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TourAdvantage
TourAdvantage

TourAdvantage Helps Experience Providers Fight Back Against Online Travel Agencies White-Labeling Their Brands

Customer:
TourAdvantage
Industry:
Events & Entertainment
Platform:
FareHarbor

TourAdvantage is a full-service solution that helps tour operators and experience providers take control of their businesses through an often-overlooked channel: automated email marketing.

After spending years in the corporate world, Daniel in IT and Lesli as a Product Manager, the duo wanted a change. They sought to combine their technical expertise and passion for the travel industry to help tour operators grow their business through email marketing.

With their industry and marketing expertise, they amassed an impressive audience of 35,000+ subscribers. Through the blog, they formed brand partnerships with local tour operators. This is where they saw the opportunity to help tour and experience providers increase their revenue through automated email marketing, and their flagship product, TourAdvantage, was born.

TourAdvantage is a full-service solution for tour operators and experience providers, powered by Drip’s automated email marketing platform and popular booking platform, FareHarbor. 

The solution includes an integration between Drip and FareHarbor, an integration with waiver systems Smartwaiver and Wherewolf, industry-specific email and workflow templates, and marketing strategy recommendations and support from Dan and Lesli.

“Email is the solution to a lot of business problems, but people don’t realize it. Most tour operators are just sending newsletters alone, which isn't effective.” — Lesli Peterson

 

The Unique Advantage Automated Email Marketing Brings to Tour Operators & Experience Providers. 

The reason that newsletters don’t work on their own? 

Most people book a tour once and never again. While newsletters are great in addition to automated emails, email automation gives experience providers a unique advantage: the ability to send automated emails after someone makes a purchase, but before the tour date. 

Depending on the type of experience, people book months in advance. During that time, with an integration between Drip and FareHarbor, tour operators can trigger automated emails upselling relevant upgrades and make a ton of money. 

The only caveat is that to do this, you need to collect email addresses.

 

Owning The Customer Relationship.

Another unique problem that experience providers face is forfeiting email addresses—and in turn, their line to direct relationships with their customers—to online travel agencies (OTAs) like TripAdvisor.

stat-revenue

60-80%

Total revenue driven by email marketing

stat-winner

35%

Repeat purchase rate

stat-purchaser

56%

Attributed revenue driven by repeat purchasers

stat-automations

27%

Attributed revenue from VIP emails

Daniel and Lesli Peterson, Founders of TourAdvantage

“Online travel agencies take a big chunk of revenue and many don’t share the email addresses. They’re doing the cross-sell and upsells but not for your tours, for other people’s tours. You have no control over what they promote, and no way to contact your customers.”

Daniel Peterson, Founder of Sunstone Digital Marketing

Daniel Peterson

Owner of TourAdvantage

TourAdvantage provides a clever way around this problem through integration with waiver systems, Smartwaiver, and Wherewolf, so their clients can collect email addresses via online waiver (even if their experience doesn’t have high liability). This way, they get all of the attendees' email addresses, versus no email at all, or just the person who booked the trip. 

“If a group of women are on a bachelorette trip, you can upsell to all of them versus just the person who booked the trip. That increases your chance of upselling by 10x.”
— Lesli Peterson

 

The Sweet Spot Email Automation.

When it comes to client marketing strategy, the TourAdvantage focuses on four different areas:

  • Lead generation & lead capture.
  • Top-of-funnel conversion.
  • Post-purchase, pre-tour automation.
  • Post-tour follow-up. 

The area they focus on the most with their clients is what they call the sweet spot—the time between the booking and the tour itself.

“The biggest benefit that our clients get with the Drip is the ability to send emails before the tour happens. That’s where they can make the most money. There are exceptions, but usually, they’re selling something once and never selling again. People aren’t visiting Rome more than once. That’s why the newsletter on it's own doesn’t work.”

Lesli Peterson, Founder of Sunstone Digital Marketing

Lesli Peterson

Owner of TourAdvantage

Sunburst Lead Magnet

10.8%

conversion rate.

Key Strategies

Welcome Series Workflow
  • 50% conversion rate
  • 10% click-through rate
Pumpkin Patch Express Upsell Workflow
  • 72% open rate
  • 14% click-through rate
  • 3% order rate
Picnic Upsell Workflow
  • 71% open rate
  • 15% click-through rate
  • 10.8% order rate

+23K

subscribers added through waivers

18%

repeat purchase rate

Key Strategies

Things To Do In Aruba Lead Magnet
  • 71% open rate
  • 19% click-through rate
  • 5.5% order rate
Exit-Intent Onsite Campaign
  • 11% conversion rate
  • +34K subscribers
  • 50% purchased

28%

repeat purchase rate.

+8K

subscribers added through waivers.

Key Strategies

Abandoned Browse Workflow
  • 66% open rate
  • 8% click-through rate
  • 2% order rate
Welcome Series Workflow
  • 55% open rate
  • 3.6% conversion rate

Sunburst Lead Magnet

10.8%

conversion rate.

Key Strategies

Welcome Series Workflow
  • 50% conversion rate
  • 10% click-through rate
Pumpkin Patch Express Upsell Workflow
  • 72% open rate
  • 14% click-through rate
  • 3% order rate
Picnic Upsell Workflow
  • 71% open rate
  • 15% click-through rate
  • 10.8% order rate

+23K

subscribers added through waivers

18%

repeat purchase rate

Key Strategies

Things To Do In Aruba Lead Magnet
  • 71% open rate
  • 19% click-through rate
  • 5.5% order rate
Exit-Intent Onsite Campaign
  • 11% conversion rate
  • +34K subscribers
  • 50% purchased

28%

repeat purchase rate.

+8K

subscribers added through waivers.

Key Strategies

Abandoned Browse Workflow
  • 66% open rate
  • 8% click-through rate
  • 2% order rate
Welcome Series Workflow
  • 55% open rate
  • 3.6% conversion rate

Sometimes people book experiences months in advance, and during that time, they use Drip to set up a Workflow that sends a series of emails upselling relevant upgrades like photo packages, food/ wine pairings, extra rental time, etc. 

While FareHarbor provides the opportunity to upsell, it's inflexible, and you can only send it once, immediately after the booking. Versus with Drip, their clients control the entire experience, from the email design to timing.

Creating a campaign to send a discount code to repeat customers further down in the sales funnel is not possible without Drip's automated email capabilities. 

The Drip + FareHarbor integration has enabled TourAdvantage clients to not only own their customer relationships but the whole customer journey. From the time someone visits their website and books a tour, they're in full control of what gets promoted, and when the promotion happens.  

 

Drip’s Automation, Analytics, and Customer Support Are Key To Their Clients Winning.

Although TourAdvantage focuses on the sweet spot because it makes so much money for their clients, Dan and Lesli love Drip’s ability to drive conversions at every stage of the sales funnel.

From the top of the funnel with browse and cart abandonment workflows to the bottom with post-purchase, pre-event upsell workflows, Drip enables tour and experience providers to drive revenue in a simple, automated way. 

The automation capabilities paired with ecommerce analytics like order and revenue reporting, and top-notch customer support are all crucial in helping their clients increase revenue and win.

“Honestly, we tried to make Mailchimp to work, but it didn’t. It was over complicated, clunky, and buggy. At the time, there wasn’t a remarketing feature and although they’ve added things over the years, we still prefer Drip.”
— Lesli Peterson

The stats speak for themselves.

FareHarbor customers are seeing incredible results with TourAdvantage powered by Drip.

9%

average click-through rate, 400% higher than the industry average.

39%

average email open rate, 15% higher than the industry average.

1.89%

average conversion rate, 950% higher than the industry average.

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