Reaching Today’s Digital Traveller
The following 5 powerful tips assist you with optimising your digital marketing efforts and connect with your customers where they spend most of their time online.
1. Grow your Subscriber Lists
If you are looking to engage with consumers the key is to create a social buzz around your promotions and attract repeat customers. Broaden your reach by acquiring more subscribers who have a keen interest in your travel brand’s offerings.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you promote digital engagement on your website with high visibility email opt-ins, social sharing buttons and real-time promotions?
- Are you asking for travellers’ email addresses at the point of sale?
- Are your contact details easy to find on all your online platforms?
2. Deliver Relevant and Timely Messages
Travellers are on-the-go types by nature, so relevance and timeliness is key. Some customers travel often, as often as several times a month, while others plan one large scale holiday a year. This makes it crucial to connect with them on the right channel at the right time.
To avoid annoying your subscribers, ask yourself these questions:
- Do you see customers unsubscribing often?
- Has your deliverability rate been falling?
- Are your social media messages being heard?
3. Personalise your Interactions
Cross- channel marketing assists with reaching an individual at the perfect time. This is imperative in the travel industry as booking holidays can be planned or extremely spontaneous, such as a last minute business trip.
“25% of people unsubscribe from permission based emails because the content hasn’t been relevant to them from the start.”
The key is to be more than just relevant, you need to be personal. Have a look at these questions to optimise engagement with your subscribers personally:
- Does your social media manager have regular, personal interactions with your fans and followers?
- Does each customer that asks questions receive a personal reply? (This is either via email or social media in most cases.) This includes compliments, enquiries and complaints…
- Are you constantly collecting new data about your customers?
4. Automate the Travel Customer Life Cycle
You have the mighty task of reaching the digital traveller who is already on-the-go and constantly multi- tasking. Bring effective messaging to travellers at every stage in the customer lifecycle and support them along the way.
Ask yourself:
- Do travellers receive automated communications according to their travel preferences at every stage of their buying cycle?
- Do you have a shopping cart abandonment strategy?
- Would a prospective customer receive any re- targeted messages about hotel packages or travel destinations they were browsing?
5. Increase Customer Loyalty
Frequent flyers is a buzz term at the moment. Travellers are one of the best audiences to retain as loyal customers as they are highly likely to rebook with your brand if they have had an incredible experience there.
Evaluate your current customer loyalty status with these questions:
- Are you rewarding return customers with points or discounted stays?
- If so, are you giving these perks away often?
- Are you giving freebies to keep subscribers excited about your brand?
This user experience ensures that there are no risks of missing that narrow window of time when travellers are ready to convert their tentative travel plans into a purchase.
Image References:
ExactTarget, Downloadable Resource, viewed 7 June 2013, <http://pages.exacttarget.com/EN-5MarketingTravelTips/?ls=Blog&lssm=Corporate>.
Groupon, Travel Advertisment, viewed 10 June 2013, <http://www.groupon.co.za/deals/johannesburg/anytime-holidays/3065894>.
