Lorraine Garvie, Director of Revenue at The Green Hotel Golf & Leisure Resort on For-Sight and For-Email: "As we are a small hotel chain we see the value in customer loyalty. Encouraging repeat business and promoting our services to our guests to up-sell is critical to our business. At Montgomery Hotel Group we recognise that our customers have choices, and we want to show them that we value their business and know them better than our competitors. For-Sight helps us to do this. By using the information we have on our customers we can create a single customer view, which enables us to personalise our communications and promote offers and services that appealing, and ultimately generate revenue”. “We use For-Email to broadcast our email campaigns and find the on-line software very easy to use to create our campaigns. We can instantly track open rates and click throughs to our website and find the detailed reporting functions help to inform future email campaigns”.

Data Manager, Jen Howard, explains how to get the most out of For-Email campaign reporting functions.For-Email provides users with a detailed and easy to follow reporting tool, track your campaigns with real-time, contact level reporting.  For-Email’s powerful 'Reporting Suite' is designed by marketers, for marketers. With For-Email you can track your recipients’ behaviour right through to your website and conversion page – with full click path reporting. For-Email can tell you:•    Who opened your email•    Who clicked through to your site•    Where they clicked on your email•    Where they went on your site•    Who ‘converted’•    Your campaign ROIBoardroom-ready printouts, graphical reports, fully exportable data and email updates all make For-Email’s reporting second to none.  Use our reports to generate lists of hot leads for follow-up, identify your most popular content and landing pages, and pinpoint your most responsive recipients. Reports include:•    Delivery and open rates•    Links clicked (by link name and destination URL)•    Emails forwarded•    Replies•    Bounces and unsubscribes•    Emails posted to social network sites•    Campaign comparison reports•    Overlay hotspot report•    Individual contact details and actionsResponse geo mappingOur brilliant Geo Mapping tool creates a hot-spot map showing you where around the world your contacts are opening your emails. You'll see at a glance where your best customers and prospects are located, and target them with follow-ups. You can select hot-spots on the map with a mouse click and instantly create geographical data segments - even if you don't have the postcode data in your database.Identify your best customers and prospects - and sell them moreWe give you a powerful kit of analysis tools - so whatever your level of experience, you can easily drill down into your reporting data and profile your best customers and prospects by:•    The address books they are in•    The segmentation queries they are in•    The dynamic content they are shown•    Any group of variable that exist in your databaseThis means, you can for example, build a segmentation query to define the profile of your top spending clients, then pull a report on all those who match that profile and clicked through from your last email. Then follow them up with a lucrative 'upsell' call.  Compare campaigns, side by sideWith For-Email you can. So you get an even clearer understanding of which campaigns are performing best for you.  Compare, side by side, the response rates generated by different blocks of dynamic content within your email campaign, and use your findings to create super-performing dynamic content. Email client analysis toolEver wondered exactly what your recipients are using to read your emails on?  Well now you can with For-Email's nifty 'Email Client Analysis Tool'.  Currently available to Enterprise clients, within your campaign reports is a link below your ‘Top 5 Email Clients:'  Click on ‘See full report’ to be taken to the 'Email Client Analysis Tool' where For-Email will show you a full breakdown of the email clients which handled your campaign.  This could be Outlook, an iPhone, a Blackberry or an Android. How many of your recipients use their email client in Chrome or Safari? Or just what percentage of your recipients actually use Lotus Notes? The answers are only a click away!  This data is gold dust when it comes to optimising the design of your emails to render in your most commonly used email clients. Use it wisely.

Forth Communication has recently been appointed by BDL Management to implement their marketing database software, For-Sight, across 40 hotels in the UK. The investment will provide the Scottish hotel management company with the necessary tools to attract and retain high yield customers, achieve service consistency, and deliver personalised service within an intensely competitive environment. The bespoke centralised guest/customer database, For-Sight,  gives BDL Management anytime access to customer and prospect data with the ability to run email or direct mail campaigns complete with reporting facility. Implementation of the system has further benefits for the company, with hotel owners and asset managers assessing turnover and profit as measures of hotel management success.  The ability to demonstrate technological development was made possible with Scottish Enterprise providing a financial contribution to enable the purchase of the system.  BDL Management Commercial Director, Nik Gupta commented “We’re delighted with the functionality of the system delivered by Forth Communication. We’re able to understand our guests, their requirements and drive customer loyalty across our hotels”. “We look forward to commencing our revamped communication strategy and driving business through audience segmentation and bespoke email communications.  Our target is a 30% uplift in business in 2012 as a direct consequence of our new CRM platform across accommodation, food and beverage and leisure activities”. Gordon Drysdale, Business Development Director at Forth Communication added. 'Forth are delighted to be working with BDL Management, a company who have both the drive and enthusiasm to continually strive to improve the way they communicate with their customers, and increase revenues. For-Sight, will be a key tool to assist BDL achieve their growth targets'. Fiona Alexander, Scottish Enterprise account manager for BDL Management, said, “BDL Management is a great example of a Scottish company with the ambition and capacity for growth.  I’ve worked with the team on various projects, and this latest software investment should enable them to accelerate their growth considerably, helping them achieve their goals faster.”BDL Management Ltd possesses a hotel portfolio which currently boasts 40 hotels within the Holiday Inn, Ramada Encore, Express by Holiday Inn and the Crowne Plaza brands.BDL is UK’s largest multi brand franchisee of InterContinental Hotels Group and Wyndham Hotels Group.  Formed in 1997 to develop and operate new build internationally branded hotels, BDL manages hotels in locations across the UK and Ireland.  For more information visit www.bdlmanagement.co.uk  

The Forth Communication email broadcast tool, For-Email has new updates and enhancements to make it even more user friendly!   The main design change is the navigation for the application.  This has changed from a left-hand menu, to a horizontal menu across the top of the screen. This change is part of our drive to increase the usability of For-Email for new and existing users. Another new feature allows users to change the width of their campaigns, for templates that support it. New application navigation The new navigation is positioned across the top of the screen.  The previous 'Overview' is now a simple 'Home' icon and 'Help' made more prominent to the top right. The top right section of the header has also changed to give a cleaner, fresher feel with faster access to the sections under 'My Account'.  The menu when using the survey tool and site builder is also updated to show across the top of the screen. Campaign width All our templates were previously a fixed width; however new updates mean the user can change the template width depending on the email campaign.  You can still create columns and resize elements in those columns. Remail Our new Auto Remail feature lets you schedule a re-send of an email campaign to all non-openers.  You can define how much time to allow before non-openers are remailed, and you can set new subject lines to ensure maximum engagement.For more information on For-Email click here  

Business Development Director, Gordon Drysdale was recently interviewed by Caterer & Hotelkeeper, giving advice and expertise on e-marketing.  To read the on-line article click here. From bespoke e‑mail to TV tickers and recorded messages for callers on hold, there are many ways to improve your marketing mix at little cost. Ross Bentley assesses the options. E‑mail and, to a lesser extent, SMS texts have revolutionised the way operators in the hospitality industry market their business. These electronic communications are not only cheaper than traditional direct mail, they also allow users to react more quickly to changes by sending out promotions, almost at the push of a button. However, according to Gordon Drysdale, business development director at marketing technology provider Forth Communication, more important than the media used is the level of knowledge you have of your customer's preferences. data sources Drysdale says that, for hoteliers who use multiple systems, from their main reservations and property management system to their other associated databases - like the restaurant, spa and golf course - the ability to pull together all these data sources to give complete customer information is essential for marketing purposes. But marketing isn't about simply sending targeted correspondence. In this article, we have highlighted other paths to raising the profile of a business and directing guests to special offers - all using technology to a certain extent. From bespoke recorded phone messages, through television screen messaging via a ticker, to managing TripAdvisor reviews - technology has given marketers many more strings to their bows. opinion – Make the most of e-mail marketing Gordon Drysdale, business development director, Forth CommunicationThere is still a place for direct mail marketing campaigns within the hotel sector, but increasingly hotel marketers are realising the potential of utilising more cost-effective digital marketing channels, such as e‑mail and SMS, to promote special offers to their customer base. The hotels we work with tend to send out traditional direct mailing campaigns three or four times a year on average, to target both individual consumers and corporate clients. By comparison, e‑mail campaigns are run two or three times a month. The most critical advantage of e‑mail over postal mail is the cost element, somewhere between 0.3 and 0.7p per e‑mail, depending on volume. Another advantage of using e‑mail is the speed with which you can set up a campaign. If you have templates set up on your broadcasting system and you have a list of people you wish to contact, then you can have the e‑mail broadcast within seconds. This speed enables hotels to react quickly to fill gaps in bookings for the weekend coming, to offer quick turnaround discounts, or to attempt to cross-sell or upsell. Currently we are seeing a number of hotels selling at a room-only rate but then using e‑mail to upsell. They do this by sending out an automated e‑mail acknowledging guests are due to arrive soon and asking them if they would like to reserve a place for dinner or breakfast, or a round of golf, and so on. Post-stay e‑mails often include follow-up surveys - asking guests about their thoughts on their stay and attempting to glean additional information such as birthday, partner's details or interests (for example, fine dining, romantic breaks, sporting weekends, and so on). These surveys allow hotels to continually monitor their performance and enhance the data they hold on the guests, which can further assist the targeting of future marketing activity. SMS text messages can be just as effective as e‑mail in many of these regards but, obviously, hotels have fewer characters to play with, so the information they send out has to be succinct." Five ways to make the most of marketing ● Ensure data is cleaned and screened● Use as many data sources as possible to build an accurate and complete customer database● Make sure data is segmented appropriately for each marketing communication, so that the right information reaches the right people● Use reporting functions to measure and analyse results and inform future activity● Ensure that you have an intuitive interface which is easy for the guest to use   Caterer & Hotelkeeper - March 2012.pdf (1.91 mb)