Montreal-based MagnaTech is promoting two database-management
software tools designed to improve an agency’s customer service
with computer-to-fax or e-mail itinerary delivery and customized,
electronic direct-mail blasts to clients.
The company, with some 400 agency customers, recently
reintroduced OneTouch, a software program that lets agents
electronically convert itineraries and invoices into faxes or
e-mails to the client.
The new version, however, also features a marketing angle: It
lets agents include links to other specials posted on their
agency’s Web sites.
MagnaTech specifically added that feature to OneTouch to help
agencies convert their corporate clients into leisure customers as
well, according to Jacques Thibault, MagnaTech’s president.
In addition, Sabre agents using OneTouch can collect the name
and address of each client and automatically compile them into a
database for future marketing efforts via fax or e-mail. Versions
for users of other GDSs are in the works, Thibault said, and in the
meantime, agents on other GDSs can use their contact-management
databases from Microsoft Outlook or Access.
OneTouch works hand-in-hand with another MagnaTech product,
Sales Bot, which can tap into the client information gathered by
OneTouch, generate mailing lists and send out personally addressed
e-mails to those clients. Agents can tailor the e-mails to
incorporate the agency’s logo, color backgrounds and graphics from
anywhere on the Web.
“It’s not hype and it’s not spam,” Thibault said of the e-mails.
“It’s directed to the individual by name, and if the agent uses our
contact manager (a part of OneTouch), they can put in that the
client is interested in golf or scuba diving and focus directly on
that person’s interests.”
Though there are many customer database products on the market,
Thibault suggested that MagnaTech’s products are less
labor-intensive for retailers.
“These people have no time,” he said about travel agents. “If
they try to manage a database or tab through a whole menu of things
to enter data, they’re not going to do it. There are database
management systems that are really nice, but that’s what’s wrong
with them they’ve been brought to the travel agencies by IT
people.”
MagnaTech leases One-Touch and Sales Bot on a month-to-month
basis, with that charge determined by the number of staffers using
the programs. It charges a startup fee of $270 for OneTouch and
$665 for Sales Bot.
Call 888-393-3602. Web site: www.magnatech.com.
