Newsletter : September 2003

NZTO Comment

by Garry Bond, General Manager, New Zealand Tourism Guide

The proposed merger between Air New Zealand and Qantas looks like it's run out of air points now so the competition will start to heat up. Pacific Blue is setting up shop and Singapore Airlines and Korean Air are increasing their services to this country. This is all good news for operators with more visitors equalling more money in the tourism pocket.

Combined with more flights comes the announcement that New Zealand has once again been voted favourite destination by the readers of one of the United Kingdom's top travel magazines. Wanderlust readers have voted New Zealand as top destination for the third time in a row. New Zealand has also jumped 13 places to number 7 as the country where American visitors would most like to go on holiday.

But wait there's more... In addition, luxury lodges in New Zealand now fill four out of the top 10 places in the latest list of International Resort Hideaways by the authoritative Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report.

Personally I have also fielded many enquires from overseas outbound tourism and travel companies wanting various marketing material to be able to promote New Zealand. Just this morning I had a request from the Communications Director of ElderTreks - Exotic Adventures for travelers 50 and over in Toronto, Canada. He was wanting more images of this country to satisfy the needs of his clients.

The traffic to our Web site has also jumped up by 20% over the last 3 weeks which indicates that our own marketing is working well and more people have their Web browsers pointed at this country.

From all accounts it's looking like the upcoming summer will be a good one for New Zealand. Reports of forward bookings are getting stronger and barring any major world crisis we should have a bumper season.

September Member Shield Winner

Congratulations to Greg and Adele Bryers from Atholbrae Gardens in Norsewood. They placed a New Zealand Tourism Online Member Shield on their Web site, entered our free draw and won an extra 6 months membership on www.tourism.net.nz

You too can be a winner. Each month we draw a new name from the hat so if you haven't entered yet it's not too late. You just need to be a current paid member with us, place the applicable member shield on your Web site and register. The sooner you inform us that you have placed the shield on your site, the sooner we can place you in the monthly draw.

Next draw: Monday Oct 13th 2003.

For more details just visit our exclusive member only business centre www.tourism.net.nz/business-centre

Here's what the two shields look like.

They are exclusive for our members and they not only look great on your Web site but help aid your search engine status by connecting with a major NZ tourism portal. To check your member status with us, visit our site and pull up your listing. If you have a gold star by your name the you can use the gold member shield. If you have a silver or bronze star by your name then use the official member shield.

New Web Site Feature

In line with our policy of adding value to your membership package we have added an enquiry frame feature. This was introduced just a few days ago and basically it encouages visitors to your Web site to make an enquiry regardless of what page they are viewing. Depending on how your Web site is set up you should see an enquiry bar at the top of the page and visitors can make an enquiry easily. An added advantage occurs if they leave your site and the enquiry bar continues to be displayed with your name on it (again it depends on how your Web site is set up).

There is no additional cost for this feature and for those who can't see the enquiry bar at the moment, there will be two reasons why...

1. Your Web site setup - It doesn't accept the enquiry bar or it displays only on your home page then disappears. Sorry, can't do anything about this from this end.
2. We haven't installed it yet - We still have quite a lot of work to do to get all of our members up and running with this feature.

Email Signatures - Email Marketing for the Lazy

by Mark Rocket and Nick Butler, Avatar Web Promotions

Spend couple of minutes creating an email signature and you've got a marketing machine that piggybacks on every email you send.

You can create signatures both on email programs like Outlook and Eudora and on Web-based email tools like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. Check the Help menu for instructions.

Think of an email signature as a business card automatically stapled to the bottom of your outgoing emails. They are a quick and simple way of making it easy for people to contact you, as well as a chance to brand your company, promote your Web site and even do a bit of basic selling. Here's an example:

An e-sig should tell people:

• Your Web address. If you put the full address including the "http://" it will be a clickable link. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to get to your site
• Your real world contact details. A lot of people prefer face-to-face, or at least ear-to-ear communication
• What you and your company do

And while you're at it why not take the chance to add:

• What makes you different from your competitors, and what makes you better
• A specific call to action, preferably with a clickable URL link to follow: Join our newsletter etc.

Three tips:

• Try to keep your signature short. Between four to seven lines is best. You can save space by putting your address etc on a single line
• Jokes and favourite quotes in signatures tend to be better suited to personal emails than business ones. It's a matter of style vs professionalism.
• Avoid gimmicky graphic or animated signatures. They distract attention from your marketing message and make the email slow to download

An aside: Some people who own a domain don't use it for their email. For example, Englebert Example at Example Services has a domain "exampleservices.co.nz" but uses "exampleservices@xtra.co.nz" instead of "englebert@exampleservices.co.nz". Having forked out for a domain, Englebert is missing out on the added crediblity, portability and brand reinforcement that he would get from using his domain.