Marketing automation guide

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to the use of software tools and technologies to streamline, automate, and analyse marketing tasks and processes. The primary goal of marketing automation is to make marketing efforts more efficient, personalised, and effective. It allows businesses to reach their target audience in a more timely and relevant manner, nurturing leads and guiding them through the customer journey.

Why does marketing automation matter in travel, attractions & hospitality?

Marketing automation is a game-changer in the travel, attractions, and hospitality sectors, where complexity and competition are part of the daily routine. It’s like having an experienced helper at your side who takes care of reaching out to potential guests, managing reservations, and creating customised content. It streamlines tasks such as email campaigns and offers personalised suggestions while responding to customer questions.

By using data and segmentation, marketers can offer tailored deals that enhance the customer experience. Plus, data analysis helps them keep up with changing trends and shifting customer preferences, ensuring they stay at the top of their game in this fast-evolving market.

Benefits of marketing automation

Improved customer targeting

Improved customer targeting allows businesses to segment their audience based on factors such as demographics, behaviour, and past interactions. By delivering highly personalised content and offers to specific customer segments, businesses can enhance the relevance of their marketing efforts, resulting in higher engagement, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, increased bookings and revenue.

Enhanced personalisation

Streamlined email marketing

Efficient social media management

Effective lead nurturing

Challenges in implementing marketing automation

Marketing automation for a travel booker life cycle

Awareness and acquisition

Marketing automation plays a crucial role in enhancing the awareness and acquisition stages of a travel booker’s lifecycle in several ways. Social media channels are great here – and make sure that your website offers accessible, informative and actionable content.

By leveraging marketing automation in the awareness and acquisition stages, travel businesses can effectively guide potential bookers through the customer journey, provide a seamless and personalised experience, and ultimately increase the chances of converting them into paying customers.

Engagement

Customers can be anxious when it comes to travel – often they are spending a lot of money. The travel, attractions and hospitality industries are also packed full of competition, all pushing for attention, so it’s important to keep your audiences engaged to keep them interested in their journey with your brand.

This is where marketing automation comes in! It is key to engagement, allowing marketers to deliver highly targeted, cross-channel, personalised communications.

Monetisation and upselling

Retention and re-engagement

Marketing automation best practices

Understand your audience

First off, you shouldn’t start your campaigns without understanding your audience, so let’s start there.

Make good use of segmentation

Dividing your audience into meaningful segments based on demographics, behaviour, and preferences allows for more personalised communication.

Set clear goals

With any campaign, you need to have goals – which need to be clear, concise and communicable. Setting SMART targets is always a good way to go here.

Select the right automation software

You can’t achieve your goals if your automation software can’t give you exactly what you need, so make sure to choose the right tool for your needs.

Create relevant, engaging content

Content remains king (or queen), so make sure that the content you create is relevant, of great quality and engaging.

Nurture your leads

Marketing automation software allows you to develop automated workflows that nurture leads over time. By gradually introducing prospects to what you offer, you’ll be able to build trust and encourage repurchase.

Timing matters

Send messages at the right time really does have an impact! Schedule emails to coincide with your audience’s activity patterns for maximum impact.

Personalise

Creating highly personalised content will improve the relevancy of your communications, ensuring that your audience feels valued.

Have a multi-channel approach

Combine email with other channels like social media and retargeting ads to reach customers in multiple places.

Integrate

Connect your marketing automation platform with your CRM and booking systems for a seamless flow of data.

Implement Drip Campaigns

Personalised drip campaigns turn visitors into buyers, increasing sales, and can also help with increasing repeat purchases and re-engaging audiences post-purchase.

Measure and Analyse Results

To gauge the success of campaigns and to constantly learn (so we can improve), measurement and analysis of results are key!

Compliance

Be aware of data protection and privacy regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, and ensure your practices comply with them.

Train your team

Ensure your team is well-versed in using the automation tools to maximise their capabilities.

Clean your data

Regularly clean and update your contact database to ensure accuracy and relevance.

There can be a lot to learn when it comes to marketing automation, however, it’s clear to see that when you use the right tools, and create the right content for the right audiences, at the right time, your team – and business – can reap the rewards again and again!

In summary

In summary

For marketers in the travel industry, marketing automation opens up a wealth of opportunities. From driving new purchases and keeping customers engaged, to thorough reporting and ongoing campaign optimisation.

At Deployteq, we have worked with a range of travel brands to transform their results with marketing automation, and we’re confident we can help you too.

So, why not get in touch with our friendly team of experts to learn more?