The marketing that sparked this idea is from the Vail Resorts crew.

While they do some stuff that is really impressive with their email marketing, their snow reports are rarely, if ever, useful to me in my decision to ski.

Before
Just take a gander and I’ll chat about it below.

I use this recent send by Keystone as a visual example, but nearly all reports follow a similar trend.

• They are tough to skim
• Come after the window in which I make decisions about skiing on any day
• Are hard to read on mobile
• Have really low click rates

It feels like were trying to put the whole snow report into an email instead of using the email to get people to the full snow report where can be a much better experience than in someone’s inbox.

After
I actually started with a very different idea that piggybacks on the second point and one other. When I decide to ski on any given day, I do that the night before. Plus, virtually nothing on this report changes from day to day. So, if it’s going to be the same ol’, why send it when I can’t act on it?

1) The Night Before
So the first tweak I made was to create an email that would go out the night before. Instead of actuals, I used forecasts.

2) Simplify
Then, I removed tons of the information that just didn’t seem mission critical while making everything a bit bigger and easier to skim (especially on mobile). I also removed some non-essential details and directed the recipient to a full report on the website.

3) Only Changes
The changes to the report are what’s important to me – new snow, weather, new lifts, etc. – so I highlighted that. I also added a place for alerts that could be used not just for on-mountain changes, but other bits of info that may entice me onto the hill.

Here’s my draft.

I guess the gist is, it would be great if a resort gave me a reason to come when I still have the time to plan and make a decision. If I haven’t made the decision to ski before I hit the sack, by the time I wake up and make it to your email in my inbox full of last night’s messages, it’s probably too late.

Thoughts?

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.