Using AI in tourism marketing requires secrecy.

January 17, 2024

Picture of a small white robot with blue eyes and a smile holding out one hand like a greeting. Text on the image says "you will love it here trust me my program says so."

The successful use of artificial intelligence (AI) in tourism marketing rests on one key factor: secrecy.  Not secrecy from your colleagues or organization…secrecy from your audience.  You need your use of AI to be invisible to them for two main reasons:

  1. Blatantly apparent AI-generated copy is generic and robotic-sounding.  And even if it were written by a human, that kind of soulless, impersonal copy doesn’t engage the audience and wastes your time and budget.  The rest of your marketing will have to work that much harder to spark a sale, let alone close one.
  2. If they sense you’re using AI to influence their decisions – and done incorrectly, they will – you’ll lose their trust. People are increasingly sniffing out AI-generated copy and then doubting its credibility.  Humanity just hasn’t yet reached the point where we’re comfortable being persuaded to do something by a robot.

Let me be crystal clear.  Using AI in tourism marketing is smart.  Tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard can be useful in many ways.  But YOU have to be smart in how you use them.  Until you become proficient in prompting and re-prompting to produce successful output, you are at risk for – essentially – sending out a stoic, unfeeling salesperson to promote your offerings.

And that won’t end well for you.

As a tourism marketer, you’re trying to sell potential guests an experience that makes (hopefully) everlasting memories and creates (hopefully) a lifetime relationship with them.  Robotic-sounding, generic marketing copy is incapable of igniting the spark required for that love affair.  And when used incorrectly, that’s EXACTLY how AI-generated copy sounds…like a robot wrote it.

To guard against this, you need to be aware of six telltale signs that content was written by AI.

Jodie Cook wrote a fantastic piece for Forbes on the subject, calling out these six dead giveaways:

  1. Lengthy introductions (aka “throat clearing”)
  2. Inclusion of ethical considerations
  3. Generic thoughts and advice
  4. Lack of personal stories
  5. Specific go-to phrases
  6. Signature structure

You can read the piece for more information on all six, but the three most prevalent ones in tourism marketing are lengthy introductions, generic thoughts/advice, and lack of personal stories.  Let’s take a look.

Lengthy Introductions

I call this the “blah blah blah” introduction and AI is famous for churning it out.  A rudimentary AI-generated piece, like that of many unskilled human writers, puts a bunch of fluff at the start and takes a bit of time to get to the meat of the content.  Often it includes clichés (“Once you arrive, you’ll never want to leave!”), or broad-sweeping statements that mean nothing in particular (“Come experience the magic of the outdoors!”).  It’s usually filled with a lot of long sentences and densely packed with a quantity of adjectives that would make a thesaurus blush.  This is the written version of speakers who begin their presentation with excessive throat-clearing…it’s buying them time to get into the rhythm of their speech.

Generic Thoughts & Advice

OMG, if I see one more tourism organization proclaim “We have something for everyone!”… I’m going to scream.  Even if you truly DO have something for everyone to enjoy, that sort of vanilla claim has zero chance of actually luring a potential visitor.  Without specific prompting and sculpting on your part, AI programs like ChatGPT are likely to generate generic content like “breathe the fresh air as you wander through our beautiful forests,” and “hop on a boat to get out and feel the ocean mist on your face as you watch an orange-hued sunset,” and “sip and taste your way through our vibrant dining scene,” and – my personal favorite – “come away with memories that will last a lifetime.”  None of that is specific and unique to YOU, so why should it compel anyone to choose YOU?  It’s just…uninspiring.

Lack of Personal Stories

First cousin to “generic thoughts & advice,” a lack of personal stories isn’t meant so literally as in “a person telling a story about their experience with you.”  That’s part of it, for sure.  But on a broader level, it’s about your BRAND making a personal connection with the audience.  Doesn’t matter if you’re a destination, hotel, cruise line, attraction, or even just a travel service…whatever.  Sharing your quirks, your variety of unique Instagram-worthy experiences, and other stories that inspire them to feel a personal connection to you… THAT’S essential in successful tourism marketing.  And it’s something you won’t get from AI-generated content without training it to write that way. It lacks the ability to do that on its own because by default, its process delivers one-size-fits-all content that’s impersonal.

And that right there is the problem. In the world of tourism, people are choosing where to spend their precious time and money, and this is VERY personal to them. Tourism is a passionate and deeply engaging purchase decision that goes way beyond transactional.  They may not care if a robot wrote their appliance user’s manual (which is simply delivering information), but they sure as hell want – say – their honeymoon suggestions (which requires the dance of persuasion and has a lot riding on the outcome) to come from a credible source.

Which brings us to the best news of all, and a hilarious silver lining for tourism marketers.  A brand is now no longer the LEAST credible source for promoting its own offerings.  The “credible believability” pecking order currently stands like this, from most believable to least believable:

  1. Someone I trust.
  2. Someone I know casually.
  3. A stranger unaffiliated with the product/service, which could be a media outlet or a random person on social media.
  4. The organization itself.
  5. A robot.

Y’all, we’ve moved up a notch.  So don’t squander that gift by making it obvious you’re using AI in tourism marketing.  Make that your little secret.

Not sure how to get started doing this properly?  Check out these ChatGPT tips for tourism marketers.

Feel like you suck at writing and so you can’t properly judge AI’s output?  These two quick reads will help you:

How to stop being an impatient writer.

Write better copy with patience and a thesaurus.

Should your brand have a Threads marketing strategy?

July 21, 2023

It’s hard to look beyond the media hype to decide if your brand should have a Threads marketing strategy.  Threads burst onto the social media scene in early July with the kind of massive fanfare that induces FOMO.  And that kind of shiny-new-toy buzz sends marketers – and usually their well-meaning but uninformed bosses – into a tailspin asking themselves:  how can we start using this new marketing channel ASAP?

Y’all, that’s the wrong question.  What you should be asking is:  does my brand NEED to be using Threads?

And the answer isn’t an automatic “yes.”

Is Threads a marketing opportunity?  Of course it is.  But you don’t seize every other opportunity that’s available to you, so why should you give more weight to this one?  Just because everyone is talking about it?  That’s a hard “nope.”

First of all, let’s get one thing clear.  The thirst for Threads is already dying down and it’s only been a few weeks since launch.  Indeed, many are now speculating that Threads might be just another a flash in the pan that will go the way of BeReal.

But it IS owned by Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), and it IS anchored by Instagram users. That means there are some chops under the hood.  So while you shouldn’t just dive in blindly, you also shouldn’t just ignore it completely without first asking yourself a few critical questions.

Should your brand have a Threads marketing strategy?  Here’s how to tell.

Ask yourself some questions surrounding these three points:

1) RESOURCES: Do you have, or can you get, the resources required to manage yet another social media channel?  If you’re not doing justice to the channels you’ve already had for years, adding a new one is only going to dilute the effectiveness of them all.  And in social media marketing, success comes with going deep not wide.  It’s better to go “all in” on fewer channels – reliable posting, proactive interaction with followers, tapping into current cultural trends – than just giving a light touch to many channels at once.  Just “having” a channel doesn’t make it effective.  “Working it” does.  This advice even made the list (at #17) of our Top 20 Tips for Tourism PR & Marketing Agency Clients.

An image from the Barbie movie of Barbie and Ken dressed in pink and driving in a pink convertible. Barbie is saying they are deep diving into the new social media channel Threads and Ken is screaming that they can't even keep up with the channels they have now. This is a perfect illustration of the debate faced by companies when deciding if their brand should have a Threads strategy.

2) AUDIENCE: Because Threads is connected to Instagram, when users establish their Threads account they are asked if they want to follow the same accounts on Threads that they do on Instagram.  So when your Threads account goes live (if it hasn’t already), your base of followers will be pulling from your existing Instagram following.  Do you need to be speaking to the same group on two different channels?  Will you share different content on Threads and Instagram, so that the same audience has a reason to follow you on each?  Do you have a plan (and then the resources – see #1 above) to grow your audience on Threads beyond your current Instagram followers?  And most importantly, is your target audience likely to be found on Threads?  It’s too soon to tell what the typical Threads user will be like, but before you dive in and invest heavy resources there, you should see where that lands.

3) GAPS: Does your current marketing strategy have a hole in it that Threads can fill?  Or can tapping Threads enhance work you’re already doing and/or accelerate results?  There’s no point in doing any sort of marketing initiative that doesn’t tie back to the big picture strategy goals.  So don’t let FOMO push you into “doing Threads for the sake of doing Threads.”  There needs to be a legit reason why it’s the right channel at the right time for the right audience and at the right resource level.

So, with all that in mind…SHOULD your brand have a Threads marketing strategy?  Maybe not.  And that’s OK.  There’s no absolute rule book in marketing.  Just remember that the biggest resource drain in marketing – and the one that’s most often underfunded – is time.  If you can’t invest the time to do it justice, it might be best for you to keep Threads on the shelf until you’re ready.

Why you should care deeply about SEO.

April 17, 2023

A black business suit and black bowler hat indicates where an invisible man stands, with the letters SEO where the face should be, as a reflection of why you should care deeply about SEO.

 

It may be less sexy than its flashier marketing cousins, but here’s why you should care deeply about SEO:  it’s hands-down the unsung, invisible hero of digital marketing.  If you’re not doing it consistently, you’re putting your business at risk.

This blog post is for all y’all who aren’t digital geeks and would love to understand – in plain ol’ English – what SEO is and why it’s important.  So while the post looks long and scary, it’s actually a brisk read that paints a clear picture without using mind-numbing technical jargon.

SEO’s entire job is to lead buyers interested in what you offer (be it product, service, or just content) directly to your website.  And when done effectively, your website will be found more frequently by these potential buyers…without you having to pay for ads to make it happen.

So what is SEO anyway?  The formal and somewhat unhelpful definition by Oxford Dictionary defines Search Engine Optimization as “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”

OK, that sounded jargon-y.  A simpler way to think about it is this:  SEO is a process you use to remove technical roadblocks between your target audience’s questions and your answers.  Or…in even simpler terms than that:  It’s creating content that’s interesting or helpful to humans, while making sure it’s able to be navigated and processed equally well by a machine like Google’s search engine.  Note the difference in wording here, because humans and machines don’t necessarily “think” the same way.  Humans want things to be “interesting and helpful” and machines want things they can “navigate and process.”  Your website has to successfully satisfy the needs of both.

So why don’t all businesses – even ones with massive marketing departments – care deeply about SEO?  Indeed they don’t, and that’s not an exaggeration on my part.  During planning meetings with DIY and small in-house marketing departments, no one EVER asks us about SEO except when they’re building a new website… and even then it’s just a one-time item on the checklist (“make sure it has good SEO”).

And with the larger marketing departments, who have more resources to devote to such things, SEO gets a much lower emphasis (if any) than it deserves.  In fact, most of the SEO specialists I’ve met share a common grievance:  the discipline of SEO has so much marketing power, and yet it’s deeply neglected and undervalued in terms of what it can bring to the marketing table.

So why don’t people care as much as they should about SEO?

First of all, it’s a scary mouthful.  Search Engine Optimization sounds like something you need a PhD to decipher.  Search engines are mysterious enough…add in the word “optimization” and that’s just an extra layer of intimidation.  Its cousin, Pay-Per-Click marketing (PPC), is so much easier for everyone to understand (you pay for every click you get, precisely as it says).

But marketers and other executives often overlook the power of SEO for other reasons, including:

  • It’s misunderstood.  SEO has multiple aspects to it (see below) and most folks are unfamiliar with all the facets involved.  So often they think of it as one-dimensional and dismiss the bigger picture of its usefulness.
  • It’s not a quick fix.  SEO is a program, not a one-time task.  And the results come as a groundswell over time, not usually as instant pops of excitement the way it would happen with PPC ads (you place the ad and boom… clicks start rolling in).  You can see some quick pops of results if you’ve made some dramatic changes that impact SEO, but mostly, it’s slow and steady improvement over time.
  • It’s invisible.  Didn’t I just say earlier it’s less sexy than other marketing disciplines?  SEO works behind the scenes, with multiple small, strategic changes that are largely unseen by the website user.  Together, those often-invisible changes lead to a payoff, but it requires you to have faith in things you can’t see and can’t always directly track.
  • It feels “harder.”  So…it requires faith, patience, and a long-term effort with a delayed payoff?  It’s no wonder so many marketing programs and budgets neglect SEO in favor of initiatives that deliver more instant gratification…even if those cost more.

But why should people care more deeply about SEO?

SEO is the practice of keeping your website healthy and attractive to search engines, like Google.  And shouldn’t that practice be one of the top goals for any marketer?  (Note, there are several search engines for use out there, but for brevity’s sake in this article, I’ll just say “Google” to represent them all.)

In more concrete terms, here’s why you should care:

  • Healthy website = better results.  Think of it like you would a health regimen for your body.  Diet, exercise, sleep, and other maintenance actions keep your body healthy, and the payoff is that you can live a longer life with fewer restrictions and medical issues.  SEO is like the diet/sleep/exercise health regimen for your website, but the payoff includes things like higher visibility in search engine results and more visitors to your website (without advertising payments for either of them).
  • The results compound over time.  If you keep up the regimen, you may not feel/see the results at first (ahem, just like dieting), but once your efforts start to make a difference, the groundswell begins.  The more attractive your website becomes to Google for certain searches and keywords, the more Google offers it to people searching for those things.  And the more people start to satisfactorily visit your website for those things, the more Google considers you attractive for them.  This cycle keeps strengthening itself over time.  It may take a little while to catch fire, but once it does…the results feel magical.
  • It protects your overall marketing program.  In the long run, the most successful marketing programs are ones with balance.  It’s risky to put all your eggs in one basket – say, going “all in” on social media to the exclusion of email marketing – and this is particularly true when it comes to balancing your paid vs. unpaid marketing initiatives.  If your website isn’t healthy enough to attract its own attention from Google without you paying for ads, then what happens when your budget needs to be cut?  Bye bye clicks.  You need that steady, solid foundation of organically-driven clicks to weather such budget fluctuations.
  • It increases the ROI of your paid marketing.  Without an effective SEO program, your website is bound to have many unhealthy aspects to it, from a user perspective.  And yet, you’re spending the rest of your marketing budget to pay to draw people there.  Every dollar you spend paying to send people to a less-than-healthy website risks sabotaging your overall marketing ROI.  The discipline of SEO forces you to think about your website’s effectiveness and how it’s organized, and that helps improve its quality score for Google Ads by strengthening keyword themes.  And SEO also forces you to focus on improving your website’s load time and page speed metrics (literally, the amount of time it takes for pages, images, etc. to load when someone tries to visit it), and this can help improve conversion rates no matter how a customer enters your website.

At Redpoint, we got a painful lesson in the extraordinary power of SEO when one of our blog posts became insanely attractive to Google for a particular (and apparently popular) set of keywords.  As the post wasn’t related to our core business, that level of attention for the “wrong topic” was killing our marketing goals.  In fact, we had to take the post down.  See why we were sorry we wrote this blog post.

So what are the key aspects of “doing SEO?”

There’s a lot to unpack within a proper SEO strategy, but here’s a high-level summary of three key elements you’ll need to consider if you want to start making SEO a marketing priority.

  1. The quality of your website’s mechanics.  Google cares (a lot) if your site is working smoothly.  Because Google’s entire mission is essentially to provide users/searchers with the best possible results, that means it wants to deliver results that feature credible, effective, and appropriate websites.  If your site is slow, takes too long to load for users, has broken links, has outdated and useless pages, and/or a host of other mechanical issues, then users don’t have a good experience when they land on it…and likely leave quickly.  The more that happens, the more Google notices and says “hey… this website isn’t satisfying people who are searching for (these keywords), so let’s stop suggesting it as a relevant option when people search for that.”  How does this hurt you?  Imagine you’re a family friendly resort in California.  And Google has been trained over time to learn that people searching for “family friendly resort in California” don’t have a good experience on your website…and so it stops suggesting you as a good result for that search.  That would be bad for you.
  2. The relevance of your content.  You’ve got to think of SEO like it’s a matching game.  If you want people searching for “family friendly resort in California” to see your website high up in the search results, you’ve got to have specific and relevant content on your site that satisfies those keywords.  Let’s say that phrase is just mentioned in passing on your home page, and there’s not a lot of rich content on your website that describes all the family friendly activities/amenities at your resort.  Over time, Google will see that folks searching with those keywords who went to your site didn’t really find you to be all that “family friendly.”  And so, over time, it stops suggesting you as a “good match” for those keywords.  Yes, you might be IN the search results, but perhaps below 40 other family friendly resorts in California who have way more relevant content on their websites than you do.
  3. How good your website is at engaging visitors.  Picture a brick-and-mortar retail clothing store, and you walk in to browse.  If you walk in, look at the first display, and then leave… you’re not an “engaged customer.”  But if you walk in and like what you see on that first display, you’ll move in further to explore the store.  Maybe even try on some items.  That definitely makes you an engaged customer, and them an engaging store.  You need to think of your website in those terms.  People will come into your website through a single page – whether the home page or an interior page.  Once they land there…what makes them stick around and explore your site?  Internal links to other pages, prominent and clear navigation, appealing imagery, pop-up windows, “you may also like…” content suggestions, and more… all are engagement tactics used by effective SEO programs to keep people on your website longer.  And when Google sees that people who visit your website stay there for a while, that tells it that you’re satisfying your visitors with good, relevant content.  It’s a mark in your favor with Google.

Each one of those three aspects requires strategy and constant maintenance.  And those aren’t even ALL the aspects of SEO.  There are so many different things you can do to make your website “more attractive to” (or, in geek-speak, “better optimized for”) Google, and a comprehensive SEO program should address multiple facets.  Yes, it takes a while and it feels harder to do than just paying for clicks…but the payoff is worth it.  Google will – without you paying for ads – suggest your website in the higher up in the search results to people who want to buy what you’re selling.  And THAT is why you should care deeply about SEO.

And a final reminder tip:  Don’t think of SEO as a one-time initiative.  You are never “done” with SEO because everything is constantly evolving:  your business, your competition, and Google’s algorithm (the mysterious formula it uses to decide what order to rank websites in search results).  So – just like dieting – forget the quick fix in favor of a slow-and-steady program and you’ll see a more effective (and lasting) payoff.

What makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo?

March 16, 2023

Your personal photos serve to capture a scene and a memory, but a marketing photo has another job:  it must persuade and entice.  But before it can even do those things, it has to catch someone’s attention.  That means your marketing photos need to be arresting enough to stop thumbs and stand out among the sea of clutter that barrages people every day.  Which begs the question:

What makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo?

By “dramatic,” I mean it evokes emotion, piques curiosity, and/or makes a bold statement.  This is done through strategic use of angle, lighting, perspective, and subject choice.  A dramatic tourism marketing photo can tell a story in one glance.  And it can also get someone interested enough to stop and read the caption or other accompanying message you want to convey.

In that latter sense, the photo is just a lure.  It’s bait, if you will, that hooks your audience into hearing what you have to say.  So for a photo to hook as many people as possible, that bait needs to be nice and juicy.

A picture can indeed be worth a thousand words.  Here are five dramatic tourism photos I’ve come across in the past month, and what each one says to its audience.

Destination British Columbia

A brown cabin sits amidst a white snow-covered forest, as an example of what makes a dramatic tourism photo.

 

This says:  private, remote, solitude, peace, quiet.  It also says, “Breathe fresh air in the wilderness and get away from the noise and clutter of your daily life.”

In this sea of snowy bluish-white, your eye is drawn to two things:  1) that little patch of brown, where the cabin sits nestled in the woods, and 2) the blurry branches in the left foreground.  And the rest of the image is just natural, uninhabited, snow-blanketed forest.  In this photo, the perspective distance from the cabin and the upward angle that still allows the cabin to peek through the trees really nail the emotion here. The cabin alone or the blurry branches alone wouldn’t create the same impact.  But they work together to hold the viewer’s attention, and that in turn communicates a message that viewers don’t even realize they’re receiving: this is literally “getting away from it all.”

Tourism Tasmania

A woman walks on an uninhabited beach with swirling turquoise water and white sand, as an example of what makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo.

 

This says:  unhurried, no decisions to make, no responsibilities.  It also says, “Be alone with your thoughts and slow down your speed.”

The curves and swirls that juxtapose white and blue are enough to stop someone’s scrolling thumbs, but then it’s the lone human walking near the water that really makes this photo.  The aerial perspective, coupled with the person, convey the scale and context of the landscape in a way that neither a close up, nor the same photo without the person in it, ever could.  And even though there’s a light frothy surf where the beach meets the shore, the timing of this photo evokes the feeling that everything on this beach is still and calm…and so the only movements are the ones YOU choose to make.  The person in the photo is clearly walking, which is essential to the emotion of the photo.  If the person were standing still, it wouldn’t create that same compelling dynamic.

Switzerland Tourism

A bride and groom dressed for a wedding sit high up on a ski lift chair with the white snowy Alps in the background, as an example of what makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo.

This says:  unforgettable, breathtaking, Instagrammable wedding memories.  It also says, “If you’ve got joie de vivre and a fun spirit, we’re the right place for your wedding.”

A quick glance at this photo catches attention because the couple on the ski lift is clearly NOT wearing ski gear.  And the “white space” around that couple ensures that they really pop…it makes a viewer want to stop and zoom in for a closer look.  What helps here is that the background is SO majestic.  It screams “classic Swiss Alps” for a wedding backdrop, and yet the mountains don’t dominate the scene.  Moreover, the perspective looking up from the ground, and the simplicity of what’s captured in the frame, evoke the feeling that the newlyweds are high above and away from everyone… alone together, far removed from anyone and anything.  I mean, could it get any more romantic than that?

Klahoose Wilderness Resort

A brown wood shed with a silver pipe on its roof that is billowing steam sits on a doc surrounded by calm blue water, with a ramp leading down to the dock in the foreground. This is an example of what makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo.

This says:  unusual experience.  It also says, “Whatever that is, it looks cool.”

It looks like a shed sitting on a dock, and that might be enough for someone to stop and check it out.  But then, it has steam coming out of the roof, so…what IS that?  It’s the steam that really makes this shot because it piques curiosity.  Then the caption tells you that this is a work-in-progress shot of the resort’s new wood fire cedar sauna and just like that…you want to be in that sauna.  The downward perspective from an elevated viewpoint shows just enough context for the viewer to understand its cool location, and that super calm blue water surrounding it adds to the allure.  BTW, you can see the finished sauna here.

Inn by the Sea

Long rows of burgundy and oak wine barrels stretch as far as the eye can see, giving an example of what makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo.

This says: “You want wine?  We’re not playing around.  We’ve GOT wine.”

Landscape and nature aren’t the only subjects for dramatic tourism marketing photos.  Look at these wine barrels.  The way the rows curve at the back, along with the perfectly aligned strips of oak and burgundy coloring, really nail the drama for this photo.  They draw the eye and give the impression that the barrels continue on to infinity.  And nothing says “we’ve got plenty of wine” like a seemingly unlimited supply of wine barrels.  Even better:  this photo was used to promote inn’s wine pairings and menus for Maine Restaurant Week.  Why is that better?  Because it’s soooo different than the usual photo used to promote such an event, like a glass of wine next to a plated dinner.  This stands out.

What’s the bottom line?  What makes a dramatic tourism marketing photo isn’t necessarily having a dramatic subject.  It’s CREATING a dramatic feeling by choosing how the subject will be photographed.  It may take a little more investment on your part – time, money, expertise – but it’s well worth it to invest in this kind of marketing bait.

For more (undramatic) tourism marketing photography tips, find out the secret to a great tourism photo.

ChatGPT tips for tourism marketers.

February 13, 2023

Here’s why tourism marketers need tips for using ChatGPT, an online program that engages in human-like dialogue based on a prompt:  because we’re all too damn busy to waste time.  And messing around with a new tool we’re not sure we’d even use feels a lot like wasting time.  Is it worth it?  Should you invest the time to get familiar with ChatGPT because that investment of time will pay off?

Short answer:  yes.  You need to know what this tool can REALLY do before you decide to embrace or reject it.  It has some uses that may surprise you.

So let’s jumpstart your learning curve with some practical tips for how tourism marketers can explore the benefits of using ChatGPT.

First, let’s get one thing straight.  ChatGPT is just a resource and a tool.  You’ve got a lot of tools to help you do your job.  Google is a tool.  Adobe Illustrator is a tool.  Semrush is a tool.  But the relentless media frenzy around ChatGPT has given it near-mystical properties that make it seem more potent than that.  Chill out, y’all.  It’s just a tool.  It’s one more resource in your toolbox to potentially help you do your job better, smarter, and faster.

And like all tools [she says sheepishly, aware that she barely knows how to use 5% of the available apps on her iPhone], its usefulness is only as powerful as your knowledge of how to harness it.  I’ll never forget years ago when an accounting mentor said to me, “If you’re doing any manual calculations whatsoever or taking a long time to manipulate data in an Excel spreadsheet, then there’s a shortcut, command, or function you just don’t know about. Excel is designed to make life easier.  If it’s making it harder, go learn more about Excel.”

ChatGPT is the same.  When you first try it out, you won’t be savvy at knowing how to coax the most effective results from it.  So you’ll plug in a few basic things and the outcomes will be unimpressive.  And then, because you’re super busy and there’s no mandate that says you need to use ChatGPT, you’ll dismiss it as unhelpful and go back to the familiar tools in your toolbox.

But what if I told you that…

  • You could paste a particularly legalese-sounding section of a vendor contract into ChatGPT and say “explain this to me like I’m an 8th grader”…and it does?
  • It could produce a style guide for all your team members to follow, after you feed it several samples of a brand’s voice to analyze?
  • It could take your 400-word bio and make it fit that directory listing’s 100-word requirement in just one click?
  • It could give you a substantive list of story ideas for your content calendar…and then organize them into a seasonal schedule…and then create first drafts of each piece of content, in different formats for social channels, blog posts, email newsletters…and even website copy that’s optimized for the keywords you require?

It can indeed do all those things and more…if you know how to prompt it effectively.

Janette Roush is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Digital, for NYC & Company, which is the official DMO/CVB for New York City.  And she’s one of ChatGPT’s early adopters and passionate champions who is learning to master the “art of the prompt.”

“If you want to get ChatGPT to give you useful answers, the key is in how you formulate your prompt,” Roush told me.  “I was once advised to think of it like an omniscient three-year-old.  It knows everything under the sun, but it doesn’t know who YOU are, WHY you need to know, and WHO you’re trying to talk to.  You need to prompt it with details like that for it to return a result that’s written in the context you need.  Otherwise the result will be very generic and way less useful to your purpose.”

Roush has honed her prompting skills through persistent trial and error.  In fact, she even documents her journey with ChatGPT on LinkedIn, making regular posts about prompts she’s tried for a wide variety of uses and the results they’ve produced.  (Pro tip:  Connect with or follow her there.  You won’t regret it.)

Inspired by Roush, I took ChatGPT for a three-hour test drive one morning, just giving it prompts for various tourism-marketing-related things.  One thing I quickly learned is that a generic prompt yields a generic answer and specific prompt yields a specific answer.  Case in point:  Look at how it adjusted its responses for social media captions based upon my specificity:

A screen shot of a ChatGPT dialogue about Lucy the Lobster in Nova Scotia Canada, as one example of ChatGPT tips for tourism marketers.

 

A screen shot of a ChatGPT dialogue that shows how it creates a caption to describe cider donuts, as an example of ChatGPT tips for tourism marketers.

 

And it did the same thing as I sought its help to generate story ideas for Northern California:

 

A screen shot of a ChatGPT dialogue that gives five general story ideas for travel to the region, as an example of ChatGPT tips for tourism marketers.

 

A screen shot of a ChatGPT dialogue that shows how specific prompts can yield more effective results, as part of ChatGPT tips for tourism marketers.

 

Are those story ideas all perfect with no need for tweaking?  Perhaps not.  But did it give me threads to follow where before I had none?  Absolutely.  And some good ones too.

So, in addition to writing copy, one use of ChatGPT is to think of it like you would a sounding board.  Or a brainstorming partner.  It can’t ideate on its own (it’s not designed to innovate) but it can work with the prompts you give it to hit you back with starter threads.

Roush shared some spectacular direction on how to prompt ChatGPT as a sounding board in one of her recent LinkedIn posts:

 

A screen shot of a LinkedIn post by Janette Roush that instructs how to prompt ChatGPT for the most effective results.

 

You may be thinking “well, why can’t I just Google stuff like that instead of using ChatGPT?”  And you can.  But Google (“regular” Google, not the emerging Google Bard version that’s trying to infuse AI into its experience but not quite succeeding as of this writing) will give you a slew of different links for you to go explore and assimilate all the information on your own. And ChatGPT will just…answer you.  Not with “here are ten sources you can read to find story ideas” or “here are ten sources to see how other destinations are making themselves an attractive esports destination.”  It delivers YOUR story ideas, and tells you how YOUR destination can achieve an attractive esports destination profile.

And then – mind blown – you can direct it to actually WRITE that story about ice skating in Northern California or OUTLINE that strategic plan to develop esports tourism in NYC.

Again…will they be final drafts that need no tweaking?  Absolutely not.  They will be FIRST drafts, but if you’ve prompted with care, they’ll be pretty damn good first drafts.

And THAT saves you time, which is the whole point of using ChatGPT for marketing assistance.

But wait, you say.  When I use Google as a resource tool, I can handpick from among sources on the results pages that I feel are legitimate and credible.  Without such references, how do I know the information I’m getting from ChatGPT is accurate?

Folks, I remind you again that ChatGPT is not supposed to be a mystical tool that sees all and knows all.  You’ll need to check your facts, just like you would using any other source.  Do you really think that something is accurate just because you got it from a source on Google that you consider “credible?”  News outlets get details wrong, websites have outdated information, and inaccurate stuff has a way of floating around and perpetuating online.  So, ChatGPT is no more nor less credible than any other source you use.  And you should do your due diligence on its output when necessary.

And while we’re at it, I should also remind you that most of the output you get from ChatGPT will need tweaking and polish.  Even with the absolute best of prompting, there will still be nuances and phrasing you’ll need to infuse.  So it can’t hurt to brush up on your writing skills, and these tips will help.

If you want to explore how ChatGPT can potentially help you with your tourism marketing needs but you’re not sure how to begin, Roush offers these four tips to get started:

  1. Commit to a finite time period for practice.  You won’t learn how to use any new tool unless you devote time to using it.  Roush recommends setting a challenge to yourself, with some kind of accountability built into the period.  Take two weeks or a month or whatever, during which you commit to prompting ChatGPT on at least one topic every day.  “I challenged myself to post a new ChatGPT insight on LinkedIn every day for a month, and it forced me to think of that tool daily,” she says.  “It didn’t come naturally to me at first, but after a while, as various needs arose throughout the day at work, I’d automatically say to myself ‘let me see how ChatGPT would handle that.’ And then I’d dive into prompting.”
  2. Don’t think of it just for help with writing.  With accurate prompting, ChatGPT is an excellent resource for organization, explanations, curation, and more.  Roush says it’s helped her structure her lesson approach for her work as an Assistant Professor at Hunter College, and it’s helped flesh out her vacation itinerary in Montreal by finding cool things to do nearby to her already-planned stops.  “I’ve also used it to help it explain things I don’t fully understand,” she says, “like when I understand 80% of a technical proposal and I want to understand 100% of it.  I can ask ChatGPT to explain it to me in layman’s terms.”
  3. Learn to become specific in how you prompt.  You won’t be good at this right out of the gate.  It takes time and practice to master the art of prompting.  When Roush first dabbled in using ChatGPT, she – like most folks – prompted it with “silly things,” just trying out generic questions and commands, and receiving lackluster responses.  “It wasn’t until I stumbled upon how to start being more specific that I began to see the possible uses of ChatGPT,” she says.  “I had asked it to create an itinerary for my vacation in Montreal and it was pretty vanilla, just hitting all the major tourist sites.  But when I fed it my existing itinerary and asked it to suggest enhancement additions using the right prompts for specificity, it really impressed me.”
  4. Let ChatGPT create a style guide for you, so it learns to deliver responses in your own voice.  Roush fed it around 40 of her previous LinkedIn posts and asked it to create a writing style guide for her… which it did shockingly well.  Now she can instruct ChatGPT to use that guide when asking it to write stuff on her behalf.  “It was surprising how well the style guide captured my voice,” she said.  “If I had tried to analyze my own work and write up my own style guide, it would have taken forever and probably been less accurate.”

The bottom line is that the more you use it, the more uses you’ll discover for it.  And with practice at the art of prompting, you can make ChatGPT something akin to a full-service virtual assistant who brainstorms, writes, organizes, and educates.

Or… not.  You may end up hating it, but until you REALLY take it for a lengthy and diverse test drive, how will you ever know?

Related reading: Issac Asimov’s I, Robot.  It was written in 1950 and well…here we are, folks.

Your belly button is an email marketing tool.

November 9, 2022

Picture of a woman's stomach, with her hands surrounding her belly button, which could be an excellent email marketing tool.

Wait… IS your belly button an email marketing tool?  Damn right it is.  Here’s why.

Consumers kinda suck, don’t they?  They need to be rewarded for everything we want them to do…liking things, sharing things, buying things, answering things.  It’s maddening.

Well marketers, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  We’ve conditioned people to chase carrots and respond to hoopla…which means we’ve ALSO conditioned them to ignore stuff that’s boring, predictable, trite, and unrewarding.  If you add in clutter from other sources, their willingness to focus on your boring stuff drops even lower.

Where does this leave email subject lines?  At the top of your “spend brainpower here” list.

Think about it…all the time and energy you spend creating the perfect email content is 100% useless if people don’t open the email.  And when sifting through their barrage of daily incoming emails, consumers use three main criteria to determine which ones will get their attention:

  1. How much they care about you vs. how much they care about the rest of the senders sitting in their inbox.
  2. How much time they have available when your email arrives.
  3. Is the content going to be worth their time?

And #3 is why subject lines should get your brainpower.  You have little or no control over #1 and #2.  

If your email marketing subject lines are things like “August Newsletter” or “News from…” or even something a little more specific like “Winter Packages at…”… you are relying on the first two criteria (which – again – are beyond your control) to supply the magic “open sesame” of consumer response.

But if your subject line is something like…

Procrastination is fine. (From Pacifica Hotels)

I hate purple. (From Chilewich)

Stick Season – Have You Ever Experienced It? (From West Hill House B&B)

The ecosystem of your belly button. (From American Museum of Natural History)

Hydrangea Heaven at Chatham Bars Inn. (From Chatham Bars Inn)

Because our first shoe had to be perfect. (From Everlane)

Caution:  Do not lick this email.  (From Seamless)

…you’re using the subject line as a lure to snap desensitized recipients to attention.  It’s likely that 80% or more of the emails they receive each day have boring subject lines.  Make yours interesting and you’re one notch closer to seducing them into seeing your email content.

Here’s the best part.  If you pay heed to #3 (teasing interesting content)…and then you actually ensure that the content IS interesting…over time, it’s going to positively impact #1 and #2.  Remember: marketers train consumers.  And the more you train them that your emails are interesting, the more that #1- they will care about you and your messages, and #2- no matter when your email arrives, they will make the time to read it.

It’s a delicious cycle of persuasive marketing goodness.  And soon you will find that consumers – those picky, aloof, what’s-in-it-for-me monsters we marketers have created – will suck just a little bit less.

Tourism folks may not easily be able to use a belly button as an email marketing tool – although for years, we worked for Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square and no body parts were off limits for marketing there – but the concept is the same.  At the end of the day, it’s all about making your marketing more persuasive.  And therefore, making all that precious time you spend creating content…worth it.

Four character traits that foster good timing in marketing.

September 20, 2022

One of marketing’s most critical tentpoles is timing, and there are four character traits people (and businesses) should possess that can help foster good timing in marketing.  You should know which of the four are your strengths and weaknesses, and then understand how each is impacting your marketing success.

Why?  Because in marketing, you should play to your strengths.  And if you want to execute the kind of marketing campaigns that aren’t a good match for your weaknesses, you’re going to waste time and money…guaranteed.

Do a little soul searching about yourself and your company’s traits and behaviors to see where you stand on these four essential character traits:

1. The Decisiveness to Act Quickly

For some marketing concepts, especially those tied to a trend or current events, you need to act NOW.  The power of social media only heightens this urgency.  Your window for success may only be 24 hours, and even launching something just two days later will fall flat and yield you zero ROI.

A fabulous recent example of this comes from startup coffee company Cometeer.  When investment bank Goldman Sachs announced it was ending the free cold brew perk previously offered in its NYC HQ, Cometeer had a free coffee table set up right outside of the bank’s building just 16 hours after the announcement was made.  Here’s how they made it happen.  Had they done it even just a week later, the news value would have been too low to make it worthy of notice.  It HAD to be linked in time to the announcement that the cold brew perk was being discontinued.

Tip:  What if this is your weakness?  Steer clear of marketing concepts and campaigns that will be a complete failure without tight, precision timing.  You may want to do them oh-so-badly, but you’ll just be frustrated that they didn’t work as well for you as they did for other companies you envy.  Years ago, on the day American Airlines announced it would now charge a $25 fee for checked baggage (an industry first at the time), we put our client Loews Hotels in the media spotlight by announcing ON THE SAME DAY that Loews would give a $25 credit to all incoming guests who flew American and checked a bag.  That Loews Baggage Buy Back Program was in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and more the moment we pitched it.  Media wanted to share it in conjunction with news about the American Airlines fee.  Had we pitched it a week later, the airline fee story would have been old news, and no one would have cared.

At the time, we had another hotel brand client who saw what we did for Loews and said, “we want an idea like that for us!”  And it’s just not that simple.  That was a client who took four weeks just to approve a simple weekend package press release.  They would never be able to turn around such operational decisions across dozens of hotels (and approve the pitch copy) quickly enough to catch the news wave.  So we’d be doing them a huge disservice and wasting their money if we forced them to try.  A business that can’t make decisions quickly has more success with marketing concepts that have a nice long runway and lots of wiggle room for timing bottlenecks.

2. The Willpower to Wait

OK so maybe you’re awesome at making decisions and acting quickly, but sometimes good timing requires that you have the willpower to wait.  Jumping the gun – before the facts are in, before the campaign is REALLY ready, before details are agreed – can not only tank your marketing ROI, but it can also cause you real harm.  A few examples we’ve seen in our time as marketing and PR counselors:

  • A government official at a destination wouldn’t wait for talking points following a violent hate crime against a tourist. Instead, he insisted on speaking with the press immediately and gave his opinion on the situation without knowing the facts.  Turns out, the facts belied his opinion in a BIG way, and the destination suffered immeasurably for it…not to mention the fact that they had to pay us a fortune in crisis management fees for damage control.
  • I can’t even count the number of times a hotel has pushed us (against our advice, I promise) to launch a package – through PR or an email blast or social post – BEFORE they’ve got all the details finalized on the website and BEFORE they’ve shared it with their reservation and front desk agents. They want to “get it out there and start selling,” but they don’t seem to get how much this harms them.  When consumers want more information (or to book) and can’t make it happen, they get frustrated.  So not only does the hotel NOT get the sale, now they’ve pissed people off.
  • I also recall a colleague being traumatized by the fact that she was “forced” to announce a huge brand partnership in the media and on social channels before the contract was finalized. The owners were trying to secure more hotel management deals and felt it would be a huge feather in their cap to have that cool partnership announced as they were engaging in other negotiations.  When the partnership fell through before the deal even got signed, the harm to their image – and their business – was excessive under the circumstances.  They earned an unwelcome gold medal in backpedaling, for sure.

Tip:  What if this is your weakness?  This one’s tough, because it’s psychological and personality driven.  You need to be aware that it’s in your nature and admit to yourself that your impulsiveness can do your marketing great harm.  In this case, you need to surround yourself with cool-headed sounding boards who can objectively rein you in when you’re about to go rogue.  And then – sorry if this is super blunt, but I say it for your own good – you need the humility to listen to them.

3. The Resistance to Complicate Things

Lack of this resistance is definitely the most common weakness we see (when it comes to marketing), and often goes hand in hand with not being able to act decisively or quickly.

The more complicated you make something – too many goals for a single campaign, too many decision makers, too many layers in a concept – the harder it will be to nail successful timing.  For some reason, it’s an incredibly common human trait to overcomplicate things.  Part of it is time and resource poverty.  Our resources are so precious that we try to force them to serve many masters at once.

But a HUGE part of it in the business world is the (often misguided) need to get multiple people involved in various projects and decisions.  If I had a nickel for every time we were ready to launch a campaign for a client, and at the eleventh hour someone said “hey, let’s get Jeff’s opinion on this before we flip the switch.”  Inevitably, Jeff has something to add that derails the timeline and – I’m sorry to say – is most often not helpful.  But we made Jeff happy by looping him in so… Politics 1; Marketing Success 0.

There’s a principle called Brooks’ Law that was originally created to address communication challenges among software project teams.  But it really applies to ANY type of team working and making decisions together, like a marketing team and its extended family (executives, operations, etc.).  Visually, it shows lines of communication necessary for various team sizes, like this:

 

One of the four character traits that foster good timing in marketing, this diagram of Brooks' Law shows how larger teams require exponential lines of communication.

 

In associations, governments, and large companies, it’s not unusual to find a committee of 10 or more involved in projects and decisions.  Do you see how complicated those visuals are?  That’s an accurate reflection of the logistics required to get consensus.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that these types of organizations find it hard to achieve perfect timing…it’s just too darned complicated.

Tip:  What if this is your weakness?  There’s no easy fix for this one, other than to say steer clear of marketing concepts that require tight timing or “drop dead precision launch dates.”  You may not be able to capitalize on current events or hot news topics, but you CAN give yourself a lengthy runway to get ducks in a row long before an important event will take place.  See how we did this for the four provinces of Atlantic Canada, making a social media splash the moment the Canadian border opened during the pandemic.

4. The Discipline to Stay Abreast of the News

Marketing needs to sit well within the context of what’s going on in the world.  Being oblivious to current events can have unfortunate timing consequences, from ill-timed insensitivities to launching a product/service you claim is “a first”…when it’s been done before.

A recent, cringeworthy example of this is when the television show Canada’s Drag Race tweeted “This crown is up for grabs” on the day Queen Elizabeth II died.  Obviously, they meant the drag race crown, but ugh… the tweet was pummeled with criticism and had to be deleted.  This is a helpful lesson that pre-scheduling social posts can be a useful tool, but unless you stay abreast of the news, it could backfire.

Redpoint nearly fell prey to this once with our popular tourism marketing newsletter Tickled Red.  For the March 1, 2022 issue, the subject line was supposed to be “Bubblegum and Tombstones in Tourism.”  Tombstones referred to the brilliant concept of Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard… but the issue’s timing was just after the war in Ukraine started and casualties were piling up.  The newsletter draft was written before the war started, but we pulled that story (and the subject line) the day before it was scheduled to send.  It was not the right time to be celebrating tombstones of any kind.

Tip:  What if this is your weakness?  If you’re not someone who immerses themselves in news every day, and you don’t have a marketing agency at your disposal to help stay abreast of news, here’s a quick fix for one-off marketing plans.  Just before you’re about to launch something, hop on a social channel like Twitter or LinkedIn and see what news is trending.  Also, do a search online for keywords related to your campaign or concept.  A quick Google search will likely reveal anything glaring that may conflict with your plans.  And then either make your changes accordingly…or have the willpower to wait (see #2 above).

If you’re scheduling social posts in advance, however, then it’s super risky for you to NOT stay abreast of the news.  So if it’s not in your nature to keep up with current events, it’s best to just change your habits:  either stop scheduling posts or start checking the news often.

Folks, the bottom line is…no one is perfect.  You and/or your company may claim some of these character traits as weaknesses and there’s no shame in that.  But you’ll have more success and achieve a greater ROI in marketing if you choose concepts that play to your strengths instead.  It will make timing your friend and not your enemy.  Reflect on these four character traits to see how well (or not) you foster good timing in marketing.

Want more tips on how to get the most out of marketing?  Check out these 20 tips we assembled from our 20 years of experience as tourism marketing counselors.

Four tips to conquer your frustration when social apps get an overhaul.

July 28, 2022

When a social media app does a major overhaul of its format and features, frustration ensues.  Most marketers go through six stages of emotional grief:  anger, resentment, resistance, resignation, petulance, and… eventually… acceptance.  This is ESPECIALLY true of DIY or “one man band” marketers, who are drowning in general marketing tasks and have little time to learn the new rules of the game in one particular specialty.

Instagram is on a path to emulate TikTok, and even though it’s been a rocky start, they are committed to getting there. Twitter is rolling out a “notes” feature, which lets you tweet long-form content.  YouTube Shorts was launched in 2021 and yet many brands have been slow to tap its potential (even though the platform gets an average of 15 billion daily views).

A blond woman in a blue dress holds her head in frustration over the latest social media app overhauls.

For marketers, changes like that can be utterly exhausting.  Sure, if you’re an Instagram marketer (for example), and that’s ALL you do… you’ll dive in immediately and figure out how to harness all the new opportunities.  But if managing a brand’s Instagram account is only one of your 100 diverse responsibilities, a dramatic overhaul of the app is a roadblock that can tank your productivity and wring you out emotionally.

Resentment and resistance can only be indulged for so long before results start to suffer.  So give yourself a brief period to pout and then figure out how to embrace the changes in a way that works best for you.

And if you’re NOT a social media specialist whose entire job is to immerse yourself in these apps, here are four tips to help you get past your frustration when social media apps do an (annoying) overhaul:

  1. Divide & Conquer: There are two things contributing to your exhaustion.  One is figuring out what the new features are and if they’ll benefit you, and two is learning how to use them.  Both things take time, which is likely in short supply for you.  So, don’t do it all at once…research first, worry about learning the skills later.  The world won’t end if you don’t adopt the new features quickly.  In fact, if social media is only a fraction of what you do, your presence isn’t likely to be that robust and so your audiences won’t be expecting cutting-edge marketing here from you anyway.  Take your time.  It’s ok.
  2. Do Research:  The best thing about the internet is that someone, somewhere will have written a helpful article within a day of the overhaul.  You can find summaries of what’s changed, how to use the new features, and why they’re useful (or not).  A Google search for things like “Instagram update” or “Twitter Notes feature” (or whatever) should bring you to the latest articles the day overhauls are announced.  Wait a few days and “how to” articles are bound to follow.  You can also check sites like Social Media Today and Search Engine Journal.
  3. Create and Use a Test Account:  Part of the emotional frustration you feel comes from worrying you’ll screw up and not use the new features correctly…and your audience will see it.  This is where having a secret “test account” comes in handy.  Setting up a second account on a channel that’s private, with only you and a few friends/colleagues as the audience, is an easy way to play with all the new features until you get comfy with them.
  4. Watch and Learn:  You may not have the bandwidth to do EVERYTHING a social media app allows you to do, but you can certainly cherry pick features that make sense for you.  So, watch what other accounts do and try to recreate them in your test account.  This means you may need to follow more than just your local or regional competitors, because if they’re in the same time-poverty boat as you, then you won’t learn much by watching their accounts.  Follow BIG brands, that are bound to have expert social media teams using the latest cool stuff.

And above all, relax.  I know it’s frustrating when overhauls like this disrupt your routine.  Suddenly things you finally learned how to do efficiently are no longer efficient to do.  It’s annoying as hell.  But social media apps will continue to evolve constantly…it’s just the nature of that marketing medium.  So if you’re going to have a presence on those channels, this is a necessary evil.

Just remember:  It’s perfectly OK if your social media marketing isn’t robust because you’re spread too thin.  As a marketer, you have to make choices…and as long as you’re choosing to be robust in OTHER areas that bring you a strong ROI, it’s fine for social media to get less attention.  In fact, we flagged that as #17 in our list of Top 20 Tips for Tourism PR & Marketing Agency Clients.  It’s worth a look.

Because really, at the end of the day, success in marketing is about how much time you can spend on it.

What’s the best way to reengage email subscribers?

April 4, 2022

If a segment of your subscribers isn’t EVER opening your emails, it’s time to get them to reengage or…what?  You’ll kick them off the list?  A strong ultimatum (see below) can indeed be one of the best ways to inspire reengagement among email subscribers.

But lordy, that sounds harsh.  And on the surface, it also seems like it would hurt YOU more than it would hurt them.  They clearly won’t miss you, but your list size decreases.  Shouldn’t your goal always be to make your list as big as possible?

No, actually.  It shouldn’t.  Your goal should be to have a healthy list with as many engaged subscribers as possible.  Subscribers who never open your email – for whatever reason – are hurting your overall email program’s success.

That’s not just my opinion…it’s a fact.  If you’re skeptical of that fact, then before proceeding down to the real purpose of this article, pop over and read this article from HubSpot. They do a brilliant job of explaining why you should prune your email list regularly and the steps to make that happen.

But that’s not why we’re here.  We already KNOW that you should prune your list.  The question is…what’s the best way to reengage email subscribers before you take the drastic step of booting them from your list?

When faced with that challenge, you have one laser-focused goal at hand:  getting folks who always ignore your emails to open just ONE of them.  This will determine their fate.  If they open it (or them, if you’re doing a reengagement series), they stay.  If they don’t, they go.

If your emails are not being opened because they’re going to spam and subscribers just never see them, ultimately those subscribers should be removed from your list.  Any reengagement email you send will also go to their spam, so no matter how provocative or seductive your bait, they won’t bite.  Cut them loose.

But the rest of the never-openers?  THAT’S the high-potential pond where your bait matters.  These folks signed up for your email at some point, but they’ve become apathetic toward you:  not disenchanted enough to unsubscribe, but not interested enough to open anything you send.  They’re in “engagement limbo.”  And if you can jolt them into opening just one email, you instantly increase your list’s health AND inspire them to care about you again.

So here’s the million dollar question:  how can you successfully deliver that jolt?

Grabbing the attention of these apathetic recipients relies exclusively on the email’s subject line.  It’s the only tool you have to influence their behavior in these circumstances.  If the subject line doesn’t grab them enough to open it, the email’s content doesn’t matter.

Reengagement subject lines (and their corresponding body content) generally fall into one of three categories:  gentle nudge, rewarding lure, or strong ultimatum.  Which one/s you should use (or whether you should combine them as a series) depends on your brand’s personality, the transactional nature of your business relationships, and how determined you are to stringently prune your list.

Gentle Nudge

This is some version of “we miss you, where have you been?”  It’s a subtle tactic with no hard bite, but it could work with subscribers who are only mildly apathetic.  You could give this tactic a better chance by personalizing the subject line: “Joan, we miss you…where have you been?”  The content in the email body may or may not contain additional lures/rewards to inspire clicks (a special discount, time-sensitive offer, etc.).  But the overall vibe of this approach is soft and subtle, gently reminding them that they once pursued an email relationship with you and why they should stay in that relationship.  It’s often used as the first volley in series of reengagement tactics.  If they respond to this, there’s no need to pursue them with further measures.

Rewarding Lure

This is some version of “bribing” subscribers to reengage.  That sounds severe (and desperate, if we’re being honest), but engaged email subscribers are precious marketing assets.  It’s perfectly reasonable for you to trade something in exchange for wooing them back to caring.  Plus, if you give them a special offer (discount, value-add, etc.) that inspires a purchase, that’s revenue you wouldn’t have had anyway because they were previously ignoring you.

This lure has to be meaningful enough to matter, or the subject line won’t grab them.  So if you send 20% off specials to your general list all the time, this one-time offer to spark their reengagement must be significantly more appealing than that.  Again, personalization matters here to help cut through their desensitization.  “Victor, here’s 50% off just for you until (deadline).”  Don’t get hung up on the use of 50% in that example. The point is to make the offer exclusive and ultra-special, beyond the types of offers you usually share.  Free stuff, exclusive access to something, special perks and more…all can inspire that holy grail behavior you’re seeking here:  open that email.

Strong Ultimatum

This one’s not for the faint-hearted marketer, but it can be incredibly effective.  Here, you essentially threaten to remove them from the list by giving them one last chance to show you they want to stay.  You want to deliver a shocking jolt?  Human nature compels people to want what they can’t have.  So telling them they’re being removed from the list unless they deliberately request to stay is bound to grab their attention.  This tactic is the most direct and yields the most definitive action.

But be prepared, because this tactic comes with risk.  If not done with situationally-appropriate grace, you risk sparking a negative reaction/perception of your brand…whether or not they choose to stay on your list.  No one loves being threatened, so while you may get the initial result you want (they stay), you may have some branding repair work to do there.  Their affection for you may have taken a hit.

Ironically, a helpful “real life” example of this comes from HubSpot, the same folks referenced above for their brilliant explanation of how/when/why to prune email lists.  The irony is that the tactic worked, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve been on HubSpot’s daily email list for ages and hadn’t opened one in a while.  One day, I got an email from them with this subject line:

“We’re signing off.  Here’s why…”

Of course I opened that immediately because I thought they were closing up shop (as I’m sure they intended).  Turns out, when I opened it… they were threatening to break up with ME because I haven’t been opening their emails:

 

a copy of an email that shows the best way to reengage email subscribers

 

Now, I’m a marketer and this was a marketing newsletter from a marketing company.  So I get why they did this and don’t begrudge them the tactic.  They got their “open” from me, and that was the primary goal.

But I have to admit…despite that allowance for marketing kumbaya, the email’s execution just rubbed me the wrong way.  Telling me that “my subscription habits are bigger than my capacity for reading everything” is rather obnoxious.  It seems to be accusing me of poor time management skills. Like it’s my fault for not being able to keep up with reading their emails…not their fault for sending emails whose subject lines don’t pique my interest enough to open them.

The rest of the approach in the email body is on point.  There are plenty of lures in there to catch my attention, and a nice big button that says “Re-Subscribe,” which is another emotional tactic designed to move me to action.  It’s as if I’ve already been booted from the list, and now I need to proactively do something to get back on it.  (Hilariously, this wasn’t true because I didn’t click on anything and still kept getting their emails.  Yet another thing that annoyed me – the empty threat.)

The point is…be careful how you approach the strong ultimatum tactic.  This is especially true if you’re in the hospitality business.  Threatening to kick someone off an email list because they haven’t engaged with you in a while can come across as VERY inhospitable, no matter how gracefully you word it.

Overall bottom line:  quality over quantity is always the best pursuit with email subscribers…and indeed with most marketing efforts.  For another highly illustrative example of this, check out the time we had to break up with Google because it was sending TOO MUCH traffic to our website.

20 Tips for Tourism PR and Marketing Agency Clients

March 22, 2022

a red colored lightbulb with illumination marks signifying 20 tips to help tourism PR and marketing clients get the most out of their agency.

We’ve been serving PR and marketing clients in the tourism industry for 20 years.  Big global brands.  Tiny obscure companies.  Obscenely huge budgets.  Shoestring budgets.  Individuals with personalities that range from Type A to Zen.  Doers.  Procrastinators.  Screamers.  Huggers.  Savvy marketers.  Marketing agnostics.  Marketing skeptics.  No two clients are the same…and there have been thousands of them in our history.

So, we’ve learned a LOT about what it takes for a client to get the most out of both marketing and its agency.  Here, drawn from our extensive experience, are 20 tips to help tourism clients succeed in public relations and marketing:

  1. Changing marketing goals too frequently, or lacking them completely, can only achieve short term results for your efforts. Either be ok with that or make a solid plan and stick to it.
  2. If you water down a BIG BOLD idea, adjust your expectations down from BIG BOLD results. All too often, circumstances cause a client to dilute an idea’s execution…but then expect the same powerful results associated with the original concept.  That just ain’t how it works.
  3. If you feel you have to micromanage your agency, they’re not the right match for you. Let ‘em go, even if it’s us.
  4. Positivity works magic in PR. If you have faith it will produce…it will.  If you don’t…it won’t.
  5. It helps results tremendously if your entire organization is aware of your marketing plans. Devote resources to educating and engaging them, and you’ll see a greater ROI in marketing.
  6. Make the time to collaborate with your agency. If you skip meetings, miss deadlines, and sit indefinitely on things awaiting approval, you’re only tapping around 50% of their potential.
  7. If your boss doesn’t understand marketing, won’t leave, and remains skeptical about every campaign… dude, find a new job. We’ve seen it.  It never ends well.
  8. Tourists want visuals. Invest continually in photos and videos…every itinerary, every package, every story angle.  Without them, you’re losing marketing opportunities…which means you’re losing money.
  9. If you have “marketing envy” and always wish your organization could do things as cool as your competitors (or your agency’s other clients), learn what it takes operationally to execute such things. Then decide if your organization can make it happen.  You may not be nimble enough, your pockets may not be deep enough, or the concepts may be the complete wrong match for your brand.  If your organization is not equipped for it, stop being wistful.  Invest your energy in what will work best for YOU.
  10. It’s totally OK to put some marketing initiatives on a steady low flame temporarily (or even permanently) while you focus your resources elsewhere. Just make peace with it and don’t expect them to yield big results.
  11. It is totally NOT OK to turn PR on and off completely. It’s the one marketing medium that doesn’t respond well to fits and starts.  Either do it consistently (at any flame level) or just don’t do it.
  12. Use tailored landing pages for your digital campaigns. Without them, you’re losing a ton of business.  For some organizations, this is a no brainer. For others, it’s like pulling teeth.  Every. Single. Time.
  13. If your guest service and/or guest experience is inconsistent or subpar in any way, marketing will not help change that. In fact, the more guests we drive to your door, the more money you’re going to waste.  The damage those guests will do through social media, review sites, and lack of referrals/return quietly sabotages the positive benefits that marketing brings.  And a business can’t survive on new guests alone, who are more costly to acquire than referrals/repeats.  Fix the foundation, and you’ll see marketing pay off in spades.
  14. You can’t find love on a spreadsheet.
  15. A website should be both beautiful and functional, but if you had to choose where to put more resources…choose functionality every time.
  16. Forget what we said in #15 entirely.  Stop thinking of “beauty” and “functionality” as two different things.  Together they comprise “user experience,” and if your website doesn’t deliver equally in both areas, you’re losing money.  Period.
  17. Social media is more demanding than any other marketing medium. If you want to deeply succeed here, be prepared to staff it fully and keep up with the breakneck pace of ever-evolving rules, features, and channels.  Doing set-and-forget style marketing only taps around 20% of social media’s potential.  It’s fine if you choose to do it that way in the context of your overall marketing plan.  Just expect your notable results to come from other sources.
  18. If your risk tolerance is low, then PR is not for you. Often in PR, the greatest risks yield the highest rewards, but there are no guarantees.  That’s what makes it so exciting!
  19. There’s a reason creative, clever tourism packages and programs get a ton of press and social media love. Boring things just don’t command attention.
  20. Consistent indecision will tank your marketing ROI more than making a definitive poor choice ever will. That sounds dramatic, but history generally proves it to be true.

And here’s a bonus item, since we kinda negated #15.  Be candid with your agency at all times. Issues and concerns can be overcome easily with open communication. A good partner – as all agencies should be – will welcome the candor.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the client experiences we’ve had, and every relationship has helped us grow. And it’s enabled us to help brands of all sizes achieve their marketing and business objectives.  Big shout-out to all our clients for putting their trust in us, and here’s to the next 20 years!