Customer Reviews – Great for Business, Great for your Well-Being

It’s been a great week, let’s grab a coffee and catch up …

Well… other than political ethics, inflation etc! … sometimes the sun shines both in the real world and metaphorically, and this has been a good week.

In today’s update …

• Reviews, good for business, and good for the soul
• Why I love specialists, new operator joins TMS
• Autosave – improving your workflow in TMS Marketing Manager
• New quick email template
• New sites go live

Firstly – shout out to Stuart Swords for tweeting their window display – what a beauty! It’s useful for Tour Ops who don’t travel around physically to agents as much as they used to, to see posts like these to remind them that you guys use TMS for your window displays and so it’s important they add content to the system!

– quick ask  …  always  tell operators you use TMS – as an example,  Karl @ Beverley Travel ( thanks Karl!)  showcased TMS to Simon Applebaum, the MD of Gold Medal and hey presto, we have Gold Medal trialling the system soon as Simon was impressed that our system was exactly what they might have developed in house, but it makes sense to have it managed centrally for all operators to use. More on that soon when the trial begins.

Reviews – Good for Business and your wellbeing

On a day when more cancellations from Gatwick have been announced, which ultimately means more unpaid work for you unraveling holidays and booking new flights, it can seem like groundhog day. I don’t do the same job as you, but believe me, software management can feel the same ( on a lot of days).

If we sign up a new client, or get a good review, it can make a groundhog week into a great week. This week, a new client who’d signed up late last year after reading my emails throughout lock down on how to approach marketing, rang me to tell me 7 months in, my advice works  and he was very happy with what we’ve provided ….he even asked me if I have anything else to sell him and those are not usual words to come from him! Needless to say, he sent me another review to back this up.  With our  TMS Reviews system   the review is live on our site for potential customers to satisfy themselves that we know what we are talking about! …. and it makes me feel great, thanks Ian.

Quick tip … if you haven’t got our review system in place,  drop me a line , it pays off to have a system in place to collect and showcase reviews and even if I say so myself, I think our system beats many many others hands down!

Why I love Specialists

I come from a specialists Tour Op background as many of you know. Back in the 90’s when I ran Simply Travel, I knew Gianni Bonuglia when he was Sales Director at Magic of … brand ( sold to TUI at same time as we sold Simply and you can guess what happened). Gianni now runs  Sardatur  and called me ( again after an email I’d sent) to talk about working with us. Wow   – the detail he had in his head on specifics of hotels and regions reminded me of the days at Simply and Simpson Travel, of the detail that specialists have and the passion they have for their regions.

What better hands to put your clients in ( and service you can get for your clients) than with specialists who know and care about what they do. You can’t know everything and your job of course, is to  know your client  and  who to work with for their holiday , so  relying on specialists  like Gianni is bound to work for you and your client – because  they care  and are  incredibly knowledgeable.

Of course – I’m delighted  Sardatur  are joining to TMS to provide you with content /promotions to share and we will be introducing them properly once we have on-boarded them and you can see some of their great content.

Quick note – that’s two clients directly from general emails I send out so for any doubters amongst you, email works!

Autosave – Improving your workflow in TMS

With software, it’s only when users start using the software that it uncovers all manner of user behavior which means that what you set out to achieve doesn’t work as well as it should. Worse still, people don’t tell you, they just don’t use it.

One of the bug bears for users who juggle multiple tasks – answering phones/speaking to clients / feeding the dog etc. is that sometimes  crafting the right promotion takes time , but before our new ‘ Autosave ‘ feature, there was a potential for you to lose your work if you hadn’t had time to finish.

Ta Dah …. no more. Now your work saves in the browser and there is a new  Save  button that follows you around as you create promotions + a handy list of promotions you are working on you can access ( so if there are more than one of you working on promotions you can share the workload now).

Watch the quick walk-through of how this works below.

New Quick Template

Consistency is the key – and being personal in your email. But setting up a system to send an email every Wednesday let’s say – consistently sending the same type of email on a regular recurring basis is proven to keep subscriber numbers up ( Secret Escapes send me tons of emails and I never unsubscribe)

Quickly sending your top offers, is a great way to supplement your more personal and thoughtful emails. Using the same promotions that you post to social is perfect as it gives your campaigns the maximum chance of being seen ( and of course, you get better open and engagement rates with email than with Facebook which only shows your posts to around 5 – 6% of your followers.

So we’ve added a quick template ( search using ‘top offers’ in our email database to find it) that is easy to adapt and use. Set up a time each week say at 5pm on a Wednesday when people are beginning to finish their work day, or send on a weekend – same day and time each week for maximum engagement. 

New Sites Go Live

We also went live on two new sites this week –  Authentic Travel  and Flip Flop Holidays, both with TMS Marketing Manager content / Tourhound and Widgety Cruise Search. Welcome to Jane & Patricia from Authentic and Mark from Flip Flip Holidays.

and to cap it all off, my son has one A level left to do which as the 3rd child working their way through the school system, does feel rather groundhog to Sarah and I! We are off to Portugal then to recover ( with all the family and partners), let’s hope that sun keeps on shining.

Have a great weekend

Steve