TORONTO — A new CRM e-mail service designed to help travel agents keep in touch with clients is ideally suited to home-based counsellors, offering personalized e-mail packages from as low as $25 per month.

TravcomTouch provides travel agencies and self-employed counsellors a service that automatically publishes e-mails for optionally selected, agency-branded e-mail campaigns including Bon Voyage, Welcome Home, Thank You for your Business, passport expiration reminders and more.

The service automatically refreshes mailing lists and publishes the communication without the need for personal interaction by the agent. It was developed by Travcom Canada, a leading travel accounting and customer relationship management (CRM) application provider, and travel-centric e-mail marketing firm Travelwatch.

Mike Miocevich, general manager of Travcom Canada, said agents just need to “sign-up, select your templates and it’s automatically done.”

The TravcomTouch service is available at a nominal monthly fee and includes optional custom tools able to generate additional sales leads, he added.

The list of options includes birthday wishes, Passport Reminder  (passports about to expire), Bon Voyages   (sent one to seven days prior to departure, depending on the setting), Welcome Home   (sent one to seven days after clients return), Thank You for your Business   (sent one to seven days after client books a trip), Dormant Clients    (sent to clients who haven’t booked with the agency for over a specified period) and Great Travel Finds   (general newsletter).

Agents control which of the campaigns they want to participate in, and they can also opt out clients for any of the campaigns.

“We’ve been hearing from our travel agency partners that they need a simple method to help them stay in touch with their clients but without the high costs and skill sets usually associated with such activities,” said Miocevich.

TravcomTouch is aimed at any agency, big or small, but “home-based agents represent one of our key markets”, he added. “It’s targeted for anyone who needs an automated e-mailing system for touch-based campaigns that doesn’t involve constant monitoring or administering.”

He added that with Canada’s new anti-spam legislation, agents need to be very careful with who and how they e-mail. “With our partners at Travelwatch, we take care in making sure we follow the guidelines set out in Bill C28,” he said.  “TravcomTouch’s reporting tool will enable agents to see who received, read and actioned e-mails sent to them.  They can also monitor who has requested to unsubscribe from future mailings and removing them immediately from the mailing list, complying with Bill C28.”

Home-based agents need to stay in touch with their clients and want a simple and automated way of doing that so they can focus on what they do best, sell travel. “TravcomTouch is that solution.”

As a temporary launch bonus, Travcom is optionally including a version of the Travelwatch Great Travel Finds eNewsletter, a popular and effective consumer marketing tool and a $50 per month value for the agent.

The product is now available with an easy online sign-up in English, with French soon to follow. Canada will be the first market to go live with plans to progressively launch to the rest of the world where Travcom operates.

Travcom Canada has been in business for some 26 years, servicing clients from $100,000 to over $1 billion in sales. Meanwhile Travelwatch Inc. over the last eight years has become one of Canada’s leading providers of permission-based eMarketing, generating several million emails per month on behalf of its travel industry clients.

CRM follow-up is even more crucial for home-based agents who may not have the brand recognition of an agent at a traditional agency. “The larger agencies are constantly marketing themselves which makes the home-based agents a bit more vulnerable. Personal service and relationship management is critical for their success,” said Miocevich.

“It takes six times more effort to get new clients then it is to keep the ones you have.  Keeping in touch with their clients will help in their success.”