Posted Date: 1/23/2013
ZDirect Predicts eMarketing Growth
With more than 50 percent of hotels increasing their marketing budgets in 2013 and marketers increasing their email marketing budgets by 56 percent, the enterprise email service provider for the hospitality industry is predicting exponential growth in the coming months
ZDirect, a company that has been providing hotels with electronic customer-relationship management solutions since 2002, enters the new year with its customer base now spanning six out of seven continents, and 2,000+ hotels and resorts using its ZMail® electronic communication platform. With more than half of hotels (58 percent) projecting marketing budget increases by at least 10 percent this year and more than 56 percent of marketers planning to grow their email marketing budget, ZDirect is positioned to grow exponentially in 2013.
From up-selling a hotel's amenities online -- or via mobile device -- with personalized pre-arrival emails, to creating offers specifically tailored to meet the individualized needs of one’s guests or groups of guests, ZDirect is helping hotel owners, operators and marketers achieve maximum profit from unsold perishable room inventory.
ZDirect Differentiators:
1. ZDirect only provides services to the hotel industry, unlike other email service
providers (ESPs) that provide service to multiple vertical markets.
2. ZDirect's Dynamic Content Engine or Business Rules Engine is patented and collects
hospitality-specific data.
3. ZDirect owns its solution from data entry (capturing the guest's email and contact
information) to inbox delivery.
4. ZDirect has interfaces to all major PMS and CRS systems.
5. ZDirect uses business intelligence to identify the right customers for the
right offer vs. list marketing that runs the risk of attracting "opt out" requests.
Profile marketing uses rich, targeted data to match what a hotel wants to sell with whom will buy it. For example, if it is Wednesday and a hotel needs to fill unsold rooms for the upcoming weekend, ZDirect can perform a profile search to identify past guests who booked four to five days out, arrived on a Friday or Saturday, and live within a 500 mile radius (as the likelihood of someone flying to a destination last minute is slim).
Behavioral marketing searches for customers based on purchase history from within the PMS and identifies how much money they spent on past stays, how many times they stayed, and in which market segments to create promotional offers based on that criteria.