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PROJECT: The Enzian Inn
Posted in: Projects by Scott W. Graves on March 2, 2009
Located in the Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth, Washington, and nestled within the beautiful Cascade Mountains, the Enzian Inn is a family-owned hotel with a loyal following. Back in 2005, Sarphi was engaged to update their web presence in a manner that conveyed the quaint character of the Leavenworth community while providing management with the online tools to keep site content up to date.
The solution was to combine a proprietary content management system on the backend, a simple HTML interface on the front end, and a third party reservations management system. Hosting was moved in-house to accommodate the constraints of an existing reservations system and a 6×6 high speed internet connection was installed to handle increased traffic.
In 2009, Sarphi expanded the Enzian Inn’s online communication efforts by using more than 34,000 e-mail addresses manually collected at check-in during the preceeding 10 years. Working closely with the internal marketing team, Sarphi developed a seasonal program and corresponding newsletter specifically tailored to previous hotel guests. Using HTML, CSS, and a third party e-mail management tool, the Enzian Inn newsletter generated a HUGE response rate and and even bigger return on investment.
The results have been remarkable. To date, we have developed and delivered the winter, spring, and fall editions of the newsletter. With open rates have approaching 50% and click-through rates are exceeding 10%, the results have been impressive. Room bookings continue to increase and the return on investment is significantly higher than predicted.