The idea of putting targeted adds into confirmation emails for golf tee times and other active sporting events now sounds like a no-brainer to me for its ability to directly target active enthusiasts. But Traveas was the first to put it all together. The Stockholm based company didn’t take the most direct path to affiliate marketing, but announce they hit some good numbers this quarter.
Traveas is now operating in the black, which is great news for any startup, and they’ve already hit 10 million transaction based email sendouts for golfers this year, with even more sports and activities in the works. This volume of direct targeting leads them to believe they can seriously challenge traditional forms of advertising. “Everything is about the information upperhand that we have compared to traditional media companies. We know pretty much everything of the whereabouts of the active athletes that we communicate with” says Jack Melcher-Claësson, Co-founder of Traveas.
The route Traveas took to sports marketing looks somewhat logical when looking back on their story, but it would have been impossible to predict four years ago. Traveas was founded in 2007 and the next year launched TravelTracker, a SMS based alert service that sends updates to travelers whenever delays occur. They improved upon the service in 2009 when they released TravelPlanner, a service that provided real-time information to a traveller’s phone, including a personalized iternerary, gate numbers, weather, exchange rates, maps to the hotel, and so on. That year we also covered their listing at www.aktietorget.se, a public exchange for growth companies not eligible to be listed on the national stock exchange.
In 2010 they took the technology behind TravelPlanner and applied it to other events like concerts and sports. They realized the potential to directly target adds in confirmation emails, and Melcher-Claësson tells us the current business concept is to make more money from a client after they have booked a ticket of any kind. “This has actually lead to us becoming somewhat of a media company, with a great “Travel Vertical” as a starting point.”
After this year’s 10 million transactional emails they’ve sent out to active golfers, they’re also getting into football, ice hockey, basketball and floorball. “All in all we’ll handle 40 million emails to active athletes during 2012.” says co-founder Jack Melcher-Claësson
He explains further:
“Our media channels have a unique information upperhand compared to traditional media channels. Based upon the partnerships with our volume hubs, we know:
– Who´s gonna exercise some kind of sports activity (gender, age etc)
– What kind of activity she or he will exercise (golf, footboll etc)
– Where she or he will perform this exercise (region, place)
– When she or he will perform this exercise (time of day, time of year etc)
All this information is of course invaluable for companies that sells golf balls, football shoes, hockey sticks, helmets etc. And it doesn´t have to be online sales. The intelligent targeting makes it possible to connect an offer with a timing and a place to get it, offline as well. That makes this email channel even more relevant to the active athletes.”
Will Traveas stick with email marketing or take their concept one step further? Their about page may offer this as an answer: Never stop doing business with your clients.
