Company Overview Days Inn, one of the hotel franchise chains of Cendant, has nearly 2,000 locations worldwide with over 6 million rooms booked annually. Days Inn services more than 66 million business and leisure travelers each year. Days Inn targets primarily to the economy and business class markets with hotels across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Days Inn has the highest market share of any hotel chain.

Before EchoMail: Days Inn wanted to advertise their new rate discount program – Daylight Savings. The Daylight Savings campaign offered a discount of 25 percent and more off regular room rates from July 11 through Dec. 31. They chose to conduct their direct marketing campaign via EchoMail in order to determine the speed and efficacy of Email in marketing and advertising.

The EchoMail Deployment: The EchoMail creative team, using a Days Inn proprietary graphic image, created multiple HTML-encoded Emails from which to choose. Days Inn provided an in-house list of nearly 169,000 Email addresses. EchoMail performed list hygiene, removing over 70,000 duplicate and invalid addresses. The campaign was sent to over 98,000 addresses. The campaign was sent in text, HTML, and AOL formats, with over 75 percent receiving HTML Email.

After EchoMail: The Daylight Savings direct Email campaign resulted in high consumer response levels, with high click-through, low bounce back, and low opt-out rates. Over 93,000 people received the Email campaign. Less than two percent of the recipients opted out. Days Inn received nearly a 10 percent click-through activity rate for the two links available in the campaign, or 9,122 clicks. Nearly 64 percent of the click-throughs occurred in the first 72 hours of the campaign.

Click-through analysis indicated that over 93 percent chose the “Daylight Savings” link, taking the user to the Daylight Savings web site where they could explore the Days Inn offer and make reservations. The remaining seven percent clicked on the logo, which took them to the main Days Inn web site.

Types of Inquiries Handled:

• Bounce-back management and Email list hygiene.
• Click through analysis.
• Creative design consultation.
• Survey distribution.