Mammoth Resorts Knows Your Favorite Mountain Sport, Thanks To IBM

If you’re a diehard snowboarder, you probably don’t want to receive a promotional email about a ski-only resort. Not only would it be irrelevant, but it might even make you want to unsubscribe from the sender.

Mammoth Resorts understands the power of personalization in email marketing. The popular Southern California mountain destination boosted the effectiveness of its email marketing campaigns by more than 300% year-over-year after partnering with IBM.

By leveraging IBM Watson Customer Engagement to monitor online visitor behavior, Mammoth Resorts was able to pinpoint customer preferences and leverage these insights for more relevant marketing campaigns. Mammoth Resorts boosted email click-through rates by 325% year-over-year, improving from 8% to 32%.  

Mammoth Resorts utilizes the data collected as a conduit for trigger-based email campaigns. The company sends emails featuring deals on the items customers have viewed but not purchased, as well as personalized travel recommendations via email, and can track the success of their campaigns via IBM’s analytics. 

A collection of four different resorts -- Mammoth, June Mountain, Bear Mountain, and Snow Summit -- Mammoth can also identify what mountains visitors are looking into for more relevant targeting. In addition, Mammoth also automatically delivers promotional emails around birthdays and booking anniversaries.

“Through our work with IBM Watson Customer Engagement we are creating personalized marketing campaigns based on specific details people are sharing with us," says Molly Holmes, direct marketing and CRM manager at Mammoth Resorts. 

Mammoth Resorts also leverages email to provide guests with regular weather and activity updates. For example, the company sends a weekly snow alert email as well as a real-time Fresh Snow and Dump Alert if a foot of snow or more covers the mountainside. This helps diehard winter sports aficionados plan their trip to the slopes.

The partnership couldn’t have come at a better time, with California’s drought and lack of snow impacting the revenues of ski resorts. Over the past five years, ski resorts in California have been forced to open their winter season late and close early due to a devastating drought in California that affected the ice melt of the Sierras. The 2016-2017 season saw the strongest rainfall in years, and marketing gives marketers an opportunity to optimize good seasons in preparation for possible downward turns in the market.

 

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