Tagible aggregates rich content including photos, 360 images, reviews and video from across the web for hotels, destinations, tours and activities companies to integrate it into their websites.
The thinking from the startup is to do away with all the searching consumers have to do to find inspiring content from different sources to bring trips to life. And, by bringing that content to the supplier's website, it will drive engagement and increase conversion.
What problem does your business solve?
The travel industry is currently spending $2.4 billion in the US alone in Google AdWords driving traffic to pages that are nothing but text on a page.
They expect the traveler to convert and yet the pages are falling short in the minds of the consumer.
The consumer needs inspiration, information and validation about the trip before they part with their hard earned dollars. So they start to open tabs. They may go YouTube and search for videos, Facebook and search for photos or friends who have been there in the past, Instagram, Tripadvisor or Google.
This is a very expensive problem for the travel industry because the more tabs that they open, the less likely they are to return and complete their purchase and hence the conversion rate goes down for every tab opened.
With Tagible installed on our clients sites, instead of having to opening dozens of tabs to find inspiration, consumers can discover all of the rich media content that will inspire them to book in one spot, directly from the text on the page.
We collect travel content from across the web for every destination, hotel, point of interest, attraction and activity. It’s as easy to integrate as installing google analytics.
Within a matter of minutes destination and product pages are brought to life with rich media content designed inspire and drive conversions. Customers see increased engagement, social sharing and most importantly bookings.
Names of founders, their management roles, and number of full-time paid staff?
Judah Musick: CEO
Tim Carlson: COO
Brad Whitehouse: Co-founder
Nine full-time paid staff across product and curation
Funding arrangements?
$30K Initial funding from Travelport
$150K Private Funding
Will be seeking $750k - $1M in Seed Round Q1 2017
Revenue model?
Simple monthly SAAS based pricing
Price per keyword per month
Flat monthly fee based on estimated number of words
Significant price breakpoints for more words
Built in analytics to prove value
Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?
Everybody intuitively knows that inspirational content has the power to convert a passive looker into an active buyer.
The painful part for a travel site is that they have so many product pages that the feasibility of curating high quality content at scale and integrating that into their product pages is such a huge time consuming and expensive project that they just never even attempt it.
Tagible however can be installed in five minutes and is completely full service meaning that all of their pages will be optimized with high quality and high converting content at scale without them having to do any of the work.
On top of that, since the product includes the licensing to all of the content it's often times much cheaper than the alternative of stock photography that many travel sites are used to paying.
External validation?
Q1 2016: Participated in Travelport Labs, Travelport’s startup accelerator
Q2 2016: Graduated the program with pilot customers such as Globus, Grayline, Maritime Travel and Exclusive Resorts.
Q3 2016: Was able to prove customers love the product and are getting great results across customer engagement, time on site, and increased conversion rates.
Q4 2016: Successfully pitched at Phocuswright and had an overwhelming response. Left the conference with 25 highly qualified demos in which the majority will turn into customers.
Video pitch:
Tnooz view:
It's hard to find fault with what this startup is trying to do.
It's addressing quite a few issues around travel inspiration, onsite engagement and conversion.
Less clicking around Google for consumers who are trying to find images, video and other content to help build a picture of their potential trip has got to be a good thing.
Sticky content that keeps consumers on a travel supplier's website - be it hotel, destination marketing, cruise company or other - and hopefully drives them further down the purchase funnel is also a good thing.
And it seems as if Tagible has made the content easy to integrate for travel suppliers and easy for consumers to click on keywords and discover and share.
It's also good to see the startup has backed up the service with analytics to demonstrate to suppliers what's working in terms of engagement, sharing and conversion.
Potential pitfalls for the company might be getting the word out about the service although participation in initiatives such as Travelport Labs and pitching at Phocuswright will help.
As with any new service, persuading travel companies that they need Tagible as well as its ability to scale once it manages to get the ball rolling.
It seems to have made a good start with customers listed above including Globus, Gray Line and United Vacations.
A final snag might be keeping up-to-date with and curating and integrating, behind the scenes, all the content out there which is constantly being created.