A small-group food and wine touring operator running trips to Italy — Ongoing, seasonal

An automated lead pipeline that gave a solo operator her time back — and became the model we now use for other small tourism businesses...

Category: Multi-Day Tours · Services: Meta Lead Ads, Marketing Automation, Mailchimp Integration, Google Sheets Automation, Email Nurture

The challenge

As a solo-operated business, this client's biggest constraint wasn't demand for her Italy tours — it was time. Every lead that required manual follow-up, itinerary emailing, or spreadsheet uploading took time away from actually running the business, so the campaign needed to work with minimal day-to-day input from her.

Our solution

Big Head Digital built a fully automated lead pipeline: Meta lead ads fed directly into a shared Google Sheet and Mailchimp audience, with an automated itinerary delivered straight to each lead's inbox the moment they enquired. The client didn't need to manually upload contacts, send itineraries, or manage follow-up sequences — the system did it for her, on a lean, seasonal budget.

Strategy

  1. Automate the handoff, not just the ad — Leads flowed automatically from Meta into Google Sheets and Mailchimp, removing the need for manual data entry or list uploads.
  2. Deliver value the moment someone enquires — An automated itinerary was triggered instantly on lead capture, so prospective travellers got relevant information without waiting on a manual reply.
  3. Keep it lean and seasonal — Campaigns ran on a modest, flexible budget suited to a small operator, scaling on and off with the travel season rather than running as a large always-on spend.
  4. Build once, reuse everywhere — The lead-to-Mailchimp automation built for this account became the go-to template, directly reused when setting up similar automated pipelines for other small tourism clients.

Results