At EyeforTravel, we are often asked what
the future holds for travel marketing.
In my research ahead of EyeforTravel’s Online Marketing Strategies for
Travel conference in Miami, the buzzwords for 2013 have been mobile and also
personalization.
What’s interesting to me is the rapid
development of the technology that facilitates personalization. Personalization means going far beyond just
acknowledging that they’re a valued customer.
Understanding what it is the consumer wants, needs and indeed when they
want to hear from you and how, sets brands aside from their competitors and
wins sales. Even more intelligent brands
are integrating social data, booking patterns, anticipating wants and needs to inspire
customers and sell travel products that are highly targeted to them, that they
might not have realized were on offer if it wasn’t for the right marketing
message at the right time.
You can only do this however, if the tools
you have permit. Thankfully such tools
are advancing.
A great example of this is Facebook’s
“Unpublished Posts” feature – something until recently only available for
adverts appearing on the right hand side of a user’s page. Now, posts targeted
to specific segments can be published on to their newsfeeds, without appearing
on other users’ newsfeeds or the Page’s own feed. This means that relevant
content will be delivered directly to the user where they’re most likely to see
it, without the danger of alienating the rest of your audience, which could
result in them clicking the dreaded “unsubscribe” option.
Personalization, requires an integration of
your marketing efforts, and data is at the heart of this. Existing data must be
leveraged to build robust databases that can then be added to as more
information is collated. Though it is certainly a dire warning not to go too far when it comes to personalizing
your content, Target’s
story of how they used algorithms to work out a young girl was pregnant
before her father knew, shows that with careful analysis of patterns and data,
you can determine a lot about your consumer – but remember, as Spiderman’s
uncle Ben once told him, “with great power, comes great responsibility”.
So where does the future of personalization
lie? In further personalizing the consumer’s experience; at every level.
Websites will become fully adaptable to their visitors, so a sun-worshipping
beach body will be greeted with an entirely different page to an
adrenaline-junkie adventure traveler. The messages, calls to action and offers
all being adapted to the individual based on their data. Even Search is
becoming more and more personalized, Google’s alogorithm learns what it’s users
are searching for, and engines such as Bing are allowing users to integrate
their Facebook accounts to power their personalized search – and thereby
opening the door for even more relevant, targeted advertising.
Utilizing these tools, you can create a comprehensive
personalization strategy with marketing that users will not find intrusive but
genuinely useful. Dancing that fine line between helpful and creepy will help
instill loyalty to your brand, which will drive sales and in turn provide more
data for your personalization strategies, marking you out in the consumer’s eye
as a cut above the rest.
To find out more about
Hyper-Personalization as well as other key Online Marketing strategies why not
check out our Online
Marketing Strategies for Travel: The Americas & Caribbean 2013 (June
4-5th, Miami) where Ritz-Carlton, Virgin Atlantic, Avis and many
other top travel brands will be presenting the latest developments in Online
Marketing in the travel space.