Presentation delivered by Paul Stephen of Sagittarius and Chris Nash of Sitecore at Travel Technology Europe Exhibition 2016, Accelerate Theatre, Wednesday, 24th February 2016
What is digital personalisation in Travel and why should I care? Travel Technology Europe 2016
1. What is Digital
Personalisation inTravel
and Why Should I Care?
TravelTechnology EMEA
February 24, 2016
Chris Nash
Business Optimisation Consultant, Sitecore
What is digital personalisation in travel and why should I care?
This session explores the process of identifying your different customer segments and building out strategies from SEO through to website experience that 'reduce the friction' and allow for better buying experiences in Travel. Hear from Dan Fox, MD from Skiweekends.com on how they have implemented personalisation on the Sitecore platform with award winning results.
http://www.hotsaucedrops.com/
Context is meaningfulness, relevancy
I want to answer questons like – what so personalization, what makes personalization effective and how to work wither personalization and how to approach using personalization strategically …
I want to show an example about the progression of an experience and how by listening to the data you can go from a typical generic experience to a relevant experience
On the next slide …
Default experience – not listening – notice the general calls to action on home page …
One the next slide
But what happens when you listen digitally and engage accordingly …
What is the intent of the visitor?
How is the intent met with relevant content and calls to action instead of a generic one for all experience
How does a relevant experience progress towards a mutually fruitful experience …
How can you by listening digitally quailify the intent more accurately by providing choices and listening to what is selected and then being increasingly relevant?
http://www.tnooz.com/article/survey-travel-industry-disruption-normal/
A survey conducted in July 2014, with approximately 800 Tnooz readers responding
So what is the industry’s view when it comes to disruption?
Personalization (59.1%) and mobile (49%) ranked high when respondents were asked what areas will experience the most disruption.
Allowing travelers to personalize their services, increase relevance with location, and access this from their mobile devices is already spurring a revolution in new services such as Uber and Hotel Tonight.
Travel companies that get it right will be rewarded with customer satisfaction and loyalty. So disruption will likely have a prominent influence in these two key areas.
And …
More than a third of respondents (35.2%) agreed that the traveler – and their behaviors and preferences — will be at the epicenter of disruption.
The emergence of new players (25.1%) seeking to address traveler needs in unique and relevant ways will also play a significant role in shaking up the status quo
The Contextual Marketing Imperative. Evaluate how marketers are meeting customer preferences.
The report was based on data from surveys of 1,200 global consumers and 200 advertising and marketing professionals at organizations with 500 or more employees.
Only 16% of the marketers surveyed say their organization is able to capture customer intent and deliver real-time, behavior-based marketing across all channels.
Some 40% of consumers surveyed say most promotions they receive don't deliver anything of interest, and 44% say they receive too many offers.
http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/study-what-do-consumers-think-about-personalized-marketing#
SkiWeekends Stats
1% = 100%
2 main issues
Too many people falling out of the funnel
Never enough ‘selling’ to convert more interest in to ‘desire’
To often once we’ve got their money we stop selling.
SkiWeekends Stats
1% = 100%
2 main issues
Too many people falling out of the funnel
Never enough ‘selling’ to convert more interest in to ‘desire’
To often once we’ve got their money we stop selling.
SkiWeekends Stats
1% = 100%
2 main issues
Too many people falling out of the funnel
Never enough ‘selling’ to convert more interest in to ‘desire’
To often once we’ve got their money we stop selling.
SkiWeekends Stats
1% = 100%
2 main issues
Too many people falling out of the funnel
Never enough ‘selling’ to convert more interest in to ‘desire’
To often once we’ve got their money we stop selling.
What is personalisation and why should I care?
Really! We’re all here to talk about personalisation!
Now the real reason is it can improve our all important sales figures
SkiWeekends Stats
1% = 100%
2 main issues
Too many people falling out of the funnel
Never enough ‘selling’ to convert more interest in to ‘desire’
To often once we’ve got their money we stop selling.
Going to use Skiweekends as a case study but first I’m going to tell you how we got there
Dan can’t be here but I am
What is personalisation and why should I care?
Really! We’re all here to talk about personalisation!
Now the real reason is it can improve our all important sales figures
But personalise what?
Analytics are the key
Before you put lots of effort in you need to know where to put the effort
Typically our clients are very similar to Skiweekends and initial acquisition is not the problem.
Its getting them through the funnel.
Data is the key to everything
This is the Big Data hall at CeBit last year
Customer Data
Website Analytics
Commerce Data - CRM / Res System
Social Data
Segmentation not personalisation
Too many people to be personal
We need put people in to buckets
Profiles not personas
The Challenge
Inter-connectivity
Data Protection
Cost / Investment - average percentage?
Data builds over time
Explicit – their email, the device
Implicit – what they looked at, what campaign they triggered, search facets, number of visits, their social interests – the list goes on
What can we learn from the real world?
I grew up in a village corner shop and we used to collect data to improve customer experience all the time. Yes really! Back then we used to call it remembering previous customers, what they like or what they did yesterday and then treating them accordingly. Or personalisation and conversion optimisation if you like.
So we have a lot to learn from traditional retail. Buying something from a shop didn't used to be called a customer experience but it's certainly something that retail has been working on and refining for centuries.
Its all about the experience
Not the holiday experience
The transactional experience
The whole experience
So many distractions (or opportunities)
The whole journey
Travel is a brilliant sector for digital marketing.
Its something that people kind of like to take their time over and this gives you so many opportunities to sell and add value
Too much focus on the initial ‘pull’ or awareness
SkiWeekends Stats
1% = 100%
2 main issues
Too many people falling out of the funnel
Never enough ‘selling’ to convert more interest in to ‘desire’
To often once we’ve got their money we stop selling.
Use all the channels
We all use SEO and Paid Search for creating initial brand awareness and then perhaps use email to send them offers.
How could you be using Social Media to drive awareness?
If you are not creating your own content to send out interested customers that aren’t creating desire then all you are doing is trying to sell with price.
Are you looking at how people are opening emails and following up accordingly.
Are you remarketing to people based on their on-site activity
How could you be using direct mail to make customers feel good about you after they’ve just spent x thousand with you.
More than a ticket
Customer communications are part of the holiday
We are selling experiences. Not products in boxes
But too often travel brands simple send what is basically an order confirmation and then maybe tickets the week before and then a survey afterwards.
This is just ‘hygiene’ really.
Lots of opportunity to add value and cross sell after ‘the sale’
Social Media Strategy
The missed opportunity
Its not about a broadcast channel
As a channel – This is where lots of journeys begin, using social as a channel to inspire, inform and delight the audience at whatever stage they are at: thinking about a holiday, on holiday, post holiday.
Over 50% of travel conversations are during or just after the holiday
37% are motivated to make a travel purchase based on a customer review
So travel brands need to be doing more later in the customer journey
As a forum - Get involved - get closer to your customers
Create raving fans and build your brand
Ultimately this is what we want, this is how we grow sustainable businesses. By having raving fans or evangelists we stop having to pay a premium to market
3 years ago the ski weekends site was attracting 200,000 visits across its peak selling period
At the time the business was carrying approx 3,000pax which equalled approx 2,000 bookings
So that’s a 1% conversion
So if we could improve conversion by half a percent then what would we achieve?
So we have spent the last few years working on improving the conversion. So for example if you’ve come to the site via a pay-per-click campaign promoting our week tours by coach then the departure points and length of stay start on the right settings (no matter what page you are on). If you like us oon Facebook already then we won’t be offering you a discount for liking our fan page.
Improving conversion even goes through to asking for feedback. Our emailers ask then a simple 1-5 question first, we already know their travel details and we can capture valuable data in one click to use on our review pages. This feedback is the absolute gold dust of personalisation and improving customer service
In the last 3 years skiweekends has all but doubled in its passenger numbers yet its website visitor traffic has only grown x%
3 years ago the ski weekends site was attracting 200,000 visits across its peak selling period
At the time the business was carrying approx 3,000pax which equalled approx 2,000 bookings
So that’s a 1% conversion
So if we could improve conversion by half a percent then what would we achieve?
So we have spent the last few years working on improving the conversion. So for example if you’ve come to the site via a pay-per-click campaign promoting our week tours by coach then the departure points and length of stay start on the right settings (no matter what page you are on). If you like us oon Facebook already then we won’t be offering you a discount for liking our fan page.
Improving conversion even goes through to asking for feedback. Our emailers ask then a simple 1-5 question first, we already know their travel details and we can capture valuable data in one click to use on our review pages. This feedback is the absolute gold dust of personalisation and improving customer service
In the last 3 years skiweekends has all but doubled in its passenger numbers yet its website visitor traffic has only grown x%