This Mequoda System operator has focused on creating loads of free products to increase email newsletter subscriptions
Note: This is part three of a five part series on the Mequoda Publisher of the Year nominees. You can tell us which new Mequoda System is best serving its audience by clicking here to vote.
If you’re a golfer that routinely gets tired of playing the same course in town then you should be subscribed to Golf Vacation Insider. This Mequoda System was created not just for golfers, but for people that enjoy golf travel.
“Our focus is on being the premier provider of golf travel intelligence in the world,” said David Baum, publisher and editor-in-chief of Golf Vacation Insider and Golf Odyssey.
Baum’s publications do that by secretly reviewing dozens of golfing resorts all over the world—from Scotland to New Zealand. The reviewers never write based on free trips or hotel rooms, Baum said.
“We could be on a free trip every week, literally. We’re invited all over the world all the time to visit courses, stay in hotels…We do not engage in that activity,” Baum said.
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To further purify the content of all biases, Baum’s publications will never accept advertising from companies they review, he said.
Website’s Offerings
Golf Vacation Insider publishes a free tip everyday on topics like Maui golf vacation packages and the “most famous hole to play on your Myrtle Beach golf vacation.”
The top of the website’s right navigation is dominated by almost 40 free reports that Baum says are used to drive website traffic and generate free GVI subscriptions.
“Our primary goal right now is building our file, so we’ve had less of an emphasis on developing paid products and more of an emphasis on building tools that will continue to allow us to develop our file more rapidly,” Baum said.
The free reports help build GVI‘s file by using rapid conversion landing pages that attract website visitors and convert them into free newsletter subscribers in exchange for the free report.
A more recently added free feature to GVI‘s website is “Ask Golf Vacation Insider.” Just a few weeks old, this section features emailed questions from subscribers and the editors’ responses.
Paid products at the site include several books with titles like Planning the Ultimate Bandon Dunes Golf Vacation, and also various ways to buy Golf Odyssey, a paid newsletter that has been running for almost 17 years. Customers can subscribe to Golf Odyssey or buy individual back issues and leather bound annual collections.
GVI‘s website is very similar to Golf Odyssey‘s, with the stark exception that GVI is free. Baum feels that this approach is better than combining the two under one roof.
“We have a bit of a challenging situation…we’re starting our 17th year with Golf Odyssey. We just felt that it was not particularly suited for a daily product and not particularly well suited to capture a lot of search traffic. If for no other reason, most people can’t spell the word odyssey,” Baum said.
Since creating the GVI website, Baum has focused a lot more on organic search, he said. Each of the nearly 40 free special reports has its own SEOed rapid conversion landing page and a dedicated keyword PPC program.
“A number of those rank well organically,” Baum said.
The site’s organic rankings have also been helped by a lead generation partnership with another golf website, Last Minute Golfer, which uses pieces of GVI‘s content in exchange for linking to GVI‘s products, Baum said.
As for advertising, GVI doesn’t offer any. “That is not to say that would not change at some point n the future…It really has not been our focus. If we did it, we would do it tastefully,” Baum said.
