s David Shim

EFT Sales and Marketing in Travel USA 2007

Considering the growing prominence of video, social networking and UGC tools, the success of communicating via online medium, too, is posing intriguing challenges for online travel companies.

Recently, David Shim, Director, Digital Marketing, Farecast.com shared that the relevancy factor is critical in getting valued time or attention from online readers in the context of email marketing especially with the explosion of video, social networking and user-generated content on one hand resulting in more online editorial options and on the other it is being felt that consumers are spending less time and giving less attention to emails.

On its part, airfare prediction website Farecast.com uses email channel to update its customers about new site enhancements whenever there’s something that applies to them, usually every two months or so.  Apart from this, there’s a fare alert communication that consumers can sign up for where they specify the frequency.

On the latest trends in the email marketing arena, Shim recently told EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta: “The biggest trend I’ve seen in the last year is the return of email as an important part of the marketing mix.  For the past few years, email been has been left for dead due to concerns around CAN-SPAM, deliverability, white and blacklisting, image blocking, etc… What is bringing people back to email is ROI.” 

“We currently employ a vendor to handle these things for us.  It was a decision we made early on to outsource this so we could employ the right strategies to meet these challenges,” he said.

In an interview, Shim also spoke about email content, critical factors related to email acquisitions and much more. Excerpts:

What factor do you taken into consideration before devising email content? Do you prepare different content for different target audience/ markets?

When we create new content or a new message we try to make sure and answer questions that are meaningful for consumers.  When is the right time to travel?  Is this a good price?  Keying in on the consumer’s perception and why they came to the site also helps.  They came to find a low price; therefore our messaging should skew towards being price focused, etc.

Being in the travel sector, we do insert targeted links and content wherever we can - it’s expected of us.  The approach, even when a blanket message goes out, is to have targeted content included as well.  An example would be Farecast’s Deals launch.  Everyone saw the same message, but when they clicked on the links to view it, if we had their home airport, we landed them on a deals page for their airport.

What are the differences in conversion rates between targeted and blanket emails?

By definition the conversion rate is higher (targeted), and sometimes can be as much as 25 times greater on a per delivery basis.  When looking at success metrics it’s important to optimise along two fronts, per delivery, and on the aggregate.  Looking at both metrics would have you send targeted emails to those that you can, and more general communications to everyone else, personalising as much as you can along the spectrum. A good mailing strategy covers all the bases. Focusing on just the rate of conversion would leave some low hanging fruit on the table.

What initiatives have you taken in the recent past to grow email acquisitions?

Prior to Farecast.com launching, we received a significant amount of buzz, along with requests to access our private site. Farecast created a simple waiting list form that required the user to supply an email address to receive an invitation to our private beta. 

As the waiting list grew, we started to invite early sign-ups into our private beta.  Prior to gaining access to our private beta site we required users to create an account.  Normally a company might see a high drop off rate with a required registration, but Farecast interest was high and we saw very little drop-off.  The lack of drop-off can be attributed to the fact that Farecast was providing value for the registration in the form of access to the private beta. In this registration path Farecast had a checkbox for opting into email communications. By the time Farecast.com opened up to the public, we had already collected a large number of registrations. 

Most recently, we launched our Farecast Deals channel with a registration form that appeared the first time you visited the page. To date we are seeing great conversion rates from this form.  One factor I believe helped conversion rates is that we launched the registration form the same time as the deals channel. People didn’t know what to expect from that page, thus it wasn’t out of the ordinary for them to see a registration form.  Had we launched the deals channel first, and the introduced the registration form, we might have seen a lower response rate.

RSS has been adopted by a range of both established travel companies and newer entrants. How successful has RSS been for companies who have implemented it?

Farecast has received a lot of praise from the blogosphere about our RSS feeds, but praise doesn’t necessarily translate into ROI. 

What are the benefits for consumers who use RSS feeds? Will RSS feeds make email marketing redundant?

RSS has its place and its audience but will never truly make email redundant.  There are certain information types that you want the moment they become available (auction ending, traffic backup), and others that you can be more passive about (the week long sale).

What’s on your agenda?

Still in the works, but overall it will focus on email, and highlight our experiences with RSS.