Anyone ever had a booking from a free e-mail address?

[Mountain Goat]

This sounds ludicrous, but going through our firm bookings for the 12 months from Feb. this year, and sorting e-mail addresses for a newsletter plugging next year, not one of our guests used a free e-mail address either to book, or in the subsequent correspondence.

Hotmail and Yahoo stand out as non-bookers, with Gmail very rare anyway.

Does this mean anything at all?

MGoat
(not too mean to fork out $5/month for e-mail)

[Hells Bells]

I use GMail now, and I have had a booking from a yahoo address, but usually nothing from free ones at all.

[debk]

Someone asked about this in a PerfectPlaces thread here at LMH back in August. Vrooje was mentioning her poor luck with freebie emails and one thing led to another. The whole thread is here viewtopic.php?t=1177&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

And here's what I wrote in reply on 19 August 2006:

Took a quick look just now and we have had 19 reservations so far this year from hotmail, yahoo and gmail accounts.

Since then, I've taken another 3 reservations from yahoo address and 1 from hotmail.

Grand total of 23 reservations taken from freebies this year. Bring 'em on!
debk

[Big Sis..]

Hi debk

Bring 'em on!
debk

Just not at 1am Eh?????


As a matter of interest was this 1am arrival from a free email?

[la vache!]

MG,
I've noticed that recently I've had MORE free e mail address enquiries and bookings, most from hotmail, which as I've said on another thread causes me no end of problems as a lot of my e mails end up in the ether somewhere (especially those with attachements). I had one again last week which went astray - fortunately the enquirer sent a follow up e mail as I had no phone number - and I still have the booking.
Interestinly I also seem to be getting fewer from people's work e mail addresses though, this could be why.

[debk]

As a matter of interest was this 1am arrival from a free email?

The booking is for a couple of friends, some used free emails, some didn't.

Interestinly I also seem to be getting fewer from people's work e mail addresses though, this could be why.

As companies crack down on non-business use of email, I would hope to see more and more free and/or vanity email addresses. Whoops, my bias showing again.
debk

[Hells Bells]

Since the Perfect Places thread, I too have had a look at my bookings, and there has been an increase in free email bookings, the comment above was more or less what I said then. I think possibly because it is more common to change your ISP these days, people are opting for free webmail addresses instead of constantly changing them.

[Orion]

With gmail and yahoo being accessible through POP (i.e. outlook and the like) web email addresses are very easy to use. I am migrating to my third French ISP?ADSL provider and now am veering towards using either gmail or yahoo as my principal address.

[vrooje]

I do have a few bookings with free e-mails, but most are not. I haven't done the research, but I would guess that a somewhat larger percentage of my non-converting inquiries are from free e-mails.

[Hells Bells]

I seem to get a lot from business addresses, but usually thier own company rather than an employee emailing in office time.

[giofed]

Actually, we get a LOT of free email addresses....
I think it's very hard to find criteria for a marketing study... at times we have the same person writing first with the free address, then with the work address, then back to free....

there maybe a zillion reasons why one would use a free email, even if, or especially, if he or she is a big shot in some company...

[e-richard]

Just under 80% of my bookings in 2006 came from personal addresses. I haven't looked at non-booked enquiries, but suspect its similar.

Question though: When you all talk about FREE email addresses, do you include the free email address you get with your ISP (btinternet, tiscali, aol etc) ?
I have included these in my term "personal address" as opposed to obvious business names.