Destination Q&A: how Lackawanna County CVB made email marketing a priority

So many destination marketing organizations (DMO) know the struggle of not having enough hands to tackle all the marketing opportunities available. Simpleview’s new managed services team is here to help make email marketing and social media strategy easier than ever — no extra hands needed. 

Lackawanna County Convention and Visitors Bureau wanted to introduce regular email newsletters filled with content that would promote the county to potential visitors. 

We interviewed Rebekah Smith, digital marketing director & idea alchemist, Lackawanna County CVB, about the DMO’s decision to utilize Simpleview’s Marketing Automation Managed Services.

Rebekah Smith
Digital Marketing Director & Idea Alchemist at Lackawanna County Visitors Bureau

 What motivated you to sign up for Marketing Automation Managed Services?

 The primary motivation behind choosing marketing automation managed services was to relieve the workload of our marketing team. With just three members on our team, we faced limitations in our ability to create and manage monthly newsletters. However, through our collaboration with Simpleview, we can now contribute content ideas and corresponding photos, while entrusting them with the remaining aspects of the process.

 How was your team handling email marketing initiatives before adopting Marketing Automation Managed Services?

 Due to our limited resources and small-scale operations, our email marketing lacked consistency and a regular schedule. Despite my efforts to establish a consistent newsletter, it was challenging to do so independently. To address this, we decided to leverage the expertise of Simpleview marketing automation managed services. Their assistance allowed us to alleviate the workload and effectively manage the scheduling of our email campaigns. As a result, we now successfully send out a monthly newsletter that performs exceptionally well.

 In your opinion, what is the greatest advantage of using Marketing Automation Managed Services?

 We have found great value in utilizing Simpleview's services. They handle various tasks such as writing and formatting newsletters, scheduling outgoing emails, managing our email lists, overseeing welcome and reengagement campaigns, and preparing reports. This has become an invaluable resource for the Lackawanna County Visitors Bureau as it allows us to directly connect with our audience through their inbox. We have witnessed steady growth in our subscriber base, and the feedback we receive from our newsletters has been overwhelmingly positive. Additionally, the reports provided by Simpleview offer us essential metrics that help us evaluate how our audience engages with the newsletter content. These insights enable us to assess how our audience responds to the newsletter content, make informed decisions about content selection, and measure the success of our KPIs.

Remarkable Results

Lackawanna CVB onboarded with Act-On in February 2020 but didn’t have the bandwidth to develop a robust email marketing plan and were disappointed with their engagement metrics. They decided to try a new approach and signed up with Simpleview’s Marketing Automation Managed Services in December 2021.

Beginning with the first send from the managed services team, the initiative garnered an open rate of 26.6% with a click-thru rate of 2.69%. Within a year, it saw a 42.1% open rate paired with a 4.61% CTR — a 15.5% increase for opens and close to a doubled click rate on their leisure newsletter. 

Simpleview’s Marketing Automation Managed Services was able to grow the CVB’s contact list by over 1,100 in just one year. With the leisure newsletter’s success, Lackawanna CVB entrusted Simpleview with a group-tour newsletter that has consistently provided open rates greater than 40% and click-through rates greater than 4% — putting them well above industry benchmarks.