Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

1. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers Introduction 1 Mobile Travel Audience 2 The Mobile Travel Journey 7 Reach and Engage Travelers 14 Conclusions 21

2. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved During travels a significant number of people turn to their mobile devices to communicate with their relatives, seek for entertainment and resolve holiday – or business specific challenges. This makes mobile an unique medium to reach and engage holiday travelers and achieve marketing specific goals. But who are the mobile travelers and what are the best tactics to reach and engage them? introduction Companies in all sizes and across different industries can benefit from a properly crated and executed mobile advertising strategy and take advantage of its unique features. To leverage your mobile marketing strategy the best way during the holidays, this white paper will provide you with insights to: ª  Who typically engages with travel relevant content ª  How mobile is applied during the travel journey ª  The best practices to reach and engage holiday travelers 1 With insights to the mobile travel audience and best marketing tactics, this report is developed to help marketers such as airlines, hotels and other tourism-relevant companies to design their mobile marketing strategies. Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

3. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Who engages with travel relevant content? Even though, the demographic of people who travel stretches from young to old and the adaption of mobile devices is close to be independent of age and gender – some consumer groups will always be more mobile travel content - savvy than others. The demographics of consumers, who frequently engage with travel content and advertisements on their mobile devices to research travel options, hotels, attractions, locations or book a travel are between 18-44 years old. 60% are male while 40% are female. These mobile travel content-savvy consumers also make over $75k a year and have a high adoption of both smartphone and tablets accounting for 92% and 51% respectively.1 The majority of travellers are aged 18-44 60% are male and 40% are female 61% make at least $75k annually 92% own a smartphone while 51% own a tablet 2 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

4. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Who engages with travel relevant content? The demographic of consumers, who frequently engage with travel content and advertisements on their mobile devices leans towards a generally mobile savvy group of consumers. Compared to their predecessors (Baby Boomers), Gen X’s are much more comfortable with technology, diversity and global awareness. They represent the ﬁrst generation that has grown up with cd’s, remote controls and computers. They have grown up with world wide travel, access to world-wide events and relations with people from other cultures. They represent the famously known Gen X and Gen Y (Millennial) - a consumer group that always is connected and expects information and services that simplify the planning as well as booking experience. This gives them all the means necessary to consider mobile devices as the most important device to stay connected and up-to-date no matter of time and place. They are considered to be ultra-connected and owners of multiple communication devices. For brands, they therefore represent strong purchasing power and an audience segment worth getting to know. Their attention spans however, are short. In consequence this means that their demands for personalization are high, and connecting with them requires an integrated and well thought-out customer experience strategy. Millennial generation is considered to be the most tech-savvy, well-networked and marketing challenging generation. 3 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

5. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Zooming in Generation x Gen X’es – are deﬁned as people born between 1965 and 1980 are highly connected on the go. They account for the most time spent on mobile and use their devices longer each session compared to Baby Boomers and Millennials. They are considered to be avid consumers of online content and social networking. What really wins their attention is digital video as 78,7% of Gen X’es download or stream video online at least once per month. Taking the goal of the last mobile session in to account, 45% of the Gen X were “just browsing”, while 36% were looking to purchase and 29% were looking for a speciﬁc location. 2 42% consider their mobile devices to be the most important media source and 41% have depended on mobile only when taking a purchase decision 4

6. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Zooming in millennials Millennials, deﬁned as people born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s are considered to be the “ultra-connected” generation. They embrace digital channels, social media and mobile communications much more than the generations before them. They expect content to be delivered across devices, channels and in the language they prefer. With hyper-targeting, millennials expect content to be tailored to them and their needs. Compared to Baby Boomers and Gen X’es, price is a top factor for Millennials.2 Millennials consider mobile the most important media for purchase decision and are 12% more likely to leverage mobile throughout their purchase decision. 5

7. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Therefore, travel marketers should focus on supporting this behavior with travel relevant information and inspiration, which favorably could be communicated through digital video promotions. Focusing on the “ultra-connected” Millennials, marketers need to advance beyond traditional marketing campaign approaches, breaking through consumers’ personal junk ﬁlters with relevant, valuable and non- promotional interactions. Travel brands need to increase transparency in their marketing efforts to create trust and ensure that their strategies for engaging with consumers, especially with Millennials, are Omni-channel in nature. Due to their price sensitivity – communicating personalized travel offers and deals is highly relevant for Millennials, while family related travel offers a can appeal to Generation X. Key take aways: mobile travel audiences With regard to their high usage of mobile devices, their always on attitude and highest interaction levels with travel content – Generation X and Millennials (Gen Y) represent consumer groups – travel brands cannot afford to ignore on mobile. Considering Generation X, travel marketers should take in to account that a large part of Generation X marketers, spend a lot of time searching for information with their mobile devices in hand. 6 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

8. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved The mobile travel journey The proliferation of apps will become increasingly prevalent in a mobile-driven world. As people spend more time on their smartphones and tablets – primarily via apps – travel related businesses have vast opportunities to communicate with prospects and existing customers during every phase of the travel journey. From becoming inspired, dreaming about where to go because of an ad, a post or a picture, to planning, booking, experiencing, reﬂecting and sharing, digital and mobile technologies enhance these experiences. To be able to personalize mobile marketing to travelers, it is crucial for marketers to understand the four stages of travel journey and reﬂect up on, what role the particular brand can play in each of these four stages to create the most context relevant experience. research purchase travel review 7 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

9. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved The mobile travel journey: research Even though mobile devices generally are applied throughout the whole travel journey, there are variations to be found when it comes to the type of mobile device applied at what time. The majority of the travel audience, research their travel at home by using their tablets (70%), closely followed by their smartphones (61%). Searching for hotel information tends to be the first activity travelers involve themselves with. 83% research this information from smartphone whereas 74% look for hotel information from their tablets. This is followed by research for flight information. In this stage, mobile apps are heavily applied to research flight information and schedules and find the best itinerary for the trip. Key Take Away: To increase their marketing effectiveness, travel offers and inspiration should focus on the destination, before the transportation. Travel marketers need to create an ideal picture of a travel before bothering consumers with flight information and schedules. Both Smartphones and Tablets are relevant platform to target during the research phase. 3 8 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

10. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved The mobile travel journey: Purchase In a recent report, JiWire reports that 52% of travel bookings made in the last quarter were on a mobile device accounting for either smartphone or tablet. This clearly illustrates the fact that mobile devices once again have overtaken the desktop. Mobile travel sales are furthermore according to eMarketer, expected to jump to $64.69 billion by 2018.4 67% of mobile travel audiences use smartphone to book a hotel, while 64% use tablet. Also, nearly a half of travelers use their mobile devices to make ﬂight reservations. Travel sales conducted on smartphones, typically involve smaller transactions for one-night hotel stays, last-minute ﬂight tickets or rental-cars. Using tablets on the other hand, typically involves larger transactions and longer trips. Key Take Away: Complement the traveler booking patterns by focusing last-minute offers on smartphones while targeting larger trips towards tablet. Create mobile discounts only, to drive mobile engagement and last but not least – make sure to optimize your mobile web for purchase transactions, and keep your mobile app updated with the latest and most exclusive offerings. 9 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

11. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved The mobile travel journey: Travel During travels, consumers use their smartphones to check that their travel plans are on schedule but not least to research new travel prices. 55% of travelers check prices for hotels and flights during their travel as well as check travel schedules. 46% use their smartphones for check in, check flight status and get alerts.1 Smartphones are also heavily applied to other travel related tasks such as: trip management, use phone as boarding pass, track a checked bag and flight cancellation. When it comes to hotel activities, more than 83% of travelers use their smartphones to check out hotel related content. 57% compare prices and availability, 55% look up address/ directions and 43% retrieve confirmation number. Key Take Away: Almost all airports have their own free WiFi connections these day, which mobile travelers use to access the content. Make sure to target your mobile marketing to these networks and places. To support the travels, spend efforts on location-based mobile targeting – you might be just the hotel or airline the travelers will choose. 3 10 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

12. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved The mobile travel journey: review Travelers rely heavily on recommendations for trip, inspiration and planning. A recent Trip Advisor travelers study showed, that more than 88% of the respondents had written a review for an accommodation after staying there, and 41% noted that they also shared personal recommendations via other online channels and email messages. More than 51% of travelers read hotel and airline reviews on their smartphone before booking and usually travelers also write reviews in real-time on their smartphone during their trip. Recommendations show to carry most weight when researching accommodation and 57%of travelers said they would be more likely to book a hotel whose management responded to reviews. 5 Key Take Away: Hotels and airlines that invest in innovative mobile campaigns can increase consumer engagement. Tap into the importance of reviews and feature summary of reviews and rating in the mobile ad creative, and link consumers to the brand’s social media or TripAdvisor page. Also, encourage consumers to review their last interaction with your hotel or airline in the app and make sure to respond to the reviews in return.4 11 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

13. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Bravofly grows in-app searches and user base with mobile marketing Objective Leadmill was chosen to launch the Bravofly sub-brand app Volagratis globally, increase the amount of app installs, improve app store rankings and optimize in-app searches. Solution Promoted in lifestyle, news & weather, business & finance relevant apps towards audiences and personas that have a history of engaging with travel relevant marketing and involve themselves with in-app search. During the campaign period, the campaign was optimized towards the best-performing geographical locations. Campaign Spotlight To download the full campaign summary visit: http://www.leadmill.com/bravofly-grows-in-app-search-mobile-advertising 12

14. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Mobile insights: travel industry The aforementioned trends highlight that travelers are highly mobile active and willing to engage with mobile content in all phases during the travel journey. Many airlines have taken advantage of the mobile traveler behavior already with branded applications that enable consumers to take travel relevant actions such as: scanning a boarding pass, check in, change a ﬂight etc. and it is worthwhile to ﬁgure out, how your brand can support the customer needs during the various stages and provide the traveler with the right information at the right moment. As travel journey key take aways make sure to: Key Take Away 1: Focus on marketing the destination before the transportation. Key Take Away 2: Complement the traveler booking patterns by focusing last-minute offers on smartphones while targeting larger trips towards tablets. Key Take Away 3: To support the travels, spend offers on location-based mobile marketing. You might be just the hotel or airline the travelers will choose. Key Take Away 4: Tap into the importance of reviews and feature summary reviews and ratings in the mobile ad creative. Key Takeaways Consider, that travelers exhibit different Behaviours across different devices. Make sure to tailor the content to meet the specific needs and requirements for each device. 13 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

15. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers As the previous has shown, having a properly crated and executed mobile advertising strategy, travel companies have the ultimate chance to increase bookings and sales, simplify travel planning and reservations, drive consumers to participate in loyalty program and acquire new customers. Reviewing a properly crafted mobile strategy from it’s basics here is where to start: Using mobile on the run – travelers are looking for quick and convenient access to information. At first, on their mobile optimized websites travel marketers need to: Optimize for mobile ²  Give easy access to phone numbers, maps, contact info and directions ²  Use properly sized buttons that are easy to tap ²  Include forms that are easy to fill in on mobile devices ²  Simplify navigation that works and reflects the mobile visitors needs ²  Have pages that are quick to load for impatient and busy travelers 14 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

16. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers Determine the mobile advertising goal Is your objective to drive trafﬁc to your website, generate brand awareness or promote your new service/product release? If brand awareness is your main goal, take the chance to use inspirational images of destinations or special destination events in order to entice consumers to visit a speciﬁc location.6 For 59% of travel advertisers, driving web traffic is the common goal when developing a mobile advertising campaign. Having this objective for their campaign, advertisers commonly feature an m-commerce action such as hotel, ticket or rental car booking after clicking the ad. Contrary, 29% of travel marketers use their mobile advertising campaign to drive brand awareness and thereby plant the idea of taking a trip. 15 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

17. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers Determine the mobile advertising goal Many travel brands have invested heavily in mobile recent years and knowing that travelers are heavy users of apps, driving app downloads is a common mobile advertising objective among travel marketers. Using m-commerce as the main mobile advertising goal, travel advertisers branded an app or mobile landing page where consumers could purchase and book travel on the spot.6 For 38% of travel marketers , generating app downloads is the main mobile advertising goal. Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), have gained enormous success with their app, that allows travelers to check-in, load boarding passes, check EuroBonus and ﬂight status, book travel and download free newspapers. 33% of travel advertisers, use mobile advertising campaigns to drive m-commerce 16 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

18. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers Set your targeting The great thing about mobile advertising is that it opens up for a whole new world of targeting possibilities – to make your campaigns as relevant and adapted as possible for your core audiences. Precise targeting is also necessary, considering that Gen X and to even a higher extend Millennials expect adapted marketing messages based on their context and preferences. There are many targeting options available when targeting travel audiences including: technogaphic, geographic, demographic and behavioral. Apply technographic targeting to reach consumers based on their type of device and connection and consider that travelers often use smartphones to book last-minute travels while tablets are applied for larger and more expensive trips. Leverage inspirational content for travelers using a WiFi connection from for example a hotel or airport and feed 4G connected travelers with content that is quick to consume on the run. 17 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

19. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers Set your targeting so the consumers have the option to know more about the area and research how to get there. Geographic targeting – or otherwise known as location based targeting holds thousands of unique opportunities for you to target the traveler in the right place and context. Only your imagination sets the limit. Use geographic targeting to ensure that the right messages get to mobile users at the right place and time. Target travelers within a 50 km radius of your destination by showing inspiring images of the location and include a learn more call to action, 18 Get the travelers attention right when they arrive at the airport. Advertise for your ground transportation solutions – that can help them to get to their hotel, or make aware of your own accommodation with a last- minute offer. Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

20. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers Set your targeting Leadmill’s behavioral targeting aligns brand messaging with topics that the target audience is interested in and interacts with on their mobile devices. It is reliable to assume that a travel audience, besides spending time in travel apps, engages with apps from a variety a categories. This can for example be; music & entertainment, communications, weather, games, shopping & retail and news. A lot of travelers shop new items for their next trip, check weather forecasts for their destinations and play games, while waiting for their connection ﬂight. Combine behavioral targeting with location-based targeting and reach your audience, just when they need your attention the most. Besides targeting travelers based on their location and technographic data, Leadmill mobile advertising also holds extensive Behavioral targeting opportunities. Those enable you to target the mobile audiences based on their mobile content consumption preferences, ad interaction, app usage, interest etc. 19 For travel marketers, it is highly relevant to target the travelers across these app categories to complement their interests and behavior. Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

21. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Best tactics to reach and engage travelers Set your targeting Based on our intelligent tracking engine supported with 3rd party integrations, we use the mobile footprints left by travelers to craft unique audiences and personas. With this targeting method, you can target Outdoor Enthusiast that have interest in nature activities and content and look for travel content that give them inspiration for new places to explore. Or what about targeting Golf Fans by promoting your new Golf resort and Parents to rise attention about your Amusement park? With Leadmill mobile audience personas, you can craft your own persona that fits your specific needs and objectives. To reach and engage the right audiences at the right time and make mobile advertising even more ROI- effective – Leadmill works with mobile persona targeting. This targeting method combines behavioral, contextual, technographic, demographic and geographic targeting in one single unit, to make your advertising even more specific. 20 Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

22. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved conclusion 21 Whether traveling for business or pleasure travelers use their mobile devices heavily throughout the whole travel journey. Considering that the consumers who primarily engage with and consume travel related content are Generation X’es and Millennials, sets certain requirements to travel related brands. These consumers expect mobile-friendly and highly context relevant experiences. Seamless integration across devices that helps travelers effortlessly to stay connected during the whole travel journey is a must for mobile marketing success. Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

23. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Opportunities for travel brands 22 As outlined in this report, mobile holds plenty of opportunities for travel brands that are ready to enhance all the capabilities available. To complement the mobilized travel behavior, it is a necessity for travel brands to invest in mobile sites and apps. Thereby brands can provide travelers with easy access to information while on the go and increase their means for brand engagement. As the attention spans of the mobile travel audience are short, travel brands need to leverage innovative mobile advertising through effective campaign targeting and engaging creative to help deliver personalized, relevant messages in the right context. Last but not least, brands need to reﬂect up on, what role they can play in each of the four travel journey stages to create the most context relevant experience. Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

24. 2015 Leadmill All Rights Reserved Mobile insights: travel industry 1.  comScore Custom Mobile Travel Advisor Survey, September 2013 2.  xAd & telMetrics, Understanding Mobile’s role in the consumer path to purchase 2014, Mobile Consumer Proﬁle: Age & Gender 3.  eMarketer, Traveler Reviews: Online CommuniMes Reshape MarkeMng Strategies 2014 4.  eMarketer, US mobile travel sales to increase 60% in 2014 5.  TripAdvisor Study Reveals: Responding on Reviews Online Drives Booking Inquiries 2014 6.  Mobile Intel Series: Travel, Millennial Media 2014 References Mobile marketing insights Understand, reach and engage mobile travelers

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