To reach skiers on and off the slopes, Vermont-based ski resort Intrawest partnered with multichannel marketing services provider Responsys to debut mobile marketing communications. It sends consumers weather-dependent offers to their mobile phones.
“A lot of skiers that ski on a weekly basis only want to go when the conditions are right, like when the big snowstorm is coming in,” said Jeffrey Clayton, VP of strategic alliances at Responsys.
Intrawest will send out mobile messages once a week with information about ski conditions and with discounts on its travel services. The firm has begun the mobile program with its Stratton Mountain Resort in
“The idea of the campaign is to identify specific things that are happening at the ski resort that they can notify the skier about in real time,” Clayton said. “There is a timing component that people seem to respond to.”
The firm partnered with mobile services firm Synbase 365 to adapt Intrawest’s pre-existing e-mail marketing program for the handheld device.
“Our customer is a high-income consumer who is constantly on the go, and we found that weren’t getting our message across by sending out e-mails which wouldn’t show up well on a mobile device,” said Randy Cuff, director of CRM development at Intrawest. “We were depending on these people to go back to their desktop to read our message again, which for time-sensitive offers was not good, so we decided to update.”
This makes it easier for a recipient to click back to a Web site or WAP-enabled site where users can transact.
“Mobile is similar to what e-mail was in 2001, and I think Intrawest has figured out that it’s not just the outbound message, but you have to give them the space to transact to find all of the information that they are looking for,” Clayton added.
