Marketing effectiveness could be seen at Sail Scotland

Portrait Software customer VisitScotland has previously given funding to Sail Scotland in order for it to carry out effective customer marketing campaigns to attract visitors to the country.

Now, Sail Scotland has revealed that the country is increasingly being identified as a sailing destination, which could be partly attributed to its marketing strategy.

Individuals from the continent are travelling to the Scottish coast because they feel they can get a better sailing experience there than in other countries. As well as visitors from outside of the UK, many Britons are taking their boats to Scotland, rather than destinations such as France, Tony Bennett, director of Sail Scotland, said.

"Over the next few years we're going to see further popularity of people venturing through the canal to the east coast or around the top to east coast," he stated, adding that 2010 will be a year of "sustainable growth".

"The sailing industry in Scotland has faired a lot better than the rest of the UK," Mr Bennett concluded.

In order to promote Sail Scotland, Portrait Software customer VisitScotland provided £65,000 so that the organization could carry out a marketing campaign to highlight the country as an ideal base for water sports.

Once a consumer database has been built by organizations such as those in the tourism sector, they may want to use solutions such as Portrait's Customer Analytics to decide which segments of customers should be targeted with what messages and through which communication channels.