Tsogo Sun Reaches 61% More Subscribers with SMS

Tsogo Sun is Africa’s leading hotel, gaming and entertainment group with an extensive range of brands that provide world class accommodation. Tsogo Sun has over 45 years of experience in servicing the local and international business and leisure traveller, and is focused on building its portfolio of successful global brands.

The majority of Tsogo Sun’s database was contactable via cell phone as opposed to email. This meant that each time they sent an email marketing campaign, they weren’t reaching more than half their database. Tsogo Sun identified a need to communicate to their mobile database more effectively. To do this, they wanted to send SMS contacts the same monthly newsletters as received by the email portion of their database. “We needed a cost-effective solution implemented by a service-provider with the necessary technical expertise to develop the solution for us. Since we already used Everlytic as the platform for sending our email communication, it made sense that the services were integrated with one supplier,” says Candice Van Straaten, Tsogo Sun’s CRM Communications Project Manager.

Everlytic’s solution was to develop an SMS-to-Email feature. This function enabled email newsletters to be sent as SMSs to mobile contacts. The SMSs were personalised and contained a link to the newsletter. When the contact clicked on the link, it would open an online version of the email in their browser, giving them the same message as that of an email recipient. Since the number of characters in an SMS is limited, a shortened link is inserted when the SMS is composed. “We had come across an example of a campaign that worked similarly and knew it would work for us. When Everlytic developed the feature for us, it felt like a natural progression of our digital marketing. The platform already allowed for SMS and email functionality, it was just a matter of finding a way to make them work together to achieve the result we were looking for,” explains Van Straaten.

“Working closely with clients, we evaluate their objectives in line with the product functionality. If a solution is viable, beneficial for our clients on the whole, and greatly enhances the product, we brief the feature in for development,” explains Jodine Landman,
Everlytic Client Services Manager.

Tsogo Sun has greatly extended their marketing reach using Everlytic’s SMS-to-Email feature. Over 1, 1 million emails were delivered by the group’s ten gaming properties between February 2015 and February 2016. During this same period, more than 700 000 SMS-To-Email messages were delivered, reaching 61, 3% more new subscribers as a result.

“By using SMSs to send our monthly newsletters to our database, we’ve achieved our objective of reaching a broader market. In many instances, we are reaching approximately the same number of people via SMS as we were previously only able to reach via email. This means that across the group, we are able to communicate with approximately 61% more of our clients”

– Candice Van Straaten, Tsogo Sun’s CRM Communications Project Manager

The benefits of using SMS to Email is that it has allowed for fluid communication, regardless of whether you’re sending to email or mobile contacts, with both being equally catered for.

Using Everlytic has allowed Tsogo Sun to:

• Cover the bases for effective communication.
• Extend their marketing reach to a broader target audience.

“Through working with Everlytic, we have access to technical expertise that we do not have within our own company, as well as the benefit of a strong partnership and support from the Everlytic team”

– Candice Van Straaten, Tsogo Sun’s CRM Communications Project Manager