The past few years have been very difficult for travel companies, primarily because of the recent pandemic. Today, though, things change, and people are more eager to travel. This means that travel and hospitality companies need to buckle up and increase their marketing efforts. And this is where our role begins!
When you take a look at the recent study published by Deloitte, the travel thaw is a real thing, at least in the US, where more people are now eager to travel:
Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/us-2023-travel-outlook.pdf
Airlines, hotels, booking platforms, car rental companies, tour companies, and travel agencies – all these entities can benefit from the fact that people are traveling more again. However, the competition is still fierce, and if you want to succeed, you need more than just a great offer. You need a great marketing.
Thanks to marketing automation in the travel industry, you can make your life easier and reach out to potential travelers in a streamlined and more effective way. In this post, we want to show you four ways you will surely find beneficial in this sector.
Let’s get right to it!
Plan your marketing automation in the travel industry
Marketing automation scenarios are the core feature of our platform. Why? Because it enables you to design the entire communication flow between your customers and your company. The fact is, people frequently need to be inspired to look for travel opportunities. Sure, some of us are avid travelers, but others travel just once or twice a year, and that’s it. So, you need to give your customers a good idea of what they might want to see or do.
This work starts with marketing automation scenarios – they offer a scripted list of actions and reactions leading to a desired outcome – a reservation with your company. Take a look at how such a scenario can look in this sector:
You can create scenarios made of different communication channels (emails, SMS messages, push notifications) as well as great offers to encourage people to visit your website, fall in love with photos, and book a hotel room, a flight, or a car.
iPresso Satellite
iPresso Satellite is an outstanding feature that can make your work much easier. You see, Satellite uses data about weather conditions (and related elements) so that you can adjust your marketing campaigns to weather in a given country!
How can you use this feature? Think of RTM campaigns using weather data from different countries and ads showing places worth visiting. Imagine this scenario. You are an European travel agency working with customers from Ireland. This country, although beautiful, is not famous for its great weather. You could send a campaign to your Irish customers saying something like this:
“Hey, Monica! It’s chilly outside, right? Let’s go somewhere nice and sunny! How about Barcelona? Perfect 25 degrees, cloudless sky, and a light breeze! Sounds great, right? Check out our latest offers!”
Add a picture showing sunny Barcelona or a forecast showing warm temperatures for the coming weeks, and you have a perfect ad!
With iPresso Satellite, you can automate getting that kind of information so that you don’t have to manually check weather forecasts for hundreds of different places.
Travel recommendations
This is where our recommendation frames step in the game. Shortly put, you can use these frames to display personalized product (in this instance, travel) recommendations. You can target people with different interests and travel histories and show them offers tailored to their profile. For example, if you have a customer who frequently flies to Spain, you can create a personalized travel recommendation showing them the Canary Islands. On the one hand, it’s perfectly in line with this person’s interests. On the other, it’s a nice opportunity to recommend something different.
What’s especially interesting is that travel recommendations are also good when it comes to recommending content, e.g., specific subpages or blog posts on your website. Have you just published a comprehensive blog post featuring 10 perfect places to spend the upcoming winter? Fantastic, you can recommend this post to every person who visits your website!
Customer segmentation
When it comes to personalized travel recommendations, you need to segment your customers to show them relevant offers. A client who usually books flights for his whole family rather won’t be interested in single last-minute flights, right? Segmenting customers will help you devise better offers for them as well as more attractive ads that can resonate with a given person.
That’s what our Contact Database Management is for. With CDP, you can create as many customer segments as you want, and each segment can come with some specific attributes. Later on, you can use those segments as a base for your future ads and campaigns.
Constant communication with travelers
Oftentimes, your travelers may need quick assistance, e.g., when they are stuck at the airport or when the hotel they booked has some sort of a problem. Waiting for hours on the hotline is not the best idea in such a situation. Perhaps it’s a good idea to open one or more WhatsApp channels for your travelers so that they can easily communicate with your company.
This solution is especially worth considering given WhatsApp needs just an internet connection to work; there are no additional costs. And the vast majority of airports, hotels, and even train stations and shopping centers offer free Wi-Fi so that your customers can get in touch with you.
We recently introduced WhatsApp integration to our platform, so if you want to try how this channel would work in your company – you are free to give it a try!
Wrapping up
The travel industry is just fascinating, and it comes with a massive amount of possible options and marketing strategies. Whatever you do, marketing automation can help you streamline work and maximize the results you get. We invite you to give iPresso a shot, especially given we have a special version of our platform specifically for travel companies! Go to this subpage, and you will find everything you need to know to start. And we have a free trial period for you, too!
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