WhatsApp? I am on the plane!!

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Daniela Gallimberti

Within the airline industry, Digital Marketing plays a key role to engage customers, deliver value and save cost. In the recent years many airlines caught up with the new digital marketing trends to expand their channels of communication. Social media is becoming a marketing machine and airlines have taken advantage of this. Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways and Emirates have benefited from social networks like Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.

As if this were not enough, Airlines are willing to go further than this. WhatsApp is one of the leading online communication apps with more than 700 million active users and it could provide an ideal platform to communicate directly with passengers before and during their day of travel.

According to Hayden (2014) mobile messaging is one of the most effective ways to reach customers as is the most direct channel to reach customers, while also being the most immediately received and seen by everyone to whom a message was sent. This is the reason of why Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19 billion. Because the app service allow users to send mobile messages anywhere globally without SMS fees. Hayden also emphasized the ease and cost of most mobile tactics and explained that these tactics require low initial investment and lacks the development and management burdens associated with common technologies.

The Dutch LCC Trasavia airline has identified these benefits and has decided to use its resources to give it a try. Last year, the airline announced a experimental run in the use of the instant messaging service WhatsApp for customer service communication with select members of the airline’s Flying Blue programme.

Customers could ask questions via the messaging app, such as making inquiries about an existing booking, how to check in online or hand luggage rules. It aims to respond to questions within an hour and the airline can be reached via Whatsapp 7 days a week between 8am and 10pm.

Says Roy Scheerder, commercial director at Transavia, “We want everyone to make it as easy as possible to get in touch with Transavia. We see WhatsApp as nice addition to the already existing possibilities such as Facebook and Twitter.” […] “Because of the accessibility of WhatsApp customers expect an even quicker reaction than via Twitter and Facebook.”

This seems a very possible to be put in practise on mainland but, is it possible to be implemented in-flight?.

More and more airlines offer WIFI service to their passengers. However, not every flight has the access as about only a 24% of international flights give some chance of wifi connectivity. This could be a temporary barrier .In July 2013, Routehappy did a comprehensive inflight Wi-Fi research. In the year and a half since, it was found that globally Wi-Fi hotspots have increased 271% since the beginning of 2013.

Another barrier is the cost offering WiFi to passengers that they might not be willing to pay. According to analysts, inflight WiFi is costly because airlines see it more as a revenue generator than a perk for passengers. However, two budget airlines, Norwegian and JetBlue, are two of the few who offer free wifi for every passenger on board. By offering in-flight free wifi, the airlines can benefit differentiating themselves and win business away and win market share based on the passenger experience. As the new trend is showing the world “what is going on right now” through our social networkings, airlines could take this as an advantage and benefit from free advertising. Passengers could share in real time post a selfie from their seats, or Instagram their flight meal.

Considering all these digital marketing benefits, airlines should consider to offer free WI-FI inflight. WhatsApp works through internet connection and airlines not offering WI-FI in flight will not benefit from this. Furthermore, just a small segment of travellers is willing to pay for WI-FI inflight service, meaning that even if the airlines offer WIFI service they will not be able take a full advantage of WhatsApp benefits unless this is for free.

Hayden, Tim. The Mobile Commerce Revolution. Print.

Why is Sabre® Media a Digital Marketing tool that should be considered by Airlines

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Daniela Gallimberti

Sabre® Media includes digital advertising products that airlines can use to capture the attention of each potential consumers.

Travelers do not make decisions based on just one channel; they integrate mobile, social loyalty into their lives all the time. Thus, airlines should create a digital marketing strategy based on loyalty, social media, email marketing and mobile.

Chaffey (2012) discussed that well-known online companies such as EasyJet, mainly focus on B2C but however, B2B communications are still important since B2C service may need to be sustained through advertising provided through B2B transactions. For example, EasJet products appeal to both consumers and businesses like travel agents. Because of this, airlines should consider channels not only for the promotion of B2C but also for B2B campaigns.

Loyalty Programs for B2B

Loyalty and rewards programs are some of the most popular tactics that airlines use to differentiate themselves within the industry and they also leverage these programs as a competitive advantage by positioning their brands.

Many airlines and players within the travel industry already include loyalty programs into their consumer marketing strategies helping airlines to increase or retain customers without impacting pricing. But what about B2B markets? loyalty programs can make a big difference in their marketing strategy, too.

Travel agents are a good starting point as they purchase several flights per day. Using loyalty programs between travel agents and airlines can create loyal customers not only in the travel agents themselves but in the customers they serve.

Complementing airlines marketing strategy, Sabre offers the Sabre Rewards Plus, an extremely popular travel agent loyalty program that enable airlines to reward agent points for booking on their flights.

Social media for B2B

Another method that airlines are using to create loyalty is through social media, in which frequent flyers have the opportunity to earn loyalty points by checking in or by posting messages to the airline‘s Facebook or Twitter pages. KLM is a sucesfull airline at executing their social media marketing plan, and their strategies plas a key role in their marketing and customer engagement.

The use of social media channels has become of the most popular methods for airlines to engage consumers through promotions, respond to their concerns and measure levels of satisfaction. Airlines should engage travelers through the different social media channels available, and they should also consider B2B social media channels.

Sabre Media enable airlines to engage with travel agents. Agent Connect shares and supports community for Sabre® Connected™ travel agents. Travel Agents can use Agent Connec to collaborate and share knowledge with peers around the world. This gives airlines an opportunity to manage their brand position with agents and interact with questions, offers and solicit feedback.

Email Marketing

Even though email a new channel, open rates and volume continues to increase, making it important for airlines to integrate their email marketing messages across all channels and incorporate them in both B2C and B2B campaigns.

Sabre offers an expert team of content writing specialists, designers and marketing strategists can develop the right message and get it to the right people giving companies a higher return on investment. Working with Sabre’s email marketing services will ensure that airlines email marketing campaigns are not only effective, but also memorable.

Mobile Solutions for B2C

Airlines can connect with travelers anytime, anywhere by using mobile solutions. This allows them to deliver valuable messages and essential travel documents to travelers. Staying in contact with travelers is essential to communicate any unforeseen change or cancellation. This help to reduce stresses that passengers may have throughout their travel journey.

TripCase™, part of the SabreSonic® Customer Sales & Service solution, offers travelers the chance to travel with confidence al less stress. This is done by providing them with the freedom to manage their own itinerary, the power to stay connected with their latest trip details, and the control to create new bookings within corporate policy.

Chaffey, Dave, Fiona Ellis-Chadwick, and Dave Chaffey. Digital Marketing. Harlow: Pearson, 2012. Print.

How legacy airlines are using digital innovation to engage customers and improve they experience.

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Daniela Gallimberti

Low-cost airlines retain a lead when it comes to online engagement but do not necessarily have everything their own way. Legacy Airlines are constantly developing strategies to enhance customer experiences through digital marketing approaches in order to generate customer engagement.

Building long-term relationships with customers is essential for any sustainable business and this applies equally to online elements of a business. Customer Relationship Management is a marketing-led approach to building and long term business with customers. (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). Having more control over customer relationship allow airlines to increase their capacity to proactively monitor and plan how efficient they are with aspects such as routes, timetable, seat allocation, refreshments and cancellations during the flight.

Airlines such as Delta airlines has started using the Guest Service Tool, which provides its 22,000 flight attendants with key information so they can better engage with customers while in flight. Similar to this, British Airways and Iberia or its competitor Lufthansa have started incorporating ‘Head of Innovation and Technology’ roles and digital labs into the organisation in order to come up with ways to better engage with the customer.

The following points are some of the ways that legacy carriers are using to engage customers and differentiate from low-cost airlines.

#1 Boarding Wearables

In order to enhance a great customer experience, Legacy carriers should focus on every stage of the journey process, involving when passengers book the ticket, check-in, drop bags, board the plane, travel and arrive to destination. One of the innovations playing an important role in defining the airport experience is wearable technologies. Virgin Atlantic led the way being the first airline with a trial of its kind in London Heathrow’s Upper Class Wing, and has since announced that it will productionise Google Glass.

Smartwatches Bording passes are being offered by of Vueling, Iberia and AirBerlin and Copenhagen Airport has undertaken a passenger-facing trial of Google Glass, Furthermore, Japan Airlines has equipped select members of staff with smartwatches as part of an ongoing trial.

#2 Retail – Apps integrating NFC

Air New Zealand has taken advantage of today’s ‘coffee culture’ and has been featuring barista’s who make freshly brewed coffee to passenger’s preferences in its ‘Koru’ lounges for some time. Customers can order their favourite coffee by ticking a few boxes on a piece of paper, add their name and hand it over.However, this initiative has been taken to digital levels improving the flyers experiences.

In a clever move, passengers now can order Barista-made coffee via ANZ’s tablet or smartphone app the minute they walk into one of the airline’s Koru Clubs around New Zealand, including its international lounge at Auckland Airport.

#3 Innovative Content Campaigns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsMZRl71Zo4

Virgin America excelling itself in the world of social video, and launched a gigantic multichannel, world-building content campaign that is as hilarious as it is inventive. The campaign is a six-hour video in which “BLAH Airlines” illustrates a satire of how awful air travel can be. The message behind this ad is that BLAH Airlines is the antithesis of Virgin America, and that life is far too short to be wasting your time flying with any other airline. Furthermore, Virgin take the ad further by creating a website for BLAH Airlines that not only takes ages to load but is also non-responsive, mobile unfriendly, difficult to read. Responses from audience has been positive and also a blog post about the 18 reasons to love Virgin’s BLAH Airlines content marketing campaign has been written.

#4 Email Marketing Innovation

Email is the 21st century evolution of traditional direct marketing. It’s almost free and gets delivered almost instantaneously (they don’t call conventional mail snail mail for nothing). It retains the strengths of a push medium, while adding the potential for automated response loops and tracking via digital channels. (Ryan, n.d.)

Email Marketing is a digital marketing strategy frequently used by Airlines in which the messages which are sent often contains broad content and do not provide personalised experience that today’s customers expect, especially for first-class travellers. However, as that every traveler experiences elements of travel differently, Delta Airlines found the way to take its SkyMiles frequent flier emails to new heights by using data to deliver segmented, relevant messages. Together with its agency DigitasLBi and marketing technology provider Experian Marketing Services, in May 2015, Delta launched a Flight Cycle Program sends targeted, triggered emails during the four key stages of their travel experience: plan, prep, fly, and home. As result customer engagement has increased. Along with cutting back on email clutter, the Flight Cycle emails produced open rates of 60% (doubling Delta’s 30% benchmark) and a 17.4% click-through rate—up from 4%.

Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012). Digital marketing. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Ryan, D. (n.d.). Understanding digital marketing.

How Airlines interact with their customers through Digital Marketing.

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Daniela Gallimberti

In order to satisfy consumer needs and improve interactions with customers, digital marketing has become highly important for the airline industry. Digital marketing is applied from, the moment the customer is searching for places to go on holidays, booking on a mobile phone or computer, to the moment they are boarding using the app of the company as boarding pass on their mobile or even Google Glass.

There are several digital marketing strategies applied by the airlines. One very frequently used is email marketing. Ryan and Jones (2009) highlighted the importance of customer relationships management when using email marketing strategies. According to them, by using CRM technologies, companies can segment target lists, allowing them to focus highly targeted campaigns to the customers most likely to respond. The company can fine-tune its email offerings and align it with its customers purchase history. In the case of the airlines industry, for example, American Airlines uses triggered-email strategy to remind consumers that had add a booking to the cart but haven’t purchased the ticket yet. In this email American Airlines provides the lower prices and the best offers compared to the option abandoned in the cart.

Experian has searched some interesting facts about email marketing in the airlines, for example, the winter email campaigns generates the most clicks due that the people want to spend holidays in warmer destinations. Another fact is that Airline loyalty mailings have high customer engagement with a 72 percent lift in unique click rates for loyalty mailings compared to non-loyalty mailings.

Nowadays the presence of any company in the social media is an essential channel to deliver promotion, information and to interact with consumer. In the airlines industry there is a new trend called “Social Seating” . Airlines are increasingly allowing passengers who opt-in to share their social media profiles and use others’ to pick their seatmates.
A company launching a successful digital campaign that had over 1m YouTube hits was British Airways with its cross-channel campaign, Magic of Flying, that connected with consumers through an interactive billboard campaign. The key to the campaign’s success was its call to action – the hashtag – which encouraged people to go to its #lookup branded site.

Another way in which airlines enrich interaction with consumers is through online booking and check-in. This not only improve the customer experience but its also provide the company with wide customer data that can be use for future marketing campaigns such as mailing.

However, many companies have been criticized because of use of passengers data. For example, Delta Airlines mentioned this subject and received negative responses. When customers found that their personal information was programmed onto Delta’s website, they were less than pleased.

The goal for airlines, however, is to deliver a better experience. Imagine the flight attendants with tablet computers researching the people on the flight. Some is beneficial- allergies, preferences, and nationality may affect the food they serve to each flier.

Some high cost airlines are offering new technologies to interact with their customers. Virgin Atlantic for example, was the first airline offering air travellers to experience the benefits Google Glass technology as they arrive at London Heathrow airport, in an innovative pilot scheme that started in 2016. Concierge staff in the airline’s Upper Class Wing will be using Google Glass and other wearable technology to deliver the industry’s most high tech and personalised customer service yet.

American Airlines has also implemented WIFI on board in order to keep interacting with their customers when they are on board and also keep satisfying passenger needs. For only $19, American Airlines passengers can enjoy of this service all flight length.

References:

Experian, (2014). Email Marketing Trends. [online] Available at: https://www.experian.com/assets/marketing-services/white-papers/ccm-travel-industry-email-marketing-trends.pdf [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016].

OnSpot Social, (2014). Airlines Turn Digital Marketing into Data Collection. [online] Available at: http://onspotsocial.com/digital-marketing-turns-data-collection-major-airlines/ [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016].

Ryan, D. and Jones, C. (2009). Understanding digital marketing. London: Kogan Page.

Smart Insights, (2015). Digital Marketing in the Airline industry. [online] Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/b2b-digital-marketing/b2b-strategy/digital-marketing-in-the-airline-industry/ [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016].

the Guardian, (2014). Five brands leading the way in omni-channel marketing. [online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2014/nov/28/omni-channel-marketing-john-lewis-british-airways [Accessed 1 Feb. 2016].

Forever 21: Permission-based e-mail

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Daniela Gallimberti

Nowadays, permission-based e-mails is an increasing and important medium of marketing communications that enables companies to establish and build closer relationships with customers. E-mail marketing campaigns include benefits for the company such as low cost distribution of promotional messages, targeted distribution of promotions (discounts, coupons, events invitations and so on). Furthermore, e-mail marketing is a affordable form of marketing used by small and medium-sized businesses. According to Pavlov, Melville, and Plice (2008), e-mail marketing campaigns produce approximately twice the return on investment of the other main forms of online marketing such as Web banners and online directory adverts. Another advantage is that e-mail marketing is highly targeted and focused. Marketers can customise and personalise each email message.

Beside all these benefits for the company, on the other hand, there have been widespread consumer complaints about unsolicited e-mails (known as “spam”). Now, in most cases, the recipient provides explicit consent to receive direct e-mails and, in some countries, this is a legal requirement (Worthy and Graham, 2002). The most significant encouragement for users to “opt in” to a firm’s e- mailing list is the opportunity to receive information that matches their interests as receivers are more likely to open and read such messages. (Grunert, 1996; Gengler and Thomas, 1995).

There are different types of emails marketing that a company should consider such as Conversion / life cycle, E-newsletter, House-list campaign and Event triggered. A critical examination of one of these type of email is detailed next.

As an example I took the emails that Forever 21 sends me periodically. These emails can be classified as part of a House-in campaign, where Forever 21 have obtained my email address and is sending me promotional campaigns of launch of products or special offers. However in the case of this particular email (#HolidaysReady) it can be said that is a Event Trigger strategy.

Personally I would not open any of Forever 21 emails because I do not find them relevant, I might open it if I feel in the mood to do it, but there is something that i find annoying and is the frequency of which I am receiving these emails and this is one of the reasons of why I lost interested in opening them, it is just too invasive. However, I did not cancel the subscription, I just ignore them. Besides my personal case, the design of the illustrations are very attractive, the brand logo position is prominent, hyperlinks are well identified and message content is aligned with its subject and headline. No personalisation has been identified. The calls-to-action is also attractive, obvious and easy to find to access the landing page. The use of images reflects the purpose of the campaign by showing some clothing outfits included in the promotion.

It can be said that Forever 21 campaigns can work for people who is loyal to this brand or is looking for some seasonal offers, but I don not think they work for general customers, especially because of the frequency of the emails which I found them very invasive an as result unattractive. The subject of the email could also be more precise, direct and engaging.

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 15.07.32

The Landing page looks like a extended version of the messagel but offering more features, discounts, and options. Also the theme used (Christmas) is more related to the promotional seasonal campaign.

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 15.10.12

To conclude,in my opinion, Forever 21 should implement a deeper tracking of customers response to their campaigns in order to check who are responding positively and who are not and reduce the frequency of emails.

Argos, Leading a high street revolution. (case of study)

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Daniela Gallimberti

Argos, the UKs leading digital retailer serves around 123 million customers a year through its network of 758 stores. Being a aware of the importance of the digital age, Argos has as goal to transform the traditional in-store experience by opening more online stores. The challenge faced by Argos is to take into account every customer feedback and opinions of digital stores shared in different social media channels but with stores across the length of the UK and an estimated 123 million customers a year, managing, dissecting and digesting the volume of response would be a challenge. To accomplish this, Argos is using a social listening platform called Brandwatch Analytics helping it to understand consumers reactions and feelings front of the new concept stores. Brandwatch gathers millions of online conversations every day providing users the tools to analyse them empowering brands to make smarter, data-driving business decision. Using Brandwatch Argos is able to segment social data by creating categories for each store including some criteria such as location data, names of the shops and streets. Argos can also set up Rules to segment the data even more, filtering data into pre-set categories and helping Argos to identify the performance of all the stores by feedbacks filtered in social networkings like Twitter. Argos can also identify who was talking and where the social conversation originated by using demographics and location functionality helping it to identify consumer behaviour. By knowing customers sentiment and feedbacks Argos can give a response and make changes fasters by using this real-time information on customer satisfaction. Argos has exploit social analytics to its advantage, helping prove with supporting data, that its new digital concepts stores deliver the exact experience that its customers want.

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Posted on October 15, 2015 by Daniela Gallimberti

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