How Madden Media Helped a Destination Drive Traveler Engagement

Travel decisions can start as daydreams: a photo of a shoreline, a tip from a friend, a story that sparks curiosity. Madden Media, an Intuit Mailchimp pro partner, helps turn those ‘maybe one day’ moments into real journeys.

For more than 40 years, the full-service, fully-remote destination marketing agency headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, has helped destinations across the US connect with travelers through creative storytelling, strategic planning, and digital channels like email marketing. 

From Wisconsin’s shores to California’s wine country, Madden partners with destinations to create stories big on heart and even bigger on impact. Their expertise spans email strategy, content development, and campaign deployment, helping destinations amplify what makes their communities unique.

The challenge: Driving traveler engagement 

Madden Media helped bring that unique vision to life in their collaboration with Destination Door County. To help drive seasonal engagement, the Wisconsin destination wanted a way to show potential travelers what can make each season special. 

“As an agency, one of the challenges we see with destination clients is the need to move beyond broad, one-size-fits-all messaging,” says Whitney Attebury, Director of Email Marketing at Madden Media. “For Destination Door County, we wanted to personalize communications in a way that reflected seasonal traveler preferences and inspired visitation.”

Philip Rahm, Email Marketing Strategist at Madden Media, stresses that personalization should go deeper than surface-level tactics. “Personalization isn’t just putting a first name in the subject line,” he says. “When people sign up for email, it’s intentional.”

“The challenge we have in travel email marketing is that we’re not selling products,” Philip explains. “We’re selling intent. A travel guide order can be a strong conversion metric. It signals the desire to learn more about a destination and can point to visitation down the road.” 

Conversion markers like these matter for destination marketing organizations, which don’t sell hotel rooms or tickets directly. 

“If we can elicit data from them, like asking if they’re planning a winter trip, we can build messages around their interests. We can follow data beyond open and click rates, into Google Analytics and UTM tracking, all the way to conversion points like ordering a visitor guide.”

The tools: Segmentation and personalized automation

Madden started by auditing Destination Door County’s data to determine how to build personalized, automated campaigns. “Anytime we start to engage from an email perspective, we like to take an audit of the client’s data and say: this is what you have, here’s how we can use it,” says Whitney.

From there, the team used a mix of Mailchimp’s tools and integrations:

• Segmentation and automation to trigger seasonal welcome emails based on subscriber data or tags
• Geolocation targeting to supplement missing subscriber details and reach both local and out-of-state audiences
• Send Time Optimization to deliver campaigns at the best-performing times
• Gravity Forms integration for real-time access to new signups from Destination Door County’s website

Pairing their approach with Mailchimp’s segmentation and marketing automation platform, the team launched a seasonal welcome email series that drove engagement by reaching the right travelers at the right time. 

Seasonal guides, in particular, can also provide insights that help the team fine-tune their clients’ campaigns, identify peak and shoulder seasons, and shape broader media strategies. If winter engagement is low, for example, they can recommend new content or campaigns to encourage visitation during that season.

“Mailchimp makes it easy for us to implement foundational best practices, like a welcome series and automation, and then layer on inspiration,” says Alana Smith, Email Marketing Strategist at Madden. “We’re not just delivering emails; we’re helping destinations build connections.”

The results: An engaged traveler community and a successful campaign

Madden’s seasonal approach and use of Mailchimp’s advanced marketing tools led to great results. The team drove stronger engagement with the seasonal welcome email series than the non-seasonal series that came before it:

Seasonality played a role in campaign performance. Seasonal welcome emails outperformed non-seasonal ones, delivering a higher average open rate (54.4% vs. 36.9%) and stronger engagement overall. Seasonal campaigns also achieved a 40% higher click-through rate (13.9% vs. 9.9%), underscoring the value of aligning messaging with audience behavior and travel intent.

Performance patterns reflect the team’s expertise in tailoring outreach to traveler demand. Spring messaging led with the highest open rate (57%), Fall-focused outreach achieved the strongest click-to-open rate (27%), showing that subscribers interested in fall travel were more likely to engage once they opened the emails. 

Summer welcome emails also delivered strong engagement during peak visitation months. As expected, winter-focused campaigns performed modestly, reflecting lower regional travel activity during that season and a smaller volume of sends.

Travelers selected spring, summer, and fall more often than winter during the signup process, so those seasons drove most of the results. Fewer subscribers indicated winter travel. But those deployments still offered useful insight to the Madden team.

Together, these results show how strategically tailored welcome emails can help drive engagement and highlight when destinations, like Door County, Wisconsin, can focus future marketing efforts.

Madden Media and Mailchimp: A strategic partnership

Madden’s relationship with Mailchimp has evolved since they became Mailchimp pro partners through Mailchimp & Co. With dedicated support from Mailchimp’s partner management team, and a listing in Mailchimp’s Experts Directory, the team expanded its use of Mailchimp’s advanced marketing tools to help drive results for clients like Destination Door County.

The team praises Mailchimp’s partner program, crediting their partner development manager, Nikita Srinivasan, for helping them adopt new tools, troubleshoot efficiently, and expand their expertise. 

“The pro partner model with Nikita’s support has allowed us to go deeper into Mailchimp’s core features,” Whitney says. “Expert support helps us better educate our clients on features and functionality, which helps us broaden our email programs. Having that knowledge and support has elevated our role to becoming strategic partners with our clients.” 

What’s next for Madden Media

Based on their success with Destination Door County, the team shared 3 tips that destination marketers can consider applying to their workflows:

1. Evolve your creative templates. Travel is about inspiration. Keep your creative fresh and your templates flexible to highlight evolving brand stories, seasonal themes, and new ways to experience a destination. - Whitney Attebury
2. Build around intent, not only transactions. If someone signs up for a seasonal guide, give them content that expands that season with things to do, places to stay, and insider tips. That way, your email can feel like part of the trip planning process instead of just another marketing message. - Philip Rahm
3. Don’t be afraid to trim your database. Treat your contact list like a living, breathing audience rather than just a number. A smaller, engaged list can sometimes outperform a larger, unresponsive one. - Alana Smith

Looking ahead, the Madden Media team plans to continue evolving their email marketing efforts for their destination clients while exploring SMS marketing as a complementary channel. The team hasn’t adopted SMS yet, which makes it an exciting opportunity to test, learn, and see how it can help strengthen engagement alongside email.