Have you ever stayed at a hotel or taken a tour and never heard a word again from the provider?
Major League Baseball doesn't make that kind of customer relationship management mistake and sent me an email on behalf of the New York Yankees a day after I attended the Yankees-Tigers game Aug. 19.
Take a look at the email below:
Notice there are links to video highlights of the game, an opportunity to provide feedback about the game experience, a schedule of upcoming home games and a button to buy tickets.
Major League Baseball knew I attended the game and had my email address because I purchased my tickets online at StubHub, so there must be some information-sharing going on.
If only more hotels, airlines, cruise lines and tour and activity providers would engage with their customers in a similar way so soon after the trip. It would undoubtedly build more repeat business and engender some brand loyalty.
And, even Twitter, with its 190 million monthly unique visitors, understands that email marketing is an essential way of communicating with its community even though it can tweet and blog.
Marketing, after all, must be multichannel and hopefully an integrated effort.
In Edition #3 of Twitter Newsletter 2010, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone keeps account holders updated on developments including the Tweets app on LinkedIn, Users you may be interested in and even Twitter's earlybird account, which features discounted offers from advertisers, including Virgin America.
Stone writes in the email: "This newsletter focused mostly on following but there's much afoot these days at Twitter. The company is growing very fast and we're working on features at a steady clip. Come check out Twitter.com to see what's new, and happy following!"
Some hotels, in particular, do a good job of communicating with their clients after their stays, but not enough travel companies follow-up adequately.
As Major League Baseball and Twitter would probably attest, any travel company that isn't devoting resources to fine-tuning its email marketing program to clients probably is missing out on a big opportunity.