In our latest User Engagement report, we recently shared our findings from a three-week study of travel marketing campaigns. We explored the email and mobile outreach of the 30 biggest names in travel to see whose messaging best paved the road to engagement—if you haven’t yet read it, we highly recommend doing so!
We observed stark differences in how these travel industry leaders pursue their marketing approaches, goals, and tactics in real-time.
We also found interesting contrasts and similarities between:
- Using welcome messaging to activate initial engagement
- Personalizing outreach with content geared toward conversion
- Mobilizing message types across different communication channels
- Recognizing opportunities to convert missed bookings
- And so much more!
We’ve selected some of the most interesting findings from our repor—check out the infographic below that shines a light on the current state of travel marketing campaigns.
Top Takeaways of Travel Marketing Campaigns
As you can see, there’s no “industry-standard” approach to how travel marketers are engaging their customers. Looking across the customer lifecycle, the differences between many of these companies were clear.
At the start of a customer relationship, most companies are welcoming of their newest user—but the extent of that welcome varies; some companies used receipt-like plaintext transactional messages while others use multi-touch, HTML-rich series.
As the relationship grows, some industries message much heavier than others. While some are careful to personalize with great levels of detail, others appeared happy with inbox presence alone.
Mobile is a preferred channel of consumers and a must-have item inside the most travelers’ bag, yet most travel companies flat out fail to take advantage of this communication channel!
And perhaps most surprising of all, travel companies aren’t heavily investing in converting their near-purchases. In a world where reservations and fluctuating inventories make or break businesses, proactively pursuing abandoned carts is a must.
You’ll get the full breakdown of these findings inside our full report. Inside it, we’ve highlighted our most telling findings and shared a variety of emails and mobile messages to demonstrate which marketing examples we liked most.
If you’re especially interested in any of the industries studied, make sure you peruse our findings from our complementary User Engagement Teardowns!
Customer engagement is a constant moving target. Applying the lessons learned from some of the biggest names in travel to your own programs can help you reach your organization’s marketing goals.