Streamlining the marketing process

Volker Wiewer, VP international, marketing applications for Teradata, outlines how individualised customer insight can transform a travel company’s ability to create campaigns in record time.

The world is speeding up. This is something which is especially relevant for travel marketers, who must be responsive to the needs of their customers and prospects to capitalise on the sometimes fleeting moments between destination research, through to ultimately booking. According to Deloitte’s ‘Travel Consumer’ research, the path to purchase for holiday customers has become incredibly complex. For example, one third of consumers use two or more devices when researching their most recent holiday, with one in five using a smartphone both to research this process and to book. In addition, the use and influence of both review sites and social media to share positive and negative experiences continues to rise. It therefore becomes ever more vital for businesses in the sector to manage their existing customer base effectively, using the inbuilt trust and experience of their services to steal a march on the myriad of other companies competing for that crucial sale.

The process is not always easy, however. Within a single company alone, travel businesses often have to wrangle multiple departments and regional approaches, alongside the implications of trying to maintain as up-to-date a view of their individual customers and their triggers to purchase as possible, as well as the pace of the sector’s communications in general. These are increasingly becoming more trigger based, using everything from bad weather in Britain to specific date-linked and short term sales bargains to gain the attention of consumers. A core channel acting as the backbone of the regular customer contact in the industry is email, however, this communication method also has to be carefully managed to standout in an inbox and prove effective.

This was the situation facing Qantas – an airline which typically, for its Frequent Flyer programme alone, runs more than 250 campaigns per year, primarily over email, and sends over 50,000 customised newsletters to its contact database per month. However, the turnaround time for the process, factoring in analytics, contact selection, dispatching emails and collecting feedback was taking as long as five days – a timeframe which is frequently outstripped in the modern digital economy.

To solve this issue, Qantas implemented a new Integrated Marketing Management (IMM) solution – a platform which could facilitate the communications process being brought in house while also giving the airline more control over the process. By closing the loop on the marketing operation and connecting more closely campaign implementation to results, internal operations and budget allocations, Qantas has managed to shave time to market from five days to just four hours. The business is also able to have a more in-depth view of their customers, as part of the IMM solution includes the ability to match individual purchase histories and trends with social and mobile footprints, so the customer journey and its influencing factors are much more defined. Perhaps most importantly, in a large and multinational operation, the IMM platform includes documented marketing calendar actions, so various departments, countries and functions have complete clarity on planned activity, deadlines and actions.

For a fast paced and increasingly digitally driven global economy, large international travel providers are faced with high customer expectations and complicated paths to purchase, so it’s essential to ensure the marketing department is empowered with clarity on the customer view and has a streamlined process for activating campaigns. This process has already paid dividends for a business like Qantas, as well as ensuring its customer communications programme is agile and able to deliver a swift and efficient campaign to suit constantly changing industry needs.