The Advantage Travel Partnership has launched its first direct mail marketing campaign since the start of the global pandemic in March last year.
The consortium’s campaign focuses on holiday dreams and will be sent out to close to 50,000 customers featuring personalised collateral, including agent members’ contact details and logos.
The key message is ‘dreams are back in business’ with content designed to be inspirational and educational. It will include a wide variety of feature-led articles on short-haul, long-haul and cruise holidays. Destinations such as Italy, Malta and Greece feature as well as Thailand and Barbados, along with a piece on transatlantic cruising in time for the US opening its borders on November 8.
Advantage members will receive a full suite of designed digital assets and banners as part of the campaign to use in their own marketing and a digital version of the direct marketing mailer, which can be used by agents to promote across their own digital channels, customised with their own logos and contact details. The marketing materials reiterate the benefits of booking through a travel agent to reassure customers they will be helped through the new booking and travel process with expert advice.
Suzanne Cumpston, of Advantage member Sam Smith Travel in Wales, said the marketing collateral had already resulted in a lucrative cruise booking.
She said: “A creative collection of visuals and superb offers combined with a brilliant feature on the many positives of booking with travel agents has recently resulted in a particularly lucrative cruise booking for us. Dreams are most certainly back in business!”
Advantage head of marketing David Forder said now was the right time for agents to start engaging with customers more proactively.
He said: “We have continued to support members throughout the pandemic with a wide range of marketing materials and we are pleased our latest piece of activity has been so well received.
“Destinations have been steadily opening up since May giving consumers more and more choice and our members more opportunity to sell.
“This is a critical time in the lead up to peak booking periods and we wanted to arm our members with every tool they could utilise to maximise bookings as they recover from the devastating impact of Covid.”