Case History: Traveling Smart with Smarter Living Newsletters
Travel tends to take the first cut when expenses are being reeled in. But not for readers of Smarter Living Inc.’s tip-packed e-mail newsletters.
The company offers a total of nine. Together, they have over one million subscribers, with some overlap of readers who receive more than one.
The first e-zine, Last Minute Airfares, was started in 1998 by SmarterTravel.com, the publishing entity of Smarter Living Inc. As the name implies, it covers last-minute airline deals.
The second was Deal Alert. Released on Thursday mornings, it features the best air, hotel, car vacation deals, along with cruise deals and a section of feature articles that offer a variety of travel advice and a guest columnist article. Deal Alert has the largest circulation and the broadest editorial scope of all the e-newsletters.
Since then, the firm has started Frequent Flyer Mile Alert, Senior Traveler, Student Traveler, Family Traveler, Cruise News, Weekend Escapes and International Last Minute Airfares.
“What we do is research these and then we send newsletters tailored to 81 different cities,” says Ed Passarella, editor-in-chief, SmarterTravel.com. “If you live in Boston and sign up for that newsletter, every Wednesday morning you’ll get all last minute airfares announced by airlines flying out of Boston for that weekend and a number of timely stories.”
Produced inhouse, all of the newsletters link to various sections on the SmarterTravel.com Web site with some fare information linking readers directly to fare providers. They are distributed on varying schedules either weekly, monthly, or twice a month. In the case of Cruise News, distribution is dependant on the season.
Getting Subscribers
The site itself, www. SmarterTravel.com, is a powerful tool for acquiring subscribers, Passarella says. Visitors, whether they were led there through an organic search or a friend’s recommendation, are invited to opt in to one or more of the nine e-zines.
“Let’s say someone is researching travel deals to Europe and comes to us,” Passarella says. “In addition to helping them find the best deals and giving advice on how to save money and best time to go, we make them aware that they can have that info delivered to them directly.”
Subscribers are also snared through site pop ups and sign-up mentions at the end of editorial pieces, he adds.
Challenges
The foremost editorial challenge is serving subscribers with what they need. “We do surveys and testing to see what works best for various audiences and we’re always fine tuning the newsletter,” Passarella says. “With so many different e-newsletters, making sure that we’re close to each individual audience and responding to their needs and interests is important.”
In addition, Smarter Living periodically tests layouts, formats and story types. Based on its findings, it moved from text to HTML design over the last few years, although text is still offered. “The challenge is that it’s not static it’s an ongoing relationship with readers,” Passarella continues. “We need to stay on our toes, keep up with them and stay ahead of them if we can to make sure we’re servicing them properly.”
Each newsletter is geographically segmented. In addition, the senior and student audiences have different needs so editorial overlap is virtually non-existent except for highlights of stories of interest to everyone.
For example, “If Jet Blue announces a new route, there’s usually a sale associated with it. For us there’s a story there,” Passarella says. “For us it’s not just a question of picking up the announcement, we see what they’re saying and we compare their offer to others. We may also write a story about Jet Blue’s new routes and introductory offers having checked other airlines where two had better fares and three didn’t. We put everything into context for our readers whereas a more commercial site would not. Our goal is for the consumer to make the best possible decision.”
In line with that, SmarterTravel limits its role to being an information provider. Subscribers can’t book or purchase tickets from the site. And more often than not, Passarella doesn’t have data on deals that have closed because interactions between readers and advertisers/suppliers are solely between them.
But Passarella is confident that information makes good consumers. “We’re between an audience that has information needs and a client community that has products. If reaching our audience helps the advertisers they keep coming back,” he said. “If it doesn’t they don’t.”
Keeping the Quality High
How does SmarterTravel keep its lists clean?
For starters, s confirmation e-mail is requested upon sign-up. If there is no confirmation, the name is dropped from the list.
“Our whole point is the qualification of our readers that they have clearly expressed an interest by not only signing up but also confirming,” Passarella says. “Double confirm for us is an extra assurance to our advertisers that we’re fairly mailing these.”
In addition, the firm works hard to avoid trouble with spam filters or junk mail listings. Delivery rates are monitored by the company’s tech team, which is in close communication with major e-mail providers on standards and practices. The opt-in process used for the e-newsletters conforms to industry standards, and the company is careful about the size of its newsletters. “We keep them at a reasonable size as to not overburden mail systems,” Passarella says. Prior to broadcast, the e-zines are run against a script to ensure that they don’t include spam triggers.
“We’re not spam,” Passarella says. “We’re sending newsletters to people who ask for them but the big three mail providers are dealing with millions and millions of e-mail pieces. We’re conscious of policies, preferences and restrictions and work with them to make sure our readers can get what they’ve asked for.”
