Email Response Study
February 10th, 2010NAVIS recently held our bi-annual Leaders Conference in Orlando where we discussed the technologies and Best Practices that our vacation rental and resort clients can use to drive new revenue. Prior to the Conference, I conducted an interesting “secret shopper” study to see who of our attendees would respond to my email asking for more information about an upcoming vacation.
Drew, our network wizard at NAVIS, setup a covert email account for me so that the recipients wouldn’t know I was from NAVIS. My email simply inquired about dates and asked about pricing options. I recorded the exact time the emails went out and the time that responses were received. 34 companies, some of the biggest vacation rental and resorts in the country, were on our list.
This graph shows the time it took for the responses to come in. Amazingly, the first response came 18 minutes after sending.
As you can see from the graph, nearly 40% of the recipients didn’t respond at all. And if you didn’t notice, this adds up to just 28 companies. The other 6 either didn’t provide an email option on their website, or they required more information on their contact form than I was willing to provide.
The bottom line is that responding to emails in a timely manner can affect your bottom line. And if you don’t respond at all…well, you’re just leaving money on the table.
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