Email Marketing between Effectiveness and Inconvenience: A Case of Travel Agencies in Cairo

Abstract

Email marketing emerged as a viable marketing activity in the 1990s with the ascent of the Internet. As web sites and web traffic proliferated, businesses were able to use email to reach growing numbers of potential customers at a very low cost. Specifically hospitality and travel firms use e-mail marketing in maintaining a long-term relationship with customers. With the fact that empirical studies on e-mail newsletters are nil, especially studies focusing on e-mail newsletters in the hospitality and travel industries, this study proceeds with considering literature on email marketing, customer retention and relationship marketing together with information on hospitality and travel firms to provide insights into the effectiveness of using e-mail newsletters. The study depends on an empirical study based on a questionnaire survey of a probability random sample of travel agents’ clients in Cairo, to understand their views, the level of their interest and level of influence by email marketing in general and travel agents’ email marketing in particular.