Travel

There's no easy way to say how bad 2020 was for the travel industry. Colossally bad only hits the tip of the iceberg.  But there were some good spots to come out this pandemic, both personally and professionally.   This post will focus on the professional.  For the personal, let's get vaccinated and have coffee together sometime.

The break of travel in 2020 allowed me to stop and pick apart how my company operates.  Pre-pandemic business was good. I was always working and loved it. But with the break, it was a time to see what I could do to elevate the client experience. How can I make travel better for my clients?

Enter in the Itinerary Management Service emails.  

I want my clients to know all the things they need to know so that when they travel, they're informed, prepared, and well positioned for a great travel experience.  But like all baby thoughts, this one needed time to grow.

I started off using a text editor to create some basic templates. For some I added in pictures.

But for others, it was just text.

The information was good, but the presentation was lacking.

I like using Gmail for these emails because I can pre-schedule the sending. This allows me to set up all the informational emails at the time a client makes a reservation and not have to worry if I'm sick, swamped with schedule changes, or off traveling myself. The client will still get the email.

But Gmail presented a problem of its own. From my MacMail, the pictures would go through fine, but from Gmail, the pictures didn't always arrive as intended.  

The idea was good, but the follow through was unpredictable.

Then I found CloudHQ, a handy add on to Chrome that allows access to MailChimp, and MailChimp gives access to better emails!   Now the baby's starting to crawl!

With MailChimp I can create well laid out, lovely to present emails that will not only deliver information to my clients but look professional and carry my company image.  And with CloudHQ, I can link to MailChimp and use Gmail's schedule send option.

It's such a win-win. I get beautiful information emails AND I get to schedule them through Gmail.  This baby's running now!

Here's how it works.

Once CloudHQ is added to Gmail and MailChimp is linked to CloudHQ, compose a new email. Next to the "Send" button is an icon of a blue page. Click it.

When the CloudHQ screen opens, select the MailChimp tab and find the template you'd like. You can search by folder, scroll down, or search by keywords within the template.

When you find the template you'd like to use click on the icon with the arrow pointing into the box.

A new window will open and you're able to modify the template anyway you need to.

This handy tool took my emails from this:

To this:

And that's something to be thankful for.