Lead Nurturing & Ongoing Emails: How Tour Operators Turn Leads Into Bookings

You’re already getting leads. People are visiting your website, downloading your guides, and checking availability. But most of them never book because there is no real follow-up system in place.

In this episode, we break down how to turn those warm leads into actual bookings using simple, automated email nurturing. This is one of the highest impact systems you can build to stay top of mind, build trust, and guide people toward booking.

You’ll learn:
- What to send after someone downloads a guide or submits an inquiry
- How to structure emails based on your sales cycle
- What to send after someone books to drive reviews and repeat business

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Email Nikki: nikki@resmarksystems.com

0:00 Why Tour Operators Lose Leads After Email Capture
1:32 What Lead Nurturing Means for Tour Operators
4:12 Does Email Marketing Still Work for Tour Operators?
7:38 How to Build a Lead Nurturing Email Sequence
9:49 How Often Tour Operators Should Send Follow Up Emails
12:35 What to Send Before a Lead Becomes a Booking
14:34 Email Marketing for Prospects vs Past Guests
17:20 Why Post Booking Emails Matter for Guest Experience
19:21 Best Email Marketing Tools for Tour Operators
20:48 How to Segment Your Email List for More Bookings
24:16 How to Connect Your Booking System and CRM
25:43 How Ongoing Emails Build Trust and Repeat Business
27:32 The 3 Email Audiences Every Tour Operator Needs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Tor Operator Growth Podcast. Today we're talking about one of the biggest missed opportunities that we see, and that's lead nurturing and ongoing emails. In the last episode, we talked about lead magnets, how to capture emails and turn traffic into actual prospects. But here's the gap just because somebody downloads your lead magnet or checks your availability on your website doesn't mean that they're ready to book, as we talked about in the past. You've got people coming to your website showing real interest, but then nothing happens. Maybe they got one email from that lead magnet when they put in their information, but then there's really no follow-up system, no nurturing, nothing is really guiding them towards choosing the decision. And that's where bookings get lost because these aren't cold emails. They're warm. They're people who have already engaged with you, they know your brand, they just haven't booked yet. So many of you guys are already sitting on a lot of prospects in your CRM. So that CRM again, customer relationship management tools, where all of your prospects are kind of stored in your system. We're just not doing anything to get in front of them. And we see this across the board. Whether you're a tour operator just starting out, you're or you're a million-dollar revenue uh tour operator, this is a systems problem. So, Greg, where do you see this breaking down the most before somebody actually books?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

That's a great question. When I think of lead nurturing, um, I kind of thought of this idea back in high school when I was dating, right? And in high school, you often get like, as a as a man, you're like, hey, this girl, I want her number, right? And you go and get it. You go and get her number. And it's like, you go and tell all your friends, like, oh, I got her number. This is so cool, right? But then you never call her. Or she writes her number in your yearbook and you never call her, right? That's the same as lead nurturing. You're getting a lead from someone and you never contact them. Um, or maybe it's that the another kind of similar thing where you might call her and she was busy that Friday. You're like, hey, you want to go out on Friday? And she was busy. So then you never call her again. Like that's what you had kind of mentioned, where maybe they download the lead magnet, they get that confirmation of like, hey, here's your download, and that's it, right? So, what's the point of getting the number if you're never gonna use it? And so what we're gonna be talking about with lead nurturing and then ongoing email campaigns as well, is I'll relate onbound ongoing emails to this idea of dating as well. Ongoing emails is like going on a date with that girl. So you maybe you know, you got her info, you went on a date with her, she had a great time, you had a great time, you want to go out again, but then you never call her again. So ongoing emails is that like you go on a date, go on another date, like keep calling, keep going. Same with the lead nurturing, don't give up after that first time. So I don't know. That popped in my head, it made sense to me. Hopefully, it's a good relation here. Um, but if you're getting information from people coming to your website and you're doing nothing with it, you're wasting your time setting anything up, um, like creating your lead magnet, you're wasting your money and you're wasting energy just to get a lead that you're doing nothing with. So what you need to be doing, and we're gonna be talking about that today, is utilizing this in a way that's going to hopefully bring you more bookings, hopefully bring you more interest and more warm leads into your into your system, right? So, Nikki, with that being said, obviously one of the best kind of lead nurturing tools is doing it via email, ongoing emails uh campaigns or lead nurturing email campaigns. How, like, why is that still important? Why do emails still matter and why should they implement it into their flow here?

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah. Before we get into what this system actually looks like, we need to address something. A lot of tour operators just think that email doesn't work anymore. Email is still one of the highest ROI marketing channels, period. And let me give you an example. I'll be real honest with you. Email marketing outside of referrals is our number one lead driver, our number one. Um, this isn't theory. You know, this is something that is actually working. And just to wrap your head around it, let's put some numbers to it. 50% of marketers say that email is their most impactful channel. We typically see uh email open rates between 30 to 36% from people who have shown interest. Now that's going to look different for um a colder audience, but these are people that have specifically opted into your DIY or into your lead magnet. Sorry, I'm building a DIY guide right now, and that's all that's on my head. Um people who have opted in into your lead magnet or newsletter, um, you're going to see a really high open rate because they've shown interest. They signed up for something and they want to hear from you. And then from there, you're really aiming for a click-through rate of about two to three percent. Now that sounds like doesn't sound like super big, but when those people are starting to move down the funnel, they are just getting closer and closer to book. So when you start segmenting your list, sending the right message to the right consumer, those numbers are going to go up even more. And that's when email starts to get really powerful. But here's why it actually works it's direct, as we talked about in the last episode, um, or was it our last webinar? You own that data. So you can control the message and how often it's going out. You're not relying on an algorithm. You're not just hoping that somebody is seeing your post. You're showing up in their inbox. And that other pieces, you can make it feel really personal. So, yes, design emails have a place, branded emails have a place and time, but you could also send simple plain text emails that feel like a one-to-one conversation. Honestly, those are usually our highest performing emails because they feel like they were written specifically for you. And I personally booked discovery calls or personally booked um calls with people and responded to offers because I felt an email was so targeted and relevant to me personally. And on top of this, this is the other reason it's important. You could automate all of this. So you can follow up with somebody who checked your availability on your website, you could follow up with somebody who inquired, you could follow up with somebody who looked at a specific tour without actually manually having to do it every single time. And I think that that's what allows this email marketing nurturing to become scalable. So the real question is what should actually be happening between interest and booking? Because somebody might uh book in 24 hours or it might take eight months. I don't know, your buying cycle, everybody's is a little bit different. So, how can we stay in front of them in that window between we got their information, we own that data, and they're going to book. So, Greg, can you break down what lead nurturing actually looks like?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, so we mentioned this in probably every podcast. The main thing, if you get anything from this, is add value. Right. We can set up lead nurturing, we can set up ongoing email campaigns, we can do social media, we can do all the things we talk about, but make sure it's adding value. Just because someone's interested doesn't mean you just send them some random email and they're gonna all of a sudden book. If it's not engaging to them, if it's not piquing their interest and pushing them towards the booking uh process, then it's not gonna do its job. Um, so lead nurturing. First, I want to kind of talk about some of the mistakes that happen. So there's different types of leads that come in, right? You get contact form leads. So this person has a question that they're contacting you about. You have people that might have downloaded a guide that you like a lead magnet, or maybe they called in. Um, there's there's different ways that you're getting this contact information. And so the way that you nurture them might be slightly different, right? Someone comes in with a contact question and you respond to them. Don't just respond to their question and then leave it be. Make sure you put them into a sequence that's now going to hopefully answer other questions that they maybe had. Because if they had one question, there's a good chance they have a bunch of others and they're just not maybe asking them. And if they can't find them easily on your website, then they're probably gonna abandon or go find somewhere else or ask contact again and ask. So the best thing I can think on a contact form is you put them into a sequence where now you know a bunch of questions people are asking, you have your FAQs, start answering those questions in lead nurture sequences of you know, you asked a question, here's some other common things that people have. Um for example, if you're coming through like a lead form where it's a lead magnet and it's maybe a guide for things to do, you know, maybe an itinerary type of lead magnet, your sequence is gonna be a little bit different than a contact. You might not start with other things people are asking. You might start with other, you know, types of things you can do there, other call-outs to kind of push people toward booking your trip, knowing that they downloaded this guide because they're really looking for things to do in the area, and you want to make sure that your tours are top of mind as well. So there's gonna be some differences there. Um, another mistake a lot of people make is that a lead nurturing sequence is too short. So just because someone contacts you, don't feel like you can't email them multiple times for a really long time if you want to. The main thing you need to understand, and Nikki, you talked about this slightly, is understanding your sales cycle. If you're a single-day tour and your normal sales cycle is two days, that means that most people that are gonna book are, you know, inquiring or visiting your website and they're booking within two days. So your lead sequence is gonna look very different than you know a seven-day hiking trip where it might be six months before someone books. And so understanding your sales cycle is essential here. And just because your sales cycle might be short doesn't mean you can't send emails, right? So the shorter your sales cycle, the more I feel like you can send multiple emails in a in a day. If I'm if I'm going on a trip and it's a six-month sales cycle and I'm getting multiple emails a day, I'm gonna be pretty annoyed with that probably after a week or two. But if I you know fill out a lead magnet and I get two emails that day and two emails the next day, and I book, probably not gonna care. That's only four emails. So understanding that sales cycle is really gonna help you know if your lead sequence is too short or not. Um, but making sure you're adding that value along the way. So the goal of your lead nurturing should really be to shorten that sales cycle. So when you're adding this value, how can you then well I would say there's two goals. There's one is shorten the sales cycle. The other is if you have opportunities to upsell or provide add-ons, then that would be another, you know, goal of lead nurturing is to get them to add another tour or another item, maybe buy some, you know, swag or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Once they booked.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

If you can what was that, Nikki?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Once they booked. So after after booking is what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Well, it might be in the in this process as well. And so I guess at that point it's not an upsell necessarily, but if I'm if I showed interest in a certain trip, filled out maybe a a lead form, and you have other trips, I maybe don't know about those. And so saying, like, hey, you want to go zip lining, well, this like half-day Hummer tour pairs really nicely with that. Like, I may not have thought of that. And so, in that sense, upselling before you actually sold is something that can, I guess then it's just educating, but same, same concept. Um, so an example of some like neat uh nurturing might be you get a contact form, you respond immediately, answering their question, so as quick as you possibly can. And then you follow up, address common questions that they might have. It might be weather related, difficulty, logistics, whatever it might be, that might be your next email that you send out. And then weaving in social proof, so reviews, photos, guest experiences, reinforcement of like why this tour, why our company, what makes us different, why you should why you should book. And then also nudging them with like timing and availability, right? So making it that scarcity, um scarcity causes people to act faster. So making them feel like, hey, I don't have time. If I don't book this, it's gonna get full. I need to book now. And so you're gonna succeed as long as your nerd lead nurturing sequence is on you for pushing them toward booking, right? If you're just sending out information and you're not trying to get them to book, then you're probably not gonna do a good job at converting those leads into sales. So with lead nurturing, do you have anything else to add to that, Nikki? Or do we want to move on to ongoing emails?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yeah, I want to build on that just a little bit and transition into ongoing emails, but I want everybody listening to ask themselves, am I actually doing this? Because email marketing isn't just one thing. You have different moments, different audiences, and different opportunities. At a high level, and this is why I jumped the gun with Greg, you kind of have two different segments, right? And email marketing, ongoing emails falls in both of them. You have your prospects. So the people who have opted into your lead magnets and your newsletter, but have never booked, but you also have your people that have just booked, and then you have your past customers. Um, so we'll kind of think of it as your prospect list and then your customer list because they deserve ongoing emails as well. So we just talked about nurturing prospects, um, the people who haven't booked, but like I said, the other side of it is for the people who have booked. And this is where I personally see a big gap as a consumer. I can't tell you how many tours I've booked where I've been so excited. I booked, I got the confirmation email. That's never been missed. But then nothing. It's just silence. Um, and I think this is a big opportunity because the window here, right after booking, is really a great place that we can start guiding the conversation to um with the goal in mind to have them leave a review if they have a good time or ask for the reform referral or really prompt in their head to come back when they're ready. So I think when I booked my trip with uh Western River Expeditions, I've received multiple emails between when I booked, which was, I believe, in December. Um, and then my trip is actually in July. I've received multiple emails between um then and now, and I'll probably continue to receive emails that are like, you know, um, what we're gonna be eating on the river or what's to pack. And um, I received um some workouts to do that I was able to send to my dad to get him nice and ready. Um, but on the contrary, when I booked my trip to Kilimanjaro, I was so excited. I booked the trip. Of course I got the email confirmation, but then it was completely silent, nothing. Um, and I was actually nervous because leading up into the trip, I never heard anything. I actually emailed the tour operator and said, Is everything still going good? Is there anything I need to know? Like I was the one prompting um more information out, and I got it, and I'm so happy. I still gave him five stars. Like, I would absolutely recommend this tour operator, but huge missed opportunity there.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

So, anyways, it's not even like just the missed opportunity. It's you're immediately you're adding concern to the user or to your guest before they ever arrive, right? Like something like I can mount Kluminjaro, you're already probably like nervous about. It's a huge undertaking. And now you're also worried about like, is this still happening? And did I book with the real company because they're not even communicating with me anymore? Like, you don't want that uncertainty. You want people to feel comfortable, know that you're still there, especially on these you know, tours that are you know six month sales cycles. You really need to help them feel comfortable as they're preparing, or else you're gonna get them a little bit nervous. And then if anything goes wrong on the trip, they're just gonna have a bad experience. Whereas if you're really nurturing them, you're keeping them happy along the way, something might go wrong, and they're gonna be more open to like, oh, that was just something that happened, versus like, oh, they weren't really engaging me this whole time. I should have gone with someone else that really cared about me, right? So that's that's important.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

It's really easy to put doubt in your consumer's mind, especially for those multi-day trips where people have saved up a lifetime for these trips or they're once-in-a-lifetime trips, you know. But just think of it this way: this is how we start building that long-term revenue. So when we talk about email marketing, like I said, we're not just talking about prospects. So when you have a system in place, you could use the same um overall arching system to really send messages to both your prospects, your current customers, your past customers. Um, so Greg, I'm gonna ask you if somebody is listening and thinking, I don't have this all set up, where do I actually start? What tool should I be using? How can I be segmenting, segmenting these lists because it is so important? How do we stay organized?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Yeah, that's a great question. If you don't have anything right now, there's plenty of tools out there. Like, don't feel like this needs to be complicated. I think we've said it about other aspects of you know your marketing plan is keep it simple at first, right? If like the the worst thing you could do is go out there, having done none of this, and all of a sudden try to set up a 42 email lead nurturing sequence that segments to like 12 different groups. Like you're gonna fail unless you know how to do this already. Um if you have done it before, then you probably can start building onto that. So I say start simple, right? You set up your lead magnet, they download the lead magnet. Now you can send emails immediately. The confirmation email, if you're using Resmark, is gonna go out automatically anyway. But now that's when you need to pull into a tool like MailChimp or HubSpot, or we have a CRM that that we sell as well, things like that, where you can set up these sequences, these ongoing email campaigns so that they're just automatic, right? And so the way that our CRM that we um offer works is you can actually tag people. So someone comes in via lead form, you could tag them as lead form contact. Or you could contact them or add another tag that also says, like, you know, lead form contact, and then also, you know, seven-day Grand Cat Canyon rafting trip, because maybe the inquiry that they had was specific to that tour. So the more you kind of tag them and segment them that way, makes it easier to segment them down the road when you need to start splitting them up as you make it a little bit more complicated, if that makes sense. So at first, funneling like everyone into the same email thread is better than doing nothing. Um, as you get it going and it's it's rolling, then relevance will create more opens, more clicks, and more bookings, right? So, what do I mean by relevance? You can you can target people specifically, or not target, in this case, you can market to them whatever, based on their interest, right? So if they come through a form that's on a specific URL, right? So you might have the same form on multiple pages, but you target specifically from this URL, I'm gonna tag them as they're interested in this trip. versus form from another trip. And now the email campaign they might go into, that lead nurturing sequence, is going to be more focused on a rafting trip versus a Hummer tour because of where they downloaded it from. The same goes with booking. If if someone's already booked, now that email campaign, that email follow-up that you're going to start doing, can be very specific to the tour they booked. Like the example I gave earlier, I booked the zipline and a Hummer half day Hummer tour pairs very nicely with the Zip line. And so I'm going to you know add that as part of the email campaign to get you to try to to buy that as well and do an upsell there. So don't send like make sure you're target you're segmenting your list so you're not sending information that doesn't matter. If someone's already booked, don't send like a book now to them for that same trip. Obviously if it's an upsell, great. But you don't want to send them something like hey time's running out book this trip. And it's like I did two weeks ago. Why am I getting this? Um because that just is that uncertainty again like these people don't have their stuff together. What are we doing?

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Maybe I should book not go through like that's what I would think like that's weird. Did did my booking not go through?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah that too like oh no like we're getting close and now I don't have booking I should book again or do I need to call in um so you just want to add that value add that clarity and make sure they're understanding kind of what's going on. So as you're doing this the tool that you use doesn't matter as much as the system that you set up. So making sure that you really set it up like I said simple at first and expand from there and make it something that you can maintain. If you start getting too complicated it's going to be really hard to make changes um out of the get gate. So as you properly use these you'll you'll start seeing a return on that investment come through because you're going to be guiding people especially in that lead nurturing um timeframe you're going to be guiding them down to book by providing that information that they need in a timely manner.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yeah. And I think if if you need a place to start um maybe you do have some disconnected tools your booking software is separate from your CRM software. You could use something like Zapier um or Zapier however you want to pronounce it but it's a tool that lets you um basically connect two different systems and it's kind of allows it to talk to each other. So we did that for one of our tour operators um he had what were we connecting a booking would come through at the time he was not using Resmark systems. And then as soon as the booking came through it would no I'm sorry it was a form. So as soon as somebody would fill out a form it would then be zapped over into his CRM system which was constant contact at the time. So you could use something like Zapier to allow things to talk and get things a little bit more dialed in for low cost. So start somewhere but ideally it would be great to have a system that allows you to do it all in one place where you have your bookings coming through you have your lead magnets um all everybody who's filling out the information for your lead magnets and newsletter all those prospects coming into one place and then your emails are called coming out of one place but all different types of emails and messages and whatnot and segments.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

And I just tie all this in real quick to my how I started with calling a girl that you got her number from right now. So like I'm old enough where that's what you did. You still called the home line most of the time their dad answered whatever is scary. Now you just text them right they're giving you their phone number you're texting them. So all of this is a little bit more like texting where you get the number it's a lot easier to text them when they call them just like it is to set up an email sequence. So feel like don't feel like it's that it's going to bother the people because you're not going to text them too much in this case you're not going to email them too much. You're going to kind of start building that relationship before you ever actually ask them out or ask them to book. And so building that trust with them is a huge part of that lead nurturing. And then the ongoing emails is keeping that trust. Once they've booked, once they're a return customer, whatever it might be that's keeping their trust, keeping their interest so that if they ever go on a trip like that again or have a friend that does, they're going to remember you and they're going to tell people about it.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah. And the likelihood so when they're showing that sort of interest like the we're talking mainly today about people who have opted in and then you're emailing them the some subscribe rate is so much lower for people who have willingly opted in versus if you're just sending massive amounts of emails to people who maybe have shown some sort of interest five years ago, right? You're going to get a higher unsubscribe rate. So I can't wait Greg for Bianca your wife to listen to this and know that you're comparing the beginning of your relationship to email marketing. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

I was talking about high school so even before I met her but yeah her as well we we were in person most of the time but we text a lot.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

All right guys so to sum it up so think of it you really have three groups of people I guess um that you should be thinking about in your email nurturing your email marketing strategy it's the people who haven't booked yet but have willingly opted in somehow the people who have just booked and the people that you want to come back. And if you're not consistently staying in front of these peoples peoples if you're not consistently staying in front of these people your chance of converting them or bringing them back just is going to drop significantly that's the role in email marketing. It's not more important than any other marketing avenue but it's a core part and it just allows your marketing to keep stacking on top of each other to get people to convert. So the big takeaway is simple have a follow-up system in place. Make sure that your messaging is really relevant and actually nurture the people that you have in your system. It doesn't have to be overly complicated start somewhere and then build on top of that all right everybody that is another episode of the Tor Operator Growth Podcast we're really excited for our next episode if you like this episode make sure to like subscribe comment give us some feedback we'd really appreciate it. We'll talk to