Boston Duck Tours

Constant Contact Customer Since: 2005
List size: Just under 10,000
Open rate: 38%
Favorite feature: Campaign creation
Website: www.bostonducktours.com

If you visit the historic city of Boston, you won't want to leave town without taking a "Duck Tour." This famous one-hour, by-water and by-land tour gives participants the unique opportunity to see Boston while riding in a renovated World War II amphibious land vehicle. The tour operator and Constant Contact customer Boston Duck Tours began as a four-duck, 15-employee business in 1994, and has grown into a 24-duck, 125-employee powerhouse in the Boston tourism market. Since 1994, the "ducks" have carried more than 4 million visitors, including the winners of the 2004 World Series, Boston's beloved Red Sox.

According to the company's Assistant Director of Marketing and Sales, Bob Schwartz, Boston Duck Tours started using Constant Contact just over a year ago. "I wanted to start using an email marketing service, and a public relations professional told me about Constant Contact."

Bob felt Constant Contact was a good fit because it gave him a way to communicate with the company's external and internal audiences. Bob segments his list, which is now close to 10,000 members strong, into smaller groups that include group sales, individual sales, and employees.

Bob primarily uses Constant Contact's email marketing service to promote special group package tours that include a duck tour and visits to other tourist and recreational destinations, such as shopping districts, museums, and restaurants. The partner packages help with word-of-mouth marketing for Boston Duck Tours due to the additional traffic they bring to their partners. The partners, in turn, promote the duck tour to their clientele. The audience Bob targets for this communication includes marketing corporations, meeting planners, tour operators, and student groups, to name a few.

"Group tour sales make up 40% of the company's revenue. We use email marketing to target various groups and to get them thinking about our upcoming season. We send them an email announcement two to three times a year. I don't like to send email too often. I want my messages to be useful and have impact."

Bob is more than pleased with the role that Constant Contact has played in promoting the packages. "Since the time we implemented the email marketing program, earnings for Boston Duck Tour packages have increased by 153 percent."

The other half of the company's external audience is individuals - people who have signed up on the website. "We don't start targeting this group until later in the season when things start to slow down. We send them information about special discounts and coupons to finish off the season."

The final group Bob uses Constant Contact to communicate with is the company's 125 plus employees. "We use it every week to communicate with our staff. We send notices to inform people about changes of policy and other important information. Before Constant Contact we printed weekly notices and went through a lot of paper. I like that I can use Constant Contact to do so much. It makes it an easy sell."

Since they added email marketing to their marketing program, Boston Duck Tours no longer has a need for direct mail. They still print flyers and brochures that are used as leave-behinds, but they don't bulk mail these materials. They rely solely on email to communicate with their customers because it is affordable, trackable, and has proven to be effective.

Constant Contact is helping Boston Duck Tours keep all their marketing ducks in a row, and they are seeing great results. "It's a great tool. Everyone should use it."