How this travel agent increased email engagement and sales with MailerLite
As Japan reopened following the pandemic, Lindsay Colbert from Japan Ski Experience faced another potentially devastating issue.
The travel agency had switched email service providers (ESP) due to rising costs, but campaigns sent with the new ESP were getting lower engagement than she was used to.
This was not good for the business. If our subscriber list continued to achieve such poor engagement, we would have been robbed of our best means of getting leads.
They immediately looked for another provider—and this is when they discovered MailerLite. The switch dramatically improved their deliverability, ensuring their emails reached their audience and driving the bookings they needed for a successful year.
We spoke to Lindsay to learn more about why the brand switched to MailerLite. Plus she explains how her travel agency uses email marketing to nurture leads and generate sales.
How Japan Ski Experience uses MailerLite
Lindsay is a founder who also manages email marketing. She needed a tool that combined outstanding deliverability with features that make it easy to create impactful campaigns. MailerLite fit the bill perfectly.
MailerLite is really intuitive. I’m not super techy and you don’t need to be. We have grown tremendously over past years, and our email campaigns have played an important part. Mailerlite does exactly what we have needed to achieve this.
Here is how Lindsay and Japan Ski Experience use MailerLite.
Lindsay creates eye-catching emails that drive engagement with our visual editor.
Lindsay boosts sales and customer value with targeted emails.
Lindsay keeps track of what is working and where orders are coming from.
Dodging a deliverability disaster
Japan Ski Experience previously used Mailchimp. Lindsay looked to switch when she realized a small increase in email subscribers would trigger a much more expensive plan.
They moved to SendinBlue (now Brevo) only for their initial campaigns to receive much lower engagement than with Mailchimp.
SendinBlue was OK until we sent our first campaign. Suddenly we had a complete lack of engagement. This made no sense since the borders just opened and there was a ton of buzz around skiing in Japan.
This was a critical issue since its marketing list, grown organically over 15 years, was crucial to the travel agency’s post-pandemic recovery plans.
At the end of the pandemic, we really needed to fall back on our marketing list to bring in sales. We knew what our engagement rates should look like. We learned that the decrease was almost certainly related to deliverability issues on the part of the software.
Following further research, they turned to MailerLite for its reputation in keeping emails out of spam folders. The improvement was immediate.
Engagement rates not only surpassed those with SendinBlue but also exceeded their previous success with Mailchimp.
This allowed them to create an impactful email marketing strategy that effectively sells their ski experiences.
Driving sales with engaging newsletters
The goal of Japan Ski Experience’s marketing strategy is to get people to complete an interest form. They can then contact the prospect and help them make a booking.
Their newsletter is core to this as it’s a direct channel with people who are interested in booking a ski holiday. Plus the company can repeatedly message these subscribers, increasing the chances that they request a quote.
The list consists of people who signed up on the website and past customers. The strategy is especially lucrative because ski holiday enthusiasts often book multiple trips. Lindsay estimates that around 50% of their sales come from repeat customers.
Designing and sending these emails is a breeze with MailerLite’s drag-and-drop tools. This is crucial as Lindsay personally manages email marketing.
I like how easy it is to build campaigns that have great interaction. The drag-and-drop builder is really good for us.
Lindsay also leverages reporting features to see where their bookings are coming from and to focus their efforts more effectively.
Boosting the value of existing customers
Lindsay uses email segmentation to identify people who have already made a booking and then promote related packages to them, such as airport transfers or lift passes.
This helps both the brand, thanks to the increase in sales, and the customer, who gets access to useful services that will improve their trip.
I love the segmentation features in MailerLite. I can easily control who I send emails to and that was such a headache with Mailchimp. We used to mess around with it so much.
By segmenting based on the specific holiday they booked, Lindsay can send super targeted emails. What’s more, she can avoid sending general promotional emails that would risk annoying people who have already booked a vacation.
The brand uses segmentation in other ways too. One strategy involves splitting the list randomly to manage demand.
With over 40,000 subscribers, sending emails to everyone at once would overwhelm their team. Instead, they send the same email to smaller segments at different times.
This approach ensures they can handle all incoming requests, avoid keeping customers waiting, and prevent sales team overload.
They also maintain a segment of customers who signed up for early-bird deals, sending more frequent marketing emails to these subscribers.
Turning website visitors into customers
The Japan Ski Experience site attracts significant organic traffic from Google and other sources.
These visitors aren’t always ready to buy as they’re often researching holidays they’ve already booked. But by adding a form to their website that asks visitors to sign up for early-bird deals, the company collects leads they can target for future holidays.
These forms help the brand grow its list by around 70 subscribers daily during peak season. It’s a free, cost-effective alternative to paid ads.
Once the subscriber form is set up, the only costs attributed to following up on these leads are the monthly fees to Mailerlite. When you compare these fees to what you’d have to pay for PPC, it's very a cost-effective form of marketing, and more successful because it generates repeat business.
The strategy is effective because of how targeted the offer is. People are literally signing up to be informed of future sales.
What’s more, it’s not just the upcoming season that they will hear about. The brand can keep promoting holidays every year.
Becoming Japan’s best ski travel agent
With Japan fully open post-pandemic, things are looking up for Japan Ski Experience. The company is busy taking orders for the winter 2024/25 season and was recently voted Japan’s best ski travel agent.
The cyclical nature of ski tourism also means the brand has started sending similar messages to those that received such poor engagement on the previous platform. The difference in performance of the new emails sent with MailerLite is night and day.
We’re sending similar emails that we sent last May with the previous provider. The latest newsletter I sent to 25,000 subscribers had 0 spam complaints. The equivalent email last May had 0.1%. That’s a really direct comparison. We’re very happy.
Head to the Japan Ski Experience website to find out more about the brand and even book your dream ski trip.
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