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December 2009 Newsletter
10-Dec-2009
2009 Wrap UpYou might have received our recent email (sent in a slight panic) to say that our main phone line had gone down for the day. It was all due to a complicated combination of Telco arrangements and an old exchange.What it did do was to remind me that we had been in our new offices for 12 months and made me reflect (as we are want to do at this time of the year) on milestones in this pretty tough year. We had just settled into our new digs last year when Kimberley Smelt left us to go on Maternity Leave and (although we didn’t know it at the time) move down to Sydney. Melissa Kennedy rejoined us in Kim’s stead. In April we welcomed Kim back as Account Manager for NSW/ACT and, with Melissa looking after the rest of the ANZ region. Abbie Bradshaw joined us in April as Office Co-ordinator and most of you will have had contact with her during that time. In an all time first, we had no turnover in our Data Cleaning team (touch wood) and added Alexis to the dedicated group. In an exciting move, we took on international data sets for global data cleaning, reached our 10,000th ICE process (which equates to over 10 million records cleaned), delivered 3,500 ICE reports, ran over 1,000 campaigns through dataArc, 10’s of thousands of reports and answered over 5,000 of your queries for assistance from our team. The dataArc combined databases cover around 4 million travellers. We expanded our geographic territory and began working with hotels in Japan, Singapore and China with current and new products. To our enjoyment, Kimberley, Melissa, Peter and I have been able to touch base with many of you in person to see what exciting things have been happening at your properties. Peter and I have travelled to Asia, the US and Europe, attending conferences and seeing some of the huge issues the industry in these places is facing. As you would all know, the issue of rate has dominated all conversations, but it does seem that our domestic market has fared much better than many and with such a strong domestic guest base we are better placed to deal with it. ............................................................................................ |
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So...What's NextWe are really looking forward to a break over the Festive Season (especially Ryan and Trent the IT gurus) as Quarter 1, 2010 sees the launch of dataArc Version 2 (new and improved access, speed, enhanced reporting and inclusion of international data), e-trigger (a pre- and post stay email communication tool), ICE V2 (our internal data cleaning program which enhances all data supplied to you), Mdata (for clean MICE data storage and campaign management) and Hotel Snapshot (Business Intelligence tool). All of which you will hear a lot more about after the break…but if we have piqued your interest here, please let me know............................................................................................. |
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Your ActivityNot surprisingly there has been almost a four-fold increase across the board in tactical marketing activity derived from guest history, based on the last two years. Now more than ever has been the time to study and speak to your client base. And some incredibly creative initiatives have come from sometimes limited resources- both human and marketing spend.There have been new audience bases appealed to, old ones reconnected with and valuable lessons learned from the data produced by each one. We have looked at the relative values of each segment and what motivates them to spend…especially in light of increasing competition for the family dollar. Much of this communication has been email activity, which has allowed me to harp on about the need to target marketing just as effectively in email as with DM (which I will shut up about now…but let me know if you would like to discuss further). Direct mail, has had a resurgence and has been used very effectively in some cases to cut through the mass of e-activity. We have run 100’s of ROI reports to see where targets have been met and, if they haven’t, where changes may need to be made. ICE reports have been heavily scrutinised and used as benchmark tools to ensure that you are building the richest database possible to support all of this activity. We have seen soaring email capture rates getting up into the 70-90% range, which we would have not thought possible to maintain just a few short years ago. We have seen some successful affiliated marketing practises, sharing resources to target mutual audiences, both across brands, hotels or regions but also with partners inside and outside the Industry. To facilitate this there has been a ‘getting back to the basics’ in terms of profiling both in the look of guests and their behaviour, and also identifying who brings the volume and best value customer through the door. Pre and post stay emailing; in conjunction with ezymsg has been the most FAQ in 2009 and we hope to address this with the e-trigger product. ............................................................................................ |
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2009 National Corporate GamesThe ITD Clean Team recently competed in the National Corporate Games in Melbourne. Although they did not ‘clean up’ they were one of the top interstate teams to compete in the field of 69 teams, and contributed to the Melbourne economy over a (by all accounts that have been given to the Boss) a very fun weekend............................................................................................. |
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Festive Season Office TimesThe ITD office will close at midday on Christmas Eve (Thursday 24 December) and reopen Monday 4 January. If you have an urgent matter during this time, please contact Rebecca Reilly on 0413 433 499 or rebecca@intouchdata.com............................................................................................. |
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Top 5Top 5 Online Christmas Shopping websites
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| From Peter, myself and the team at ITD, a sincere thanks for your support throughout the last year. We wish you a very safe, happy and relaxing Holiday Season and look forward to working with you in 2010. With warm regards, Rebecca Reilly Director Intouch Data |
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