How the travel industry uses email in 2017

With so many changes currently taking place in the digital marketing landscape, it can be difficult to keep up with every trend – discerning which ones have staying power and, more importantly, which ones are actually relevant to your business. Holidays and travelling are a special time in people’s lives and knowing that their travel company has paid attention to their personal details is vitally important at every touch point the customer has with your brand.

So which digital marketing technique is most successful in the travel sector? Simply put, the answer is Hyper-Personalisation.

But what is Hyper-Personalisation and how do you do it?

Hyper-Personalisation is really the next step beyond simply addressing your customers by their first name. When it comes to digital marketing, customers expect contextually relevant messaging. With the latest developments in real-time email technology, travel companies can now provide unique personalised email experiences.

Innovative travel companies are using advanced techniques to increase engagement with customers through email. As we have known for a while now, imagery is vital to catching viewers’ attention. With all the stunning images the travel industry can provide; do you ever find yourself in the predicament that you can’t decide which images to limit it to in your email? Live content technology allows you to overcome this by embedding a rotating carousel of high-quality images, which can adapt according to the openers geo-location, mobile device, time zone and more.

Another technique often used to create a sense of anticipation is a live countdown timer. Immediately updated at the moment the subscriber opens your email. It can be used well to encourage customers to engage in time sensitive offers or to excite customers about their fourth coming holiday.

Do you ever have the issue of flight times changing or hotel prices going up since you sent your email? These issues are a worry of the past for travel companies who are now using real-time technology, as the data will update itself after the message is sent to reflect the current situation.

Another way of delivering dynamic context to cater to your customer’s personal needs is to provide a live weather forecast. The forecast could reflect the destination they are going to or using real-time geo-targeted technology, it can adapt to show the weather of the location where they open the email.

Hyper-Personalisation means delivering relevant messaging to your customers and prospects that target their unique needs and interests. Live content is the next step in optimising your email marketing campaign, by delivering dynamic content which responds live to each customer’s personal context.

Personalising the campaign with their first name must simply come as standard. Travel companies that adopt this shift in digital marketing will be in a great position to improve their conversion rate and ultimately their sales.

With our email marketing platform, e-shot™, you can easily achieve Hyper-Personalisation at scale by using the Automated Series feature and the Contacts Manager to segment your contacts in a way that is relevant to your business and then automate the campaign process to them.

If you work in the travel industry and aren’t doing this yet, it is worth getting touch with us to chat through your requirements. We will of course offer you a personalised experience!