I had an interesting experience today.

For the 30-40 minutes leading up to lunch I had been writing tomorrow’s annual Thanksgiving Shout Out. In other words, I had spent the better part of an hour remembering people I am grateful for and writing up reasons for my deep appreciation for who they are and what they’ve done for me.

Hungry and not finished with my post, I headed to the kitchen for a bite. It was a gray day, I hadn’t exercised a single second yet, and the snowstorm that was supposed to herald the start of winter left nothing but a skiff that was already gone.

And yet I was cheerful and positive and happy to a fault.

The Power
There is real power in appreciation that goes two ways.

For the person that expresses appreciation, as I was, it’s hard to avoid an uptick in your mood and outlook.

For the person that receives appreciation, as I experience yesterday when someone said “thank you” for a post I wrote, it’s hard to avoid an equal (if not greater) uptick in your mood and emotion.

Gratitude and appreciation are powerful antidotes to a lot of things.

The Opportunity
Given the state of online discourse and political trends, I think there’s a great opportunity for gratitude in our marketing not just tomorrow or the day after, but every message, every day.

Four years ago I came up with a list of the most effective, commonly used words in resort marketing and compared their open rates. This is stuff like:

• Powder
• Bluebird
• Dumping
• Opening day
• Sunshine

But you know which word eclipsed all of those by nearly double? Take a look for yourself:

How about that.

Don’t Hold Back
We talk about authenticity, we talk about emotion, we talk about connecting with our guests.

And I can’t help but think that a powerful opportunity to check all three of those boxes is to infuse a little more gratitude into our marketing. Gratitude for guests, for good days, for less-than-good days, for employees, for the luck of the draw that is weather, and for health and means to enjoy the sport we love.

It may be more than a nice thing to do. It may be smart marketing.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.