Whether you advertise in a newspaper, invest in stocks, or even sit down to play blackjack in Las Vegas, it’s important to have realistic expectations about how much you will need to spend and how many successes you will need in order to make a return on your investment. It’s also key to have a target return on investment.

At Tripology, we’ve realized recently that we need to work with you to set expectations and goals.

Let’s start with the math — $100 buys you 20 leads on Tripology. If just 1 of those 20 leads becomes a $5,000 booking and you made $500 off the sale, well, you’ve just made $500 off your $100 Tripology investment. A 5% conversion could mean a 400% profit in this case. And that profit can grow as your new client becomes a repeat customer and starts referring their friends and family to you.

We’ve heard varied levels of conversion from agents who’ve used Tripology. Some agents have reported a 15% conversion, some have had 30% book and others have had a 1% conversion.

The key factors in all cases are:

1) Initial sales pitch

Yes, it is true that many of the consumers that turn into leads on Tripology.com do not want to be contacted by phone (at least not initially). They expect introductory emails from three different agents, and in almost all cases, the consumer ends up working (likely booking) with the agent who sends the email that best shows that the agent has read their request, that is well-written (no grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes, and avoidance of all CAPS) , and offers them a few good reasons why the consumer should work with them.

Tripology is going to update our contact form to help you send a winning introductory email to your lead, because we feel very strongly that this introductory email is a make-or-break opportunity that’s not receiving enough attention from many agents.

2) A little success takes a lot of failure regardless of how great you are

Babe Ruth, considered by many to be baseball’s greatest home run hitter ever, only hit a home run 1 out of every 11.76 at-bats.

Simply put, success means a lot of failure. You are simply not going to convert every lead, even ones that seem perfect and have the highest intent.

But with your knowledge and our help, if you are a good travel agent and you keep going to bat, you are going to succeed with Tripology, and you are going to make back much more than your money invested.

However, if you stop buying leads after 5 or even 10 unsuccesful attempts, you will have left without giving our service a full shot.

3) Tripology still has to improve

Tripology has worked hard at providing the best filtering mechanisms of any travel lead-generation service. We’re not quite there yet, but we have made it our goal to perfect your filtering tools on our site.

We also must improve deliverability of our lead alert emails. Right now, some email providers (specifically yahoo.com) are delaying our email delivery to your inbox, causing you to receive lead alerts later than we intended to send it to you. We’ve launched an improved available leads page if you wish to use this as a backup or even your primary way of viewing leads.

We also need to make things clearer to the consumer what our site does, what a travel agent does, and make sure the consumer realizes that the agents are paying Tripology for the service. We are working on these changes to our site as we speak.

With these points in mind, please take our poll below and feel free to post your comments.

 Loading …

As promised last month we are excited to announce some changes to your profile options.You now have the option to restrict leads by the following categories :

ONLY send me leads that include phone numbers

How?  Simply login to your profile, click on ‘Edit General Preferences’ Under ‘Consumer Contact Preferences’ select ‘Only match with clients who provide a phone number’.

You can now choose your leads based on budget per person

To change your budget preference to per person simply login to your profile. Click on ‘Edit General Preferences’ and select the minimum budget for which you want to receive leads. Then click ‘per person’.

If you have any questons or would like more information call  800 924 0722 to speak with one of our Relationship Managers.

PLEASE NOTE: These restrictions can severely limit the number of leads that you receive!

Click here to find out whether or not you should choose these options.

We’re working very hard at Tripology trying to determine how best we can ask a travel consumer for the intent of their trip request.

Currently, we ask them to select:

a) Receive competitive price quotes for the travel services I’ve requested

b) Find a travel agent who can plan a unique/personalized travel experience for me

What do you think of changing these options to:

a) Find an agent to beat a price quote I’ve already received : [insert price/description here]

b) Receive competitive price quotes from three travel specialists and book with one of the three

c) Find a travel agent who can plan AND book a unique/personalized travel experience for me

d) Find a travel agent who can plan but not book a unique/personalized travel experience for me

Please comment here…

Would you consider buying choice a or d?

Is choice c the option you’re most looking for?

We have seen numerous articles this week predicting a decline in leisure travel with a recession fast approaching.  Let us know what you think….

Are you seeing a decline in vacation bookings due to a shaky economy?

 Loading …

 Are the leads you are getting not what you are looking for? Update your profile and take advantage of these new settings!

* Specify what services have to be in a lead for us to send it to you.

**You can specify what services must be included in a lead for us to send it to you. For example, if you only want leads that include both hotels, and activities, you would go under the category hotels and select “Only send me leads that include: Hotels,” then go into activities and select “Only send me leads that contain Activities.” You would then only receive leads from us that include both hotels and activities.

Note: Selecting this option in multiple categories can result in NO leads being sent to you! So, if you have selected it under each service you probably will not receive a travel lead from us.

* Do the trips you plan have require certain budget ranges? If so, specify what the minimum budget has to be for us to send you a lead.

** If you would like to specify the minimum budget for us to send you a lead, you may do so by clicking on “Edit General Preferences.” Then scrolling down to where it says “What is the budget range (for an entire trip for all travelers) for which you want to receive leads?” and enter the budget range you prefer.

* Only book trips for specific occasions…Limit your leads to those occasions.

**If you would like to limit your leads to specific occasions (i.e. honeymoons, romantic getaways, etc) you may do so by clicking on “Edit Themes.” Then, select the appropriate occasions you want to limit your leads to. Then click “Only send me lead alerts that include these selected types of trips.”

*Note: Selecting this option means that Tripology can NOT send you a lead unless it is for one of the occasions you selected.

* Only work with specific lifestyles…Limit your leads to those lifestyles.

** If you specialize in specific lifestyles (ie. Business, Eco-friendly, Gay/Lesbian, etc) and would like to limit your leads to those lifestyles you may do so by clicking on “Edit Themes.” Then select the lifestyles that you specialize in. Then, click “Only send me lead alerts that include these selected lifestyles.”

Note: Selecting this option means Tripology can NOT send you a lead unless one of your selected lifestyles is selected by the consumer.

Due to the high demand by our registered agents, Tripology is now sending leads seven days a week between the hours of 8 am and 8pm.