Nuts & Bolts - Case Study : Personality Hotels Finds Its Twitter Stride
May 2010 By Heather Fletcher
|
Challenge: Prospecting, CRM and branding.
Solution: Tweeting.
Results: About $70,000 in bookings from June 1, 2009, to Feb. 23, 2010.
What direct marketers care about is how Twitter generated $70,000 in bookings for Personality Hotels from June 1, 2009, to Feb. 23, 2010. What Erin Finnegan, the San Francisco hotel chain's marketing and social media manager, cares about is that she's providing fun, engaging and relevant information to those considering a visit to the City by the Bay. And that, she says, is how she achieves that metric.
Finnegan, a.k.a. "Marketing Diva," tweets from @personalityhtls and says she used to sit and fret about what to write in the 140 character space. But now she relaxes and goes with the flow. She's even gotten her French bulldog, Tallulah Rose, in on the action (@mstallulahrose).
"It's always so funny," Finnegan says. "Anytime anyone sees an article on Twitter or Facebook or social media, they'll rip it out or print it out and give it to me. ... A lot of them say ... there's an equation for Twitter. 'You should tweet an average of this many times a week. You should keep your content this percentage this, this percentage this.' ... But the whole point of Twitter is it's very off the cuff and spontaneous and by not putting so much thought into it, it doesn't paralyze you from being able to reach out to the customers."
For instance, she says, plenty of marketers are using codes to track conversions. But to her, that feels detached. Besides, she knows exactly how well the Twitter efforts are going, because she's the one facilitating the bookings.
By "listening" and then reaching out to those tweeting about planned stays in San Francisco, she's able to eventually have them contact her via e-mail (queendiva@ personalityhotels.com). From there, she helps them complete the booking process. But those Twitter conversations, she estimates, represent only 40 percent of her tweets.
Far fewer, about 10 percent of her posts, relate to pushed hotel information and multichannel marketing campaigns. (The campaigns that are deployed across e-mail and all social media channels—the chain has Facebook and LinkedIn presences, plus a few of the individual hotels have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts—redirect to specific landing pages on the hotel chain's Web site.)
|
Social Media ROI
Email Marketing that Works (2nd Edition)