Travelzoo: A travel consultancy company that chooses email marketing

Image: Travelzoo website Tangwenzhi A company that provides travel advisory services, can it succeed simply by pushing Ane-mail to its members every week and insisting on doing business more than 10 years ago, Web 1.0? Travelzoo has proved, at least, that the company was listed on Nasdaq in 2002 and then broke the 80 times-fold record of ebay's 2004-year earnings. As of March 31 this year, Travelzoo first quarter financial income reached 42.2 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 7%, net profit of 5.6 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 49%. It has 2000多万名 registered users worldwide. e-mail, this is the most important and only marketing channel Travelzoo currently chooses. Compared to those who are keen to expand their users through new media, Travelzoo seems somewhat different, but it is this seemingly outdated "stupid way", only last year, Travelzoo China, the number of members of more than 1.1 million people, customer single price in 300~500 dollars, Even in the high-end tourism industry, this figure is enough to make many similar companies envy. With the Web 1.0 "Travelzoo is not a merchant's agent, does not participate in the specific business, our genes are a media, Web site and e-mail is the only product we provide to users." Hong Wei, president of Travelzoo China, said in an interview with the first financial daily that the "media gene" was the most important direction for Travelzoo. In 1998, Lalf Baterre, the founder of a journalist who started out with 10,000 of dollars in the face of a variety of tourist information, wanted to do a weekly "Top 20" promotional newsletter for consumers, which is still the core of Travelzoo's main business. The internet to provide consumers with a huge amount of information at the same time, but also let more consumers in the information tide lost direction, consumers are eager to find the most value of products, but there is not much time and effort to look for comparisons and even seriously examine every product on the market. Travelzoo undoubtedly in this wave to do a "countercurrent" choice, give up "all-inclusive" information, choose "Few few" strategy. "Our approach is not difficult, it's simple but it's not easy," he said. Hong Wei explains that there seems to be no "smarter approach" to finding products in the tens of thousands of tourist products that really value what can be recommended to consumers, except relying on an experienced editor to "audition". Prices are not the only criteria for editors to audition. Travelzoo has a professional team to search, review, refine and test the 20 per week travel promotion recommendations for different countries. Compared with the price, the cost-performance ratio is the editors ' more important choice standard. "What is the value of this product to consumers?" "This is Hong Wei's most frequently asked question to its editorial team," We will reject the non conformance, it is not possible to deliver a sufficiently valuable preferential product, even if their price is low enough, the advertising cost is high enough, will not affect the choice of our content. "At present, Travelzoo's editorial team in the market search and screening of competitive products and projects, after the combination of packaging recommended to the member consumers, the user's booking behavior needs to jump to the merchant website, or through direct communication with the merchant to complete. This kind of input manpower, the material resources, makes the primary choice for the consumer the strategy to appear simple, behind but contains to the pattern and the content absolute self-confidence. Do not do "tall" "white rich beauty" for most tourism sites, with hotels, airlines or tourist attractions form cooperation, to obtain a certain discount and rebate is the most commonly used profit model. However, the "media" of the operation of the idea to distinguish Travelzoo from the traditional online tourism companies, it is more like a "Travel electronic magazine." Travelzoo does not charge any fees, but earns revenue through commercial advertising. If you say Ctrip, where to go and other comprehensive tourism platform is to open the door to do business and other consumers to find information, Travelzoo more like the product pushed to the hands of users. The former need through various promotion and marketing to the consumer "pull" (pull) to the website platform, while the latter is the product directly "push" (push) to consumers. How to let the push out of the mail is not put into the spam box, which is the common problem of all Web site enterprises. "Find your own clients and give them something right." "This is Hong Wei's understanding and answer. From the data provided by Travelzoo, the current national Active mail subscribers more than 1.1 million people, no promotion and marketing channels, the annual natural growth of more than 100,000 users, in China's data, for example, mail order conversion rate reached 30%. In other words, the weekly "Top 20" recommended products, more than 300,000 users will point to the 20 information to try the booking process. What kind of people are these 1.1 million users? "About 30 years old, good income (the average monthly income of 10,000 yuan), white-collar workers and the majority of staff," This is the key words given by Hong Wei, "This is a group of ideas, have the ability to also have the intention of ' good for themselves ' people, but also more ' savvy ' consumers." "From the Travelzoo of the weekly push products, the average product price in the majority of 2000 yuan, which in the domestic tourism industry belongs to high-end products." Targeted products can make consumers have a "small crowd", the sense of customization, the user's stickiness is often because of "feeling" and more stable. And from the data provided, the same high-end products through the Travelzoo channel Sales amount is the traditional OTA (over-the-air, a short message mechanism, through the mobile phone terminal or online mode to achieve the Business menu dynamic download, delete and update, Enable users to access personalized information services to the data value-added service platform channel more than three times times. According to Hong Wei revealed that the current Ctrip, where, art dragon, the same way network and other tourism integrated site will also seek cooperation with Travelzoo, "our customers more focused, especially in the high-end consumer groups, so these sites will be very happy to put their middle and high-end products on our platform for sales." "Based on the positioning of the model extension started in tourism, from last year, Travelzoo in the Chinese market to introduce local deal brand, began to gradually extend to catering, health and other high-end urban leisure services." What is the difference between a business that looks close to group buying mode and Groupon? The Hong Wei emphasizes "genetic differences". At present, from the local deal products, still concentrated in five-star hotel spa, high-end hotel catering and other high-end products. And in the choice of these products, still use travelzoo consistent "stupid Way"-manual selection. "Although we need people to provide these services, it does not mean that our team is huge, depending on the experienced professional editorial team behind the scenes." Hong Wei added, "We do not think that the local deal is a simple group purchase, although the model is similar to the group purchase, but in the quality of products we provide better protection, so the user satisfaction will be correspondingly improved, so as to attract more business investment." "Compared with Groupon, which has more than 10,000 employees, Travelzoo, the only 340 employees in the world, used the travel industry to try to get out of" white-rich-America "in the already-unsettled group buying industry. In fact, from the Travelzoo global view, the current Chinese products still stay in the "Top 20" and "local Deal" two products, whether will be in the near future to introduce more products and models, Travelzoo to noncommittal. "The introduction of more products is not our goal, but more important is the introduction of the same time adhere to the same ' gene ' and operating mode. "Hong Wei to this newspaper, the change is the market and the environment, the same may be the Travelzoo has been the media gene and originated from the Web 1.0 era tradition."