You know why you need to be there to connect with your customers, advertise more effectively and build brand identity. So join us for 2 hours of practical Facebook training in the CBD where you’ll leave with a functioning Facebook Page and the knowledge to start growing it successfully. As you build your page, you’ll learn how to:

1. Setup your own Facebook Page including claiming your username and page title. Understand FB policies.
2. Add custom tabs, pages and applications the way the pros do.
3. Setup your own Fan-gate that reveal hidden content only to people who Like your page.
4. Cultivate and maintain an active, positive and engaged audience.
5. Use the best time-saving social media management tools that enable you to manage multiple pages from one place, automatically schedule your posts for times they are likely to get the most engagement and give you proven content ideas.
6. Give people what they are looking for from brands on Facebook.
7. How to really catalyze the Word of Mouth opportunity on Facebook.
8. Build a fan following with 3 of the best tactics around.
9. Measure your success: Engagement vs Vanity.

Bring your laptop and build as you go, or just watch and learn. Ready? Reserve your place right now:

About the trainer – Kunal Kripalani

I recently finished up a Digital Marketing Management role with Catchoftheday.com.au, Australia’s number 1 daily deals website and an overall leader in the local eCommerce space. During my tenure, I focused on building up the brand’s presence by focusing on word of mouth marketing campaigns that leveraged Facebook, Twitter and email in order to build awareness of our brand and more importantly, bring in new prospects. I executed campaigns that more than tripled our Facebook following from 40,000 to over 150,000, grew our Twitter followers from 3000 to 13000 and added tens of thousands of new subscribers to our email database.

Prior to Catchoftheday, I headed up marketing at Fishpond.com.au, an online department store operating since 2005 followed by some time working with startups in San Francisco and a digital marketing agency in New Zealand. My work has attracted the following awards:

• Finalist, Best Online Retail Marketing Initiative, Online Retail Industry Awards 2011
• 4th at Deloitte Fast 50 NZ, 2007
• 31st at Deloitte Technology Fast 500 APAC, 2007
• Exporter of the Year, Westpac Business Awards, 2007
• Sony-Erriccson Frontier Award for Mobile Innovation, 2006

You can contact me for more details about the course here: kunal@webstrategy.asia

The fear of backlash usually leads to a ’let’s fix these other areas of the business first approach’ which leads to content-creation paralysis. Social Media driven word of mouth is potent when executed correctly. It always has an impact on brand equity and the right content pipeline can positively impact sales growth because it brings in new customers while increasing repeat patronage. What follows are a few ideas that stem from my experience:

Anticipate the response and steer the conversation using keyword filters

• You know what current affairs exist around your business – be it delivery times, downtime, There’s a degree of predictability with regards to the response you will get with keyword  filters. The related  keywords were pretty much identical and therefore predictable. Any  post with a blacklisted keyword does not appear publicly. The poster  can see it and you, the page admin  can see it, keeping the conversation on a 1-1 level  rather than a 1-many (herein lies the true brand value of letting  people vent on your Facebook Page – you control the community, whereas you don’t  control a third party forum.)
• Set your profanity filter to strong and add custom keywords to the blacklist. Proactively building a blacklist of keywords is better than the  reactive approach of deleting negative comments as they appear. Deleting after the fact always seems to attract media attention, especially in the case of the larger brands. This tactic makes the company seem less transparent and therefore less  trustworthy. It’s one think to moderate a community forum, but it’s quite another to censor it. If done correctly, your ‘negative keyword list’ will save you a tremendous amount of angst.

Test on a segment of the audience

• When making a post, it’s easy to customise the target audience. Use the geographical segmentation option to test new concepts on just  a small portion of the audience, rather than risking a disaster by blasting it out to everyone at once. Once you’re through with your trial run, you can change the audience for the post to ‘Public’ making it visible to everyone.

Go with your gut:

• Ask yourself: Is what i’m sharing going to contribute real value to anyone? Is it funny? Does it elicit excitement? Does it spawn a meaningful conversation? Is there financial value? Offer real value. Don’t waste your time or mine with empty questions.  There’s incentive for people to come up with some entertaining and engaging content that adds value to the community and ideally, the business also.

At the end of the day:

• There are always trolls looking to do everything  they can to tarnish your brand – good keyword filters will keep them in check, letting them feel like they are venting publicly, but it may be best to simply ban them from your page.
• Listen and react to people, like a person. Trying to take attention away from the key issues at hand (at the time we had a huge backlog of orders) can make it seem like we’re not listening (the perception being that we don’t care) when in truth, deciding what to say was the hard part – we didn’t want t make any empty promises.

The first thing to consider is: Are you dealing with an email marketing professional or a salesperson? I’ve sat down with the Asia Pacific director of one vendor who through the loudness of his voice tried to convince me that one of his competitors we were trialling was a bad decision. He went on to boast that his firm had recently taken a large client away from them, but then stopped short of actually giving me a name so I could do I reference check. I called bullshit.

What makes vendor selection especially tricky is when the provider you are planning on leaving makes 25th hour appeals citing the error of your ways, that the competitor your going to is worse.  To the untrained eye, the anecdotal evidence they provide along with their impassioned appeal to save their commission may cause you to sway your vote or at the very least, cause undue anxiety. And yet, like presidential candidates, they continue to make promises in their sales pitches and then proceed to constantly under-deliver (no pun intended.)

I’ve seen startups not 2 years out of their garage build sophisticated internal email marketing systems and at the same time, i’ve seen $200 million dollar organizations with archaic email systems that require new subscribers to be added manually each day.  What it comes down to is having the right people in your organization who can make informed and objective decisions. For any  eCommerce player, this means you need a team of smart people who understand how to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet. As obvious as that sounds, it is often neglected with people of zero relevant skill being allowed to make high-impact decisions. Think about it. Your email database is for all intents and purposes the life-blood of your online business. Try putting a dollar value on it and the cost of its mismanagement by your vendor, or by internal stakeholders. Unlike Warren Buffet won’t invest in anything he does not understand, business owners should be hiring people smarter than them – experts in their niche, to add value rather than Joe Bloggs to whom they can spread the workload.

When you’re picking a new email vendor, make sure you know what you want and that your prospective new partner ticks most of the boxes. Here’s a few points, in no particular order, to start you of:

• Does the UI offer productivity gains?  Can email marketers get their campaigns prepared faster?
• Does the infrastructure support your volume of email? And considering a)your rate of list growth b)your increase in mailing frequency, how long before an upgrade is required? And how much extra will this cost?
• What deliverability gains do you achieve over your current provider?  Do you see an increase in deliverability to key domains (hotmail, yahoo, gmail ?)
• How are Auto-Responders handled?  If someone is away from the office due to vacation or illness, newsletters are going to get repeated auto-responses which could trigger an unsubscribe. You can lose thousands of subscribers this way. How does the ESP handle these?
• Using dedicated IP addresses? How long will IP warming take?
• List hygiene?  Ever hear of hoodmail.com.au ? Neither have I.  This is one of several spoof addresses that tend to end up on easy-access (no double-opt-in) mailing lists. Does your ESP habitually screen the quality of new subscribers before they are added to mailing lists?
• When you want to make simple changes like update the messaging on your unsubscribe page, how long does it take and who needs to do it? Your people or the vendors?
• When you call, do they answer the phone? How long does it take for them to respond to voicemail?
• Does your issue get resolved within the day? Or within an acceptable timeframe?
• Data migration: getting it from the old into the new.Setup and ongoing support -Are you dealing with someone with the  technical know-how who can actually solve problems?
• Are you looking for a partner, or simply a delivery system?
• Where is their hardware located? Is it powerful enough to handle your  speed of placement requirements? (enough server CPUs? Big enough pipes?)
• Does analysis of your subscriber data show any anomalies like higher unsubscribes from a particular domain? Have you experienced large spikes in unsubscribes on any particular day? Do you know what triggered it? This could represent a substantial loss of subscribers through a domain rejection rather than actual unsubscribes.
• Last but not least, how much is it going to cost?  Email delivery fees will be pretty much on-par across the board, but the cost of professional services like coding, design, training and database analysis will vary. Plan your needs.

That list was just a few of the things one needs to work through to ensure a transition that goes as smoothly as possible. You’re ending one old relationship because you’ve found someone new and better. There will be some heart-ache, but it can be mitigated.

You can achieve this through:

1. Monitoring Share of Search (aka Share of voice.) Organic search traffic for industry keywords and brand keywords. (you.com vs. competitor.com etc.) – shows if you own the keywords in your industry and if your brand is becoming more or less of a force in the marketplace.
2. Traffic Differentials vs. competitors (specific to local markets) – shows impact of strategic decisions in context of competitors. Viewed together with Share of Search data described above, you could for instance, get a good idea of whether a competitor’s recent ad campaign was a success or not. I cover this more in point 6.
3. Facebook and Twitter mentions / chatter (talking about this) and follower growth. Looks at sentiment and comparative growth vs. competitors in a defined period. In the end, how many new email subscribers, registrations and sales you’re getting is what counts. Especially with sales, it’s important to measure with latency in order to avoid the temptation of discounting the value of social from just a week or two of data.
4. Google Alerts to monitor competitor activity on the wider web. This is a legacy system that should be in play already. With competition on the web getting tougher across all categories, it’s important to have the intel. on hand to be make both tactical and strategic changes.
5. Monitoring of specific community websites in country. Eg. Whirlpool in Australia is not well crawled by Google Alerts, so having a monitoring system here can be a useful early warning system. Ultimately Facebook and Twitter will serve as the litmus test for the most significant issues.
6. Understand Brand Recall through measuring user search intent: Ie. When people think of buying electric cars, are they thinking about you? We can understand what brands people associate with key industry search terms. For example: ‘buy electric car’, in the past 90 days. We could identify what brands/terms are searched for when looking for just about anything and also which search terms / brands have risen by the most significant amounts – This can be a gauge of eg: How well a competitors TV campaign or other recent marketing activity has performed. Try searching for ‘your brand name.’ on Google Insights. Do you own your brand online? Or is a competitor poaching it? Also, what keywords do people associate with your brand? Does this properly reflect who you are or who you want to be?
7. Understand customer propensity to recommend your site to others: A Netperformer survey after checkout offers a measure of consumer sentiment that should be looked at alongside LTV analyses (Active customers etc.)

I hope this information will help you implement a system that gives you a monthly competitive brand metrics report and help you make more data-driven, rather than assumption-driven decisions.

Android will flourish. Apple will flounder. 2012 will see mobile wallets go mainstream outside of Japan and South Korea and people take advantage of the impulse opportunities to shop local deals on their phones, while relishing in the eCommerce experience afforded by tablets. Web and mobile apps will help us share more, and we will also outsource more. In no particular order, here are some ideas to ponder for 2012:

1. Android continues to flourish. With better technical specs, ever sleeker designs and sharper price points,  Android phones and tablets are quickly dominate the landscape. Sad to say, but with Steve Jobs gone, Apple’s domination of the gadget world ends. Let’s face it, without Steve, Apple has proven in the past that they lose direction. Perhaps their board has learned something, but history has a way of repeating itself.
2. Mobile-wallets will be big, catering for monetary transactions (PayWave Google Nexus) and also the rest of the consumer journey – from discovery, to post-sale relationship building. local search, reviews, loyalty etc.
3. Daily Deal sites that are entrenched in their high commission and large sales force business models will struggle in light of the ease of replicability of the business model, and the not so greedy new market entrant who is able to appeal to more small businesses. Those who stumble with customer service will fade from existence, while those that focus whole heartedly on their core value proposition in a said niche will thrive.
4. Social Media continues to grow in influence as a new customer acquisition and retention channel. How to leverage the word-of-mouth opportunity becomes more science than play. More job openings for hybrid marketers/customer service personel (aka community managers) are on the horizon as budgets shift to digital channels and more so to new media.
5. Mobile-Friendly web-app sites become a priority, as entrenched web businesses play catch up, ahead of delving into iOS and Android application.
6. Crowdsourcing for everything from getting a website built to getting your homework done becomes so easy and widespread.
7. Sharing – everything from facilitating cram sessions for exams to hitching a ride to the mountain comes of age. The idea of Ownership makes way for Access. Zimride.com is one example. Also daily deal sites are making experiences like a day on a yacht, or a night out in a stretch limo, far more accessible.
8. Digital Consumption. eBooks, music, movies, software – It can all be downloaded directly to a tablet, which are getting cheaper every week. Yes some people still like the feel of the pages of a book between their fingers, but they are a growing minority. Embrace the digital economy. If you sell paperbacks, CDs and/or DVDs in exclusion, you need to get creative. Evolve if you wan’t to stay in the black.
9. Gamification: More and more game elements will encroach upon our daily lives. If it’s fun, people will use it, and it can be profitable. I’m using an amazing game-centric app to improve my Spanish right now. Another notable app turned a Transformers poster at a bus stop into an rpg. Amazing. These are great innovations that are fun for consumers and also add value to the businesses that provides them.
10. Data-Driven Commerce: With the ability to make sense of the mountains of data and the ability to take action on the insights, enterprises that see the potential will dedicate more resource towards mining, organizing, understanding and planning to use their data to optimise their process to squeeze out extra cash and properly time the rollout of innovations to take advantage of emerging trends.

So there you have it, some industry-shaping trends for 2012. Are you poised to capitalize?

Nothing is so permanent that it can never change.

The gospel of web usability is being rewritten. As the digital realm evolves to include a plethora of new media touchpoints, so too does the way we interact evolve. I’ve run marketing campaigns that break every so-called convention that was designed to convey trust, authority and relevance and build brand advocacy. Gone are the days of Web 1.0 and 2.0. The web is no longer in beta. The promise we imagined at it’s birth has come to fruition. Those of us that succeed, share one or both of these traits:

1. Ability to innovate – creativity and decisiveness
2. Ignorance - naiveté that enables child-like enthusiasm and tenacity towards anything new. There is no right or wrong.

So let’s play:

If your Facebook Page is an extension of your website, then it’s ok to push people to a custom confirmation page there.

Even if people don’t have a Facebook account, pages are public, so anything you put up will be visible to anyone. I’ve used this neat little trick to push people from competition entry forms on a website, to an ‘entry confirmed’ page on Facebook. I wouldn’t try this for an order confirmation, but in the playful context of an ‘Enter to Win’ competition, it works nicely as a cross-promotional tactic. Facebook is so mainstream, that even if people don’t want to use it, they recognize it. If they happen to not be an email subscriber, they might choose to connect with you on Facebook instead.

The digital playground continues to evolve at a remarkable rate. What is new today may be gone tomorrow, or it may be worth a billion in 12 months time. Here are some digital trends for 2012 to ponder.

How are you breaking web conventions?

According to Jeremiah Owyang(web-strategist.com) the six key areas of responsibility are:

1. How to align the web strategy to meet corporate objectives
2. Project Prioritisation
3. How to allocate digital resources
4. How to measure ROI
5. How to understand what customers think of our online consumer touch-points
6. How to leverage the latest technology and digital trends

Here’s my approach to each of these areas:

Aligning the Web Strategy With Corporate Objectives

Start by answering two fundamental questions: What are the business goals? And how can the web help to achieve these goals? We are looking for a vivid understanding of what the business wants to achieve, including specific Key Performance Measures, so we can start to build a web strategy framework.

Key success factor: Consideration of a global web presence and localisation requirements.

How to Measure ROI

Focus on actionable metrics that answer business problems. Apply the “So What?” Rule:  Ask “So What?” three times and build a measurement framework that includes only KPIs that pass the test. This is the first step towards the creation of a continuous improvement regime, where we use data to drive enhancements.

Example: “Research from company XYZ suggests that including peoples’ faces on our website is a trust factor that can boost sales. This is a tactic already used by competitors A, B and C.  Based on this my hypothesis is that including an image(s) of friendly faces will increase conversion on key pages/products.  I propose the following A/B tests…”

Tie KPIs to revenue and profit in a monthly dashboard. For example:

Furthermore, we want to benchmark our progress versus the competition – our share of voice, and how has this trended over time? Have our TV commercials had the impact we expected?

How To Allocate Resources

What forms of web marketing do we need to use to meet business objectives? With marketing budgets shifting towards digital, the online channel manager becomes a key driver in the success of the organisation.  A holistic understanding of digital marketing opportunities and their relationship to the organisation’s web properties is the key to success.

How do we select vendors? You’re looking for more than just technology – a solutions provider, one that meets business requirements today and in the future. They have a great organisational fit, are great communicators and their solution can be deployed easily. Their support team is second-to-none, the technology is frequently updated to meet evolving user needs, they demonstrate thought leadership in their niche and of course, the solution comes with a service level agreement.

How Do We Prioritize Our Projects?

Resources are in short supply, competitors are moving ahead with their initiatives, there are 101 ideas on the drawing board.  A project prioritisation framework is needed to systematically determine which ideas get the go-ahead and in what order. Every project will be subject to the scrutiny of an ROI model that describes the anticipated benefits, with a bias towards revenue and profitability.

Highest Impact: KPIs.  What is most likely to help us meet our targets?

Shortest Timeframe: How quickly can we pull this together?

Sustained Value: What’s the potential impact over the next 3,6,12 months?

Projects will be reviewed and those with higher anticipated ROI will be completed sooner, while eliminating those that are not worth doing. Project submissions must have sound reasoning and data to back them up. Any examples of international best practice and/or Data to back up the theory / trend?

Started with an idea, then get some data to back it up and offer a proposal, highlighting two or three things of value to the business that we can measure.

Example: Smartphone and Tablet uptake in the Asia Pacific is being fuelled by widespread adoption of iPhone, iPad and Android OS devices.  Of particular note is the penetration rate in our key markets of Australia,New Zealand and Japan.  There is a clear and present opportunity to capture the attention of this user segment and captialise on a growing technology trend. We propose the creation of native applications and advertising assets designed to enhance the brand experience for users on these devices.  - We can measure application downloads and resulting engagement levels, including any lift in sales.

Qualitative assessment enabling internal submission and voting of ideas can also form part of the process, using a solution like Bloomfire.

How to Understand What Our Customers Think About Our Website

Sales funnel analysis will help derive insights into what parts of your website are most useful. You can then form hypotheses that are the basis of conversion optimisation testing.

Qualitative User feedback should be solicited at various points of the purchase cycle. The approach taken could be email or a SAAS solution like Uservoice or GetSatisfaction. Over time, you will notice peaks in support of common issues and these typically take precedence in your project priority queue.

How Do We Leverage The Opportunities Of New Technology & Digital Trends?

The web strategist has an intricate understanding of the latest technology and digital trends, and how they can be leveraged to meet business goals. Crowdsourcing and Team Collaboration factors heavily in this area. The requirements are:

1. Keep up to date: With limited time, making use of Twitter lists and RSS feeds from a set of key publishers and thought leaders to keep abreast of developments is a key time-saving tactic.

2. Crowdsource: Solicit ideas from within the organisation.  Implement a solution like Bloomfire that enables internal communication and collaboration.  Experts can make themselves known throughout the organisation, while ideas gain evangelists that are eager to see them become real solutions.  Turning great ideas into reality can take time, especially culture shifting ones, but its important to seed the idea and continue to champion its merits passively and as the evidence mounts, buy-in is inevitable.

3.Innovating for your industry: What international best practice and solutions implemented in other industries can be applied to ours?  What current technology solutions can be tweaked to deliver value to our niche?  What digital trends should we take action on today or keep monitoring over the next couple of quarters to see if it is a real trend or just a fad? All of this is encompassed within the above-mentioned project prioritisation framework.

Building a picture of the Online Traveler’s Customer Journey from travel desire through to ticket booking and post-flight experience, is the first step towards maximising the value in your customer database with a segmentation strategy that enables delivery of personalized communications.

We are talking about gaining insights into customer behavior that will allow us to construct an optimized customer lifecycle messaging framework that increases both conversion and long-term retention.  This framework serves as a roadmap for the stakeholders in your organization that have a say in shaping the customer journey: From awareness building through to loyalty management.

source

The Online Traveler: Someone who uses digital channels to plan and book their travel and then share the experience with others.

This is a series of two posts.  In Part 1, I will segment each of the steps in the online traveler’s customer journey, present some real-life scenarios and present some thought provoking questions.

Then,in part II,  I will create a framework that identifies communication opportunities to improve the online traveler’s experience while adding value to the selected airline’s bottom line. I will cover awareness with inbound advertising, conversion with on-site messaging trigger messaging (as part of a lifecycle messaging plan), incorporating a broader discussion of behavioural messaging and how to use a Cohort Analysis to derive insights for an optimal lifetime customer relationship management plan.

PART 1: Understanding The Online Traveler’s Customer Journey

Stimulated interest to Travel and Destination Discovery: Search Engines ar Gateways, Social Networks are Decision Drivers.

SEO and SEM serve as a gateway: 64% of leisure travelers and 65% of business travelers use search engines to begin their travel planning - Google, September 2010

Social Media fuelled word of mouth is arguably the primary source of travel inspiration today, be it for a specific destination, or just seeding the idea of going somewhere new into someone’s mind.  As a traveler, a field report by friends and family is what usually stimulates interest in a destination or serves as a reminder that it’s time to get back on a plane – making me more receptive to travel promotions.

Social Networks are decision drivers: Facebook users who are referred to travel booking sites are far more likely to book travel than those who are referred via search engines like Google.

That’s the power of “wisdom of friends,” which was a key factor behind TripAdvisor’s new Trip Friend initiative. Trip Friends harnesses the concept of Facebook’s social graph to enable trip planners to get travel reviews and ask questions of trusted friends. – PhocusWright, 2010

At this stage, i’m visiting Kayak, Zuji, Expedia and Orbitz to get ideas and am also more likely to engage with marketing collateral through display, search, mobile and social media.  I know that some airlines opt-out of metasearch engines and I will always make a point to visit that airline’s website to check fares.  I use metasearch for research, but always book my flights on the airline’s website.  This is usually a little cheaper and it also let’s me manage the booking online with greater ease.  I am also interested in booking accommodation, things to do at the destination, airport transfers and transport options while I am there.

It’s not just about the destination.  It’s how you get there

Recommendations and reviews also form part of the selection process. The average travel planner will visit anything from 2 to 10 websites before a transaction proceeds. Skytrax reviews always form part of my research before trying a new airline.  Online peer reviews are seen as independent and believable sources of information, second only to recommendations from friends and family.  This raw and unbiased user-generated content can be the determining factor between securing a ticket sale now, rather than giving the prospect a reason to search for and consider other offers. Do you solicit feedback from customers after they fly?  Do you show reviews from people who have flown on your routes?  Why not?  Also consider how can you integrate Facebook Social Graph (Likes) into the sales funnel?

Airline / Flight Selection & Ticket Purchase

To turn a prospect into a customer, provide them with everything they need to complete the purchase – without having to leave your website.

source: Zagat 2010 US & International Airlines Survey

Choice Factors: When choosing a flight, respondents’ main considerations are: direct routes (65%), ticket price (55%), past experiences (50%), time of day (48%) and seat comfort/leg room (46%). If a meal is not offered on the flight, and most aren’t, 55% of surveyors opt to purchase food in the airport, while 18% bring food from home.

source: Zagat 2010 US & International Airlines Survey

Assurance that they are getting the best price (or at least within your class of airline.)  Highlight the unique features your airline offers on that particular route that sets you apart from competing airlines.  Display reviews and ratings.  Work with Skytracks if you need to.  They have a database of unbiased and route specific information that will help prospective buyers make a purchase decision without leaving your website.  Booking travel usually takes time.  It’s not uncommon for someone to spend hours, spread over several days, weeks or even months to make a purchase decision.  That’s a lot of time for them to weigh all of their options, across all airlines.

Consider this: It’s common for airlines to offer multiple fare options with additional ‘benefits’ to be had with the higher fares.

- A discounted fare, with no refunds.  Any date changes come at extortionary rates.

- A dearer fair, but refundable (less administration fees) and changes won’t cost a small fortune

- Flexible fares, tickets that cost even more, but are valid for 12 months – for those who are unsure of their exact travel plans.

But you’re not just paying for flexibility with your travel dates anymore.

Consider this: Would you pay an extra 10%  just to secure a ticket that counts towards your mileage and tier status vs. a cheaper promo fair that does not accumulate miles?  It’s a strong drawcard, especially for people who might be just an inch away from Silver status, or accumulating enough points for a business class upgrade.

Scenario: You book a ticket on the airline’s website, but realize you picked the wrong flight time.  Within minutes of your booking you speak with a call centre agent.  What are expectations?  To be able to change your flight time easily without being a charged a gazillion bucks right?  Kudos to Air New Zealand for making this happen for me.  So, even if your official policy states that the fare is non-refundable and that you have to charge a $100 change fee - don’t do it. Give up this short term revenue opportunity in favour of a long-lasting and potentially lucrative relationship.

Online Audience Segmentation: It’s easy enough to segment travelers by demographics or class of ticket purchased, but there is much more value in segmentation by behaviour.  For example, a booking is made for a travel party of 4 including 2 adults and 2 kids.  That is obviously a family trip.  The destination provides a clues as to wether it is a vacation, or if they are visiting family.  If they are going on vacation, there’s an opportunity to push ancillary revenue opportunities:  high margin accommodation, car rental, activities and insurance.  We will delve further into customer database segmentation in second part of this post.  For now, let’s look at some qualitative data:

I have a 78 year old uncle to whom travel metasearch and online travel agencies may as well not exist, whereas for me, they are where my flight search begins. Where we agree is pricing:  Transparency in the ticket price – what is displayed is what you actually pay, is a critical decision factor.  Websites that display additional fees after the initial search result instantly lose favour.

The family vacation: My 45 years old friend with a wife a 2 kids needs to get from Melbourne to South Africa.  What’s important ?  Convenience.  Get us from point A to B as quickly as possible.  ”We’re on a hard earned vacation, we don’t need to deal with flight delays, uncomfortable cabins, bad airplane food or seats with no video screens.  Budget airlines are pretty much a non-option for us.”

Other websites visited by business and leisure travelers in making their trip decisions:

- Airline website: 40% / 40%
- Hotel website: 36% / 36%
- Websites of the destination visiting: 32% / 40%
- Travel websites (eg TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, Rough Guide): 29% / 31%
- Online travel agency: 26% / 25%
- Website of a high street travel agent: 16% / 15%
- Car rental website: 14% / 11%
- Social networking website: 11% / 10%
source

Travelers are clearly interested in planning their accommodation, transportation, insurance and activities before arriving at their destination.  There is a clear opportunity to increase ancillary revenue through providing a remarkable planning and booking solution as part of the ticket sales process or even afterwards in the time leading up to departure.  Integrating these necessities into a customer lifecycle messaging plan could prove to be a key driver of high margin ancillary income.

At The Airport  - Taking Off

What about the travel experience – both at the airport and in-flight ? I hate waiting in check-in queues, so kudos to Star Alliance at Vienna International Airport, where there’s no shortage of self check-in kiosks and Austrian Airline assistants to hand-hold those who need it.

I arrive at Vienna airport and need to access my email in order to find my booking reference and use the self-checkin kiosk.  I log on to the free wireless internet and get what I need. – Wifi access is a big money maker for airports, but it’s also extremely inexpensive to provide.  I see an opportunity for an airline to offer free wi-fi at the regional hubs and also growth market airports in order to build goodwill.  I think the brand alignment works exceptionally well for airlines that offer inflight wi-fi and also budget airlines:  ”Free wifi – the lowest price we can give you.”

Scenario: You arrive at the airport late.  You miss your flight.  What does the airline do?  Put’s you on the next available flight at no extra cost.  Thanks Virgin America, you rock!  vs. AirAsia (who do not rock) because they made me cough up for another ticket.

Scenario: You arrive at the airport late.  The airline has already offloaded you.  You’ve got no check-in baggage and the e-boarding pass you printed just says you need to be at the gate 35 minutes before the flight.  However, you get to the airport, and security says you need to visit the airline counter and get the boarding pass ‘endorsed.’  Ok, so aside from negating the benefits of an e-boarding pass, I’m late for my flight, but fortunately the Emirates Airlines staff are good about it and after a phone call, they let me through.

On the Plane

source: Zagat 2010 US & International Airlines Survey

Scenario: There’s a long immigration line and Airport Customs give you a hard time at the airport.  How does this affect your choice of airline the next time you fly?

Does it not make sense for the airline to schedule their flight arrival at a time when passenger-load is lower? One could argue that this is purely an airport operational issue, (Melbourne,Tullamarine – need to get their act together for morning arrivals) and passenger volumes will rise to a point that forces a hand, but until then, airlines should realise the extend of the negative image that a passenger is left with. The result is flying with a different airline (even if just to arrive at the airport off-peak) or to fly into a neighboring airport (also means another airline.)

Sometimes you will find airport security or biosecurity staff placed outside of their normal checkpoints to pre-sreen a ‘random’ selection of passengers and then mark their customs declaration cards with special codes that get them a ticket to a lengthy interrogation and baggage inspection. Airport Customs personnel need more training into the nature of an air traveler’s journey.   The common factor is stress – from getting to the airport on time, to getting a decent seat on the plane.  Add in a jet-lagged traveler coming off an overnight flight and put him up against a cranky, newbie airport customs officer who hasn’t had her morning coffee = disaster waiting to happen.  We need to move passed by-the-book stereotypical ‘random’ inspections.

Scenario: An 8 hour flight from Singapore is approaching Melbourne on schedule, but the tower advises the flight to circle and wait for a runway to become available.  The flight eventually lands 25 minutes late.  People who have just spent 8 hours in small, uncomfortable economy class seats, with the cries of babies who can’t handle the air pressure changes does not want to spend a single minute more on the plane.

Scenario: Flying from South East Asia to Europe:  Cheapest flight in.  Because once you’re there, domestic routes are highly competitive and there’s a host of flights for you to choose from.

Post Trip Engagement:  ”We Hope You Enjoyed Your Flight”

Conclusions

With an ample selection of new opportunities, there is a need to develop a framework that enables a business to rapidly assess if a solution is right for them.

Through customer journey analysis you can derive insights that inform database segmentation and access the data that leads to the formation of hypotheses for A/B and multivariate testing, which in turn leads to optimal website usability and ROI.  The result is a system in that leads to constant incremental improvement.

It’s important to consider the customer journey in its entirety and recognise the fact that the experience a passenger has from discovery through to arriving at their destination reflects on the airline’s reputation, regardless of whether things like long immigration and customs lines are outside of their direct control.  Qantas can be commended on providing priority clearance passess to their business class passengers.

PART II: The Opportunity – Optimising The Profitability of the Online Traveler Sales Funnel

In the follow-up to this post, I will develop a strategic framework that will help identify and prioritise the value-add opportunities available throughout the customer journey.

Performing a cohort analysis, you can identify high-value segments and also glean insights from which you can design reengagement assets.  Through a robust testing framework, you can identify what combination of design, content and timing works best. This post presents a framework for your organisation’s lifecycle messaging plan.

The Effectiveness of Trigger and Behavioural Email Marketing

A lifecycle messaging plan requires an integrated approach across all of your digital touch-points:  Website, email, mobile, social and banners. As such, it requires working collaboratively with your retail, loyalty, rewards, and retention marketing teams to identify and implement new campaigns and programs via these 1:1 channels

Building a Lifecycle Messaging Plan begins with a cohort analysis that involves mining your database to understand optimal relevance and timing windows.  properly segment customers to deliver personalised and well-timed messaging. Examples of the value you gain includes:

Boost Conversion

• After a customer makes a purchase, how long should I wait before emailing them an incentive to make another purchase?
• After an order ship’s how long should I wait before emailing the customer to ask them to review their purchase?

Boost Retention

If a customer does not make a second purchase within 7 weeks of their original purchase, then there is an 80% chance that they will never buy from you again.  Knowing this, you can deliver re-engagement emails to the customer in the lead-up to this threshold with increasingly stronger incentives to make another purchase.

Remarketing: Emails

As part of your lifecycle messaging plan, it is important to include automated trigger emails.  For example, when someone adds an item to their shopping cart, but then abandons it before making payment, you have an opportunity to contact them to encourage them to complete the purchase and try to understand what happened.  This means offering time-sensitive, quantity-limited special offers.  One vendor suggests that you can recover 40% of abandoned online hotel bookings.  In another case, Alaska Airlines achieved these results with their remarketing

• Open rate was 81.5%, more than twice the already high average of 36%, while CTR topped 29.6%, three times better than the 8% average.
• The campaign converted at 12.3%, four times better than the 2.5% average.

Incentives aside, even just asking them if there was a problem with the website can be the tipping factor. This is also a great source of qualitative feedback. Remember that completion of the first purchase is just the start of your relationship. For example, after a flight, it would be great to know how the customer enjoyed the flight.  I know some airlines hand out surveys in-flight, but email offers a more efficient pathway that I think also gives you more honest feedback.

Remarketing: Banner Ads

In case you don’t have an email address, you can use remarketing over the Google Content Network to show ads to people who have previously visited your website and capture incremental conversions.

Calculating Lifetime Customer Value

LTV = Expected Life X ARPU X Gross Margin

Implementing Your Lifecycle Messaging Programme

• Take an integrated approach across all of your digital channels.  There is a need to work  collaboratively with your retail, loyalty, rewards, and retention marketing teams to identify, advocate, gain buy-in and implement new campaigns and programs.
• Map your customer journey from discovery through to checkout and then use a cohort analysis to properly understand it and identify opportunities to deliver relevant, well-designed and well-timed messages to your customers to ensure they become lifetime customers.  Performable may come in handy.
• Ensure that the vendor meets your needs.  You may find that the best solution is one that you develop in-house, but if you don’t have the software engineers available, then you might find that the basic list segmentation and scheduling features offered by iContact are sufficient, but then again, the remarketing system offered by Cheetahmail may be your cup of tea  There’s always Mailchimp that is also easily integrated into a plethora of third party applications, one of which may give you the added functionality that you need. Also consider RevenueExpect which integrates with some of the popular shopping carts.  Redeye looks like a pretty powerful and comprehensive solution.

Questions to Include in Your /Remarketing/Behavioural Messaging Vendor Selection Checklist

We are in the midst of the alternative energy revolution and the rise of green consumerism.  From reusable supermarket bags to  to carbon-offset schemes for air travelers, companies are responding to consumer demand for green and environmentally sound alternatives.  Let’s take a look at Energy Supply, Cars, Airlines and Coffee.

Green Energy

If your electricity supplier offered you a home power-plant that ran on solar energy and generated enough electricity for your home and a little extra that you get paid for feeding back into the grid – Would you take it?  This is already an option but with high setup costs, this remains out of main stream consumption.  As a step in the right direction, power companies offer green energy plans where you can pay a small premium to ensure that some or all of your power supply comes only from renewable sources. You can switch suppliers and setup your account online.

Car Sharing

The average car is parked more than 90% of the time, indicating a terrible waste of our personal resources to buy and maintain such an underutilized capital investment. Car sharing, usually with hybrid electric vehicles, pioneered on a grand scale by ZipCar, has been replicated around the world.  As a testament to the business model’s success, household name rental car company Hertz is getting in on the act:

Traditionally in the U.S, a mark of adulthood is owning a car. Those habits are changing in some places, especially cities and college campuses for some good reasons. They’re not just environmental but personal financial reasons. = Hertz head of communications, Rich Broome.

For those that still prefer to own their own car, there are new all-electric models being rolled of the factory floor daily, while hybrid options still exist for those that need some assurance of old-faithful gasoline.

Coffee

• Fairtrade: A social good initiative, so we stop drinking what some call “the tears of columbian farmers”
• Organic: Pesticide free and naturally grown coffee beans that are better for us.
• Recyclable coffee cup lids:  Plastic lids go to landfill and take 1,000,000 years to decompose! Alternatives exist.
• Free coffee grounds:  Some stores make their used coffee grounds available for free to be used as fertiliser.
• Bring your own mug:  Save a cup, a lid and get a discount on your coffee.

Airlines

source:  World Travel Market Industry Report

Zagat Survey:  If particular airlines introduced measures to become more “green”  or eco-friendly, would you be…?

source

While it’s an emerging niche, there’s a clear disconnect here between general consumer preference for green travel vs. industry insider expectations of a surge in environmentally aware holidays. The decline in green preference since 2008 suggests people are feeling the financial pinch.

Many airlines offer me the opportunity to fly “Carbon Neutral.”  It seems that if I pay them a little extra, then I am off-setting my portion of carbon emitted during the flight.  Here’s why I’ve never done it:

1. I have just paid hundreds if not thousands of my hard earned money to purchase a ticket and I am not feeling like shelling out anymore at this stage.
2. How does it work? Without an understanding of carbon credits, all this fly carbon-neutral stuff sounds like mumbo-jumbo.  If my donation were tied to a specific outcome, my arm might be twisted.

Here’s how to make it work:

• Why not award more miles to travelers who choose to take up the carbon-offset option?  Or perhaps introduce another tier of miles: Green Miles that open the door to some exclusives.
• Furthermore, the carbon-offset option could be more than an after-thought and instead become a part of the pricing structure. airlines already offer multiple price points for the same seat on a flight, so I propose a “Green Seat” as well.
• Identify a specific green initiative that will benefit the environment as a result of my contribution.  How many trees will be planted and where?  What coral reefs will be preserved? For example, Virgin Blue’s statement is not specific or relevant enough:

• 4419 kgs sounds like a lot, but it is out of context. They should be specific about something they are doing.
• Furthermore, a less fictious sounding name would help: “Department of Climate Change Approved Greenhouse Friendly Abatement Projects?”
• KIVA.com knows how to attract the socially conscious dollar and airlines could take a page out of their marketing playbook if they want to see better uptake of their carbon-offset programs.  They share real stories and show you pictures of specific people and projects you can help.

Conclusion

Delivering socially and environmentally aware products and services is in demand defining factor in the success of all organisations this decade.  Like Apple fans, there’s a cult following of consumers out there just waiting for you to give them the choices they are looking for and they are willing to pay a premium for them.  However, in the long-term, socially aware products and services will become commodities as consumers expect nothing less from the businesses to which they give their patronage. Greenmode.com.au presents an action plan:

 

1. Viewing Compliance as an opportunity
2. Making Value Chains Sustainable
3. Designing Sustainable Products and Services
4. Developing New Business Models
5. Creating Next Practice Platforms