Last year, we went on a Viking River Cruise of the Danube. We really enjoyed it. I wrote about buying into the “drinks package” on the first day of the cruise – and how I was up late on the final night “getting my money’s worth”.
My wife didn’t drink enough to cover her investment in the drinks package, so overall they MADE money on us.
Link: Drinks Package Success
Now we are seeing what they did with that extra $$$ …
We just got our (delayed) mail from MN brought down to Florida and I think we’re getting the last laugh. In just 8 weeks of our mail, we received ELEVEN colorful Viking flyers and catalogs!
Some are just simple flyers, but many of them are full-blown catalogs (in addition to all the emails they send). I’m guessing that these things have to cost them between $2-$4 to print and have delivered (based on AI estimate).
These aren’t the first catalogs they have sent us. They’ve been peppering our mailbox pretty steadily since we first put a deposit on that cruise back in March of 2024. That’s 24 months of 3-5 mailings a month, or probably about 100 mailings like these.
Multiplied by $3 each, they have sunk $300 into marketing us to sign up for another cruise (which we haven’t). That’s a lot more money than what they made on that drinks package!
We are thinking of taking a cruise next year, but honestly we haven’t really considered Viking among the options in Australia / New Zealand. Norwegian has a 11 night for $8.6K. Viking’s ocean cruise is 14 nights for $20.5K.
They did a nice job, but that is quite a big difference. I think I’d rather put some of that money into upgraded airline seats, or a bigger cabin.
Is there a marketer that so aggressively sends you mail?
Image: MrFireStation.com
MrFireStation 
We find that if we have a Viking Cruise booked, we receive fewer mailings. We are doing a cruise on the Elbe in April and October Italy to Barcelona.
Yes, Viking is considerably more expensive than larger cruise lines, but when we have gone back to the downmarket larger ship we have been disappointed. We have decided (except for perhaps a last minute Pacific Coast Cruise) to stick with under 1,000 passenger ocean vessels which is Viking or Oceania or Azamara.
To us, price sensitivity is not a priority over experience, or in other words, what I would have tolerated or put up with in the past no longer applies. I am slowly moving to the philosophy of “you can’t take it with you so enjoy it now.”
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We’re planning on traveling with another couple on this next cruise, so we will all need to work out together what the budget is. I actually have liked the couple “megaships” we’ve been on, so I’m not too concerned about going down the good-better-best hierarchy. We’ll just upgrade our room and buy a few more niceties along the way.
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I just pulled the latest Viking mailer from the mailer and put it right into the bin. They must do the math on such aggressive marketing but it’s not going to work on us, either.
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You think they would realize that their aggressive marketing isn’t working for the people that aren’t responding. If they haven’t heard from us on our 1 year anniversary of the cruise, I expect their mailings will decrease dramatically.
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My nominee for aggressive and stupid marketing goes to PennyMac. They the servicing rights for my 30-year mortgage that is fixed at 2.65%. They send me a couple flyers every month and call me couple times per week. The chances of me wanting to refinance are zero.
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Yeah – that doesn’t even make sense. I would think the response rate has to be close to ZERO for someone with a a low interest rate like that!
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IMO good sales and marketing consider the value you are bringing the customer. They buy your product or service because you are helping them. Bad sales and marketing approaches think it is all about the selling and that you can trick people into buying. I remember a former VP of Sales who was squarely in my lower left Magic Quadrant of Reprobates. He had a coffee mug that showed a sales guy leaving a refrigerator sale he just made to Eskimo.
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He was probably proud of that mug, too!
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