| An Online Marketing Success Story |
 Like all industries, the travel industry was impacted by the 2009 recession. To better reach and entice customers to "get on board" with new cruise deals and offers, Expedia CruiseShipCenters knew they needed to rev-up their online marketing efforts during a very challenging economy.
The company sends out more than 1.5 million emails a month and manages five to six unique email marketing campaigns in three languages. They are also using the Lyris HQ Social Media Enhancer to share content from its email newsletters on popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. With this social sharing functionality, Expedia CruiseShipCenters enables email recipients to share valuable content via their social networks – virally spreading deals and offers to new prospects. Expedia CruiseShipCenters also monitors conversations on Twitter, engages customers and prospects, and responds to customer issues as they occur. Additionally, the company is using analytics capabilities to gain insight into customer behavior and overall online marketing campaign results, which enables the organization to better segment audiences and refine campaign strategy in real-time. By integrating social and mobile marketing and analytics capabilities into its strategy, Expedia CruiseShipCenters has been able to increase leads, convert prospects and improve the bottom line. In addition, the company has achieved email open rates as high as 40 percent, which is nearly 20 percent higher than the industry standard, according to MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2009. Here are a couple of examples of their email marketing campaigns:
Dave Mossop, Interactive Media Specialist at Expedia CruiseShipCenters, values the importance of personalization, and by integrating Expedia’s in-house CRM system with its email database the company has been able to synchronize and update information as needed. This seamless integration enables the company to create highly personalized emails that are addressed from individual cruise consultants to recipients, which deliver improved response rates. According to Mossop, “people who receive an email from a personal cruise agent are 5.5 percent more likely to open the email than those who receive an email addressed from a CruiseShipCenters location, and they are also 23 percent more likely to click a link in the email if it is addressed from a personal agent.” To learn more about Expedia CruiseShipCenters and how the company is integrating email marketing with social and mobile in its online marketing efforts, John Mast, VP of Marketing at Expedia CruiseShipCenters, will be speaking at MarketingSherpa's 2010 Email Marketing Summit in Miami on January 22nd. Further, Expedia CruiseShipCenters and Lyris will be giving away a free, 7-day cruise for two people at the event. Stop by the Lyris booth #2 to enter your name for a chance to win! For cruise giveaway rules and conditions, please visit, http://www.lyris.com/go/cruiserules. ### Related Resources:
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