Correspondence: Kate Boothby, Institute of Direct Marketing, The IDM, 1 Park Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 0AR, UK. E-mail: kateboothby@msn.com

¹is a senior consultant for the IDM. Her roles have included managing the Education Department, advising a college about its marketing database and acting as a key architect for the IDM's online digital marketing course.

Abstract

VisitScotland is Scotland's official tourism agency. VisitScotland's remit is to create and nurture a strong 'Scotland' destination brand by producing high impact marketing communications for a diverse target audience to encourage first time and repeat visits to Scotland. Eight out of ten visitors to Scotland arrive from the UK and Ireland. Approximately 10 per cent of the VisitScotland UK and Ireland team's marketing budget is given to direct marketing. The majority of the marketing communications budget is allocated to mass media in the form of television and cinema, press, including adverts and PR, online activity, sponsorship and events. VisitScotland has been developing its database over a number of years and has been actively profiling names to enhance its customer data since 1995. Visitor profiling techniques have been refined over the years, resulting in the introduction of a 'loyalty question' in 2003. VisitScotland's regional databases were merged following the full integration of VisitScotland with the area tourist boards in 2005. The 'Climbing the ladder' campaign was able to take full advantage of the wealth of customer data and knowledge that became available after the merger.