Online giants such as Google and Facebook hoard invaluable customer data - a golden orchard hidden in walled gardens. Marketers are faced with a stark choice: either accept this blind spot in understanding their customers, or find a way to breach the walled gardens.
NB This is a viewpoint by Tomas Salfischberger, founder and CEO, Relay42
Travel brands can’t ignore Google or Facebook or any dominant digital player - they provide such value to consumers that they must be factored into any online marketing strategy. In his recent Tnooz analysis of what airlines should do in 2016, Nadav Gur heralds the rise of the messenger app – specifically Facebook Messenger.
Spearheaded by KLM, these new services offer passengers flight updates and boarding passes delivered on the dot, at the right moment – and crucially, on the right platform for the customer.
The challenge of the walled garden extends beyond Google and Facebook. The customer data which travel marketers need may be hidden behind the walls of second-party data collectors such as OTAs, metasearch, ad-servers and demand-side platforms.
The real challenge is how to access and activate this broad data landscape.
The answer lies in smart data management technology, cross-pollinating passenger data to create a single user profile and the possibility of personalisation at scale.
A truly omnichannel data management platform (DMP) allows carriers to tie together all touch points, linking their own data from CRM, web and call-centre to real world events, instead of operating only within these infamous walled gardens.
Let's look at an example.
Imagine your passenger is in conversation with the Facebook Messenger airline bot, confirming her flight details. Before departure, there is a storm and significant flight delays: the airline’s lack of integration between event management systems and customer-facing platforms such as Facebook means that the storm, and its impact on her journey, goes uncommunicated on the passenger’s preferred platform.
Luckily, she watches the news, and rearrange her flight independently. Albeit disgruntled at the lack of communication, the customer is sorted; but what about the airline? Unable to integrate CRM and event management data with Facebook’s user-level data the airline fails to re-allocate her seat and the chance to re-sell it is lost.
The best way to handle this example goes beyond basic advertising, and into personalised service delivery: when granular identification data is no longer held to ransom, a DMP can create a detailed single view of each customer for usage in personalisation, service delivery and targeted marketing across channels.
Now, with a DMP connecting event management systems and media ‘walled gardens’, real-time weather updates can be used to offer context to passenger communications: as a result, the right notification can be pushed to the same passenger on her preferred channel– say, Facebook.
The airline continues the dialogue to organise an alternative flight via Messenger, informed by all of her previous travel behaviours across email, website and third-party display ads. This passenger takes an alternative flight, and satisfied with the levels of service, adds an inflight meal for good measure.
Her empty seat is sold to a traveller who was left stranded mid-storm, waiting for a trans-European train. Recommendations are displayed to him based on his Google search activity, and his previous browsing preferences. The airline can deliver the stranded man just what he needs - a fast route home - courtesy of their connectivity to the airline’s Revenue Management System.
The extent of this cross-channel dialogue opens up a whole world of opportunities for the travel industry, and for the marketers who choose to maximise on them. As walled gardens continue to ascend, with data treasure troves such as Whatsapp, Twitter and Snapchat joining the media fortress, marketers must recognise the role of technology in freeing their most valuable asset; their customer data.
According to a Forrester report, 85% of marketers seek a seamless suite of solutions over a set of siloed channels; which means the majority of marketers are maturing when it comes to recognising data opportunities.
Rather than taking the power balance of media giants for granted, marketers should instead seize the moment to find the right technology to turn their sales, and service, around. Only when marketers begin to breach the walled gardens, will the airline industry be able to reap the benefits, and soar above them.
NB This is a viewpoint by Tomas Salfischberger, founder and CEO, Relay42
NB2Image by Pixabay