Supercharge Your Travel Marketing Strategy

I haven’t flown in well over a year. There’s a fair chance you haven’t either. And while you haven’t necessarily missed the recirculated air or TSA pat-downs, there are sites to see, loved ones to hug, and adventures to be had. (You do miss the mini pretzels, though, right?).

With travel bouncing back in our new, post-COVID-19 world, it’s time to think about generating buzz and reengaging customers.

We’re already seeing vaccine-related travel surges, with US ticket prices in particular approaching 2019 levels for the highly anticipated summer season; indeed, the TSA screened over 24 million travelers in the first two weeks of May, up 715% from the same period last year.

Still, travel restrictions remain, rates of illness and vaccination vary worldwide, and comfort level with travel continues to run the gamut, so it’s both more important and more challenging than ever to fine-tune and properly target communications.

Thankfully, a thoughtful and tailored approach is not only possible but scalable, and results in positive impacts on revenue growth and customer sentiment in both the short- and long-term.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which Tinyclues can help optimize travel marketing communications – in or out of a pandemic. 😉

Understanding Intent: Targeting Early Bookers, Late Bookers, & Everyone In Between

Communicating with potential bookers – whether to push current offers or upcoming promotions – is essential to a healthy travel marketing strategy. And it has arguably never been more important to understand booking propensity.

Between fluctuating travel restrictions across regions, shifting travel safety guidelines, and many would-be travelers still ambivalent about returning to the skies, rails, and seas, the potential for sending irrelevant content has only increased; clear insight into the circumstances and wants of consumers is key. But is it truly possible to predict real booking intent? To identify the exact propensity of a given consumer to transact within a set timeframe?

Spoiler alert: it is 🎉.

It just so happens that Tinyclues’ sophisticated propensity modeling quickly identifies for marketers not only those customers who are inclined to transact, but precisely when; traditional propensity models leave timing out of the equation.

And that’s no small thing. You want to understand if your customer is more likely to book a Standard Double or a Deluxe Suite, yes – but understanding whether they’re likely to do so in the next month or the next year is what’s going to allow you to truly uplevel your targeting and messaging strategy and, ultimately, deliver on your goals. Whether you’re promoting packages well in advance or scrambling to fill seats or rooms at the eleventh hour, Tinyclues identifies precisely the right campaign audience in minutes. Talk about a piece of cake. 🍰

Dare (Your Customers) to Dream

There are many opportunities for travel marketing specialists to scale their plans and increase campaign volume while simultaneously delighting their audiences and managing fatigue – opportunities that extend beyond the concrete packages and offers typically slated for promotion.

Take, for example, a prominent European airline whose tendency had always been to run campaigns exclusively for very specific offers with specific price-points attached.

Using the airline’s first-party data, including signals and behaviors most other tech ignores, Tinyclues was able to identify trending topics within their database, which became the basis for new campaigns (and incremental revenue 💰). Some of these campaigns were focused on generating excitement around destinations that Tinyclues identified as being of special interest to portions of the airline’s customer base – destinations that would otherwise have been overlooked.

These insights enabled the airline to extend its reach to consumers it had previously been missing, to feature topics it hadn’t been prioritizing, and to communicate in a way it hadn’t considered before. What better way to complement a tactically-focused plan than to remind audiences of the bigger picture? What are consumers really buying when they book a seat or a room if not meaningful experiences and lasting memories?

As the threat of COVID-19 wanes and restrictions ease, it’s an especially good time to focus on allaying residual travel fears, reminding audiences of what they love about travel, and inspiring them to dream big.

There may still be some turbulence ahead (see what I did there? ✈️), but there’s no doubt we’re headed in the right direction.

Ready for takeoff? We’d love to fly with you.