People crave experiences, now more than ever.
Digital nomads. Music festival revivals. Road trips. Pop-up shops. Interactive museums. The list goes on and on.
The emphasis on experience extends far beyond trips to new cities and exotic beaches. Consumers are using their purchasing power to buy more than things, and this trend is influencing how brands vie for attention and appeal to the modern consumer.
Think about it this way: companies are motivated to not only sell more experiences, but make the process of purchasing and interactions with their brand a more positive experience, overall.
Marketers need to think about their role across a consumer's journey with their brand holistically, instead of just as a way to lead people to press "purchase". That view of the customer experience is short-sighted, and is a one-way ticket to disaster when consumers today expect so much more.
Data puts marketers at the right place at the right time - and at more places where previously absent. How can marketers re-write the script for better customer experiences? Start by putting relationships first.
Making Relationships First Priority
Because of its many complexities - from razor thin margins to rapidly changing inventory and silos between airport services, call centers and airlines themselves - the travel industry has struggled with limited transactional relationships with customers, despite loyalty programs. But it doesn't have to be that way: brands like Southwest, Virgin Airlines and Emirates Airlines, to name a few, have shown that a customer can have personalized care and a positive brand experience from start to finish - and marketers can lead the way to build that relationship.
Can an airline - or any retailer for that matter - know your favorite type of coffee, your top travel destinations, your birthday and your most recent purchasing activity? Sure. But making it so that interactions are informed by these attributes requires lots of brain power. Multiply that by tens of thousands or millions of customers, and a headache is bound to ensue - unless technology steps in. But technology - ad networks, CRM, social media, email marketing, websites and mobile applications - must merge into a common space to make data consistently work for deeper knowledge of a customer. That's needed as the foundation for stronger relationships.
Adding a Personal Touch
People may think technology sacrifices personal touch; but nowadays, personalization is impossible without technology. Marketers certainly can't be everywhere at once, and that's why you need to trust automation to do its job. Built in logic can help tell the story of a consumer in the process of making a purchase decision, from planning a trip to buying a wedding dress, so that they see interactions that make sense to them rather than genericized to apply to any person at any time. The saying, "if you appeal to everyone you appeal to no one" rings true more than ever.
Not only does personalization rooted in customer data improve the customer experience, it also provides a layer of damage control in the process. Was a trip cancelled last minute? There's an opportunity to connect with the traveler with empathy. It's important to be sure subsequent communication reflects that experience, accounting for the very real impact it may have had on their plans - and their experience with your brand.
Actions Matter Most
Your travel experience starts much before you Google "cheap flights to Florence." You may regularly fly to visit family, collecting frequent flyer miles for ages to get enough points to travel across the pond; you may be asking your friends on Facebook which Italian beaches have the best views; maybe you've purchased a book on great Florentine painters or searched for Tuscan sites to see. Along the way, you've taken actions that matter - ones that create an online footprint unique to you - that can and should provide context to help marketers see you for who you are: a human being on a mission to see the world.
By taking contextual information provided by actions on social media and online search and applying them to other outreach via email, customer service and even in flight experience, interactions can be customized. Informative content on weather, what to pack, places to see and other resources can make you a go-to authority rather than a commodity. All communication should be influenced by prior activity, queued by systems that speak to each other.
Appreciating the Journey
Travel marketers know better than anyone the challenges to please consumers today: how to get in front of them as they research purchases online, get ahead of the curve so that more people can discover their brand for consideration early and often, and ultimately how to create loyal, returning customers. That's a steep task for marketers, no matter the industry.
When experience comes first, everyone wins - company and customer - by reimagining what's possible with data.