E-mail Marketing: AirBnB and it’s impetuous marketing in Japan

AirBnB is, without a doubt, one of the most successful and renowned website for people to offer, find and rent lodging. It has over 1,500,000 listings with unique accommodation offerings, such as castles or boats in 34,000 cities and 190 countries. I think its safe to assume we all love AirBnB and what the website offers. However, not so much in Japan.

When they first decided to secure a business in Japan, the company sent out several researchers to speculate the place and meet numerous individuals that already offer a place in AirBnB. However, it came to light that these researchers nearly spoke no Japanese and knew very little about the country itself. They even stayed in an AirBnB place that most Japanese people will recognize as unsanitary love hotels, which clearly indicates their reckless, unplanned visit.

We can see how careless they are by observing their E-newsletter as well.

東京発の人気旅行先をチェック

The picture shown above is the E-newsletter that came to my Email. I used it once for a small trip with my friends. For people that understand Japanese, the Japanese written in this Email is close to gibberish. There’s too much nonsense that it’s not a surprise if they used google translate to translate the language from English to Japanese. I will translate the description under Paris:

Paris destinations: Romance, Philosophy, Great food, etc.

The words just doesn’t make sense, but they keep sending these messages over and over. I would never open AirBnB E-newsletters because of this reason. I highly doubt that there is personalization, as I’ve never been to any of these locations and I’ve never traveled during the time period (Got this Email on November 4, 2015). The only personalization may be the fact that I used to live in Tokyo, but that the only factor. The design and template may not be the worst, but then again, I don’t get attracted as well. The E-newsletter lists up locations where people in Tokyo generally go to the most, but I think it can be improved by perhaps sending different locations according to age demographics, because where young teenagers want to go may differ greatly from elder people. There is no CTA involved in this E-newsletter.

However, before getting into layouts and images, I highly think and suggest that they get the message straight, not just randomly translated words that we can hardly understand.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251761

The website above gives the 4 common Email Marketing misconceptions, and #4 says exactly my point. Before going into big visuals, its important for the consumers to understand the meaning of the newsletter first. It is a big surprise that a high-profit multi-national company like AirBnB has yet to accomplish such a task.

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