By EyeforTravel.com Correspondent<br><br>EyeforTravel.com got viewpoint of Brad Corrodi, SVP, Rosetta Marketing Strategy
Published: 16 Nov 2005
By EyeforTravel.com Correspondent
EyeforTravel.com got viewpoint of Brad Corrodi, SVP, Rosetta Marketing Strategy, and Tim Walters, director international marketing and strategy, FatWire Software, the two speakers during the recently concluded Trav
Excerpts:
How do you think new technology in user profiling and CRM provide travel marketers with greater control and more targeted campaigns?
Brad Corrodi: In my view there is an over-reliance on technology in this area. Of course consumers are reluctant to give you profile information - the travel industry has a bad reputation for having mis-used profile information before. There tend to be two answers to this problem - use technology to sniff-out ever more of the 'information trail' that consumers passively/inadvertently leave behind (the on-line version of dumpster-diving) - or do the hard work to figure out what specific bits of consumer information would really be most valuable in helping you to serve the consumer better, communicating that, and delivering against it. The first approach leads to a downward spiral - people get ever more offended at what you have inferred about them without their explicit permission and resolve to share even less information, forcing the 'miners' to dig ever deeper in the dumpster. The second approach can yield a positive spiral, where people are actually willing to share more information with a company that is demonstrably using it to their benefit in ways that they understand. You don't hear complaints from people that Nordstrom's is a bad company for remembering what you bought there before and dropping you a note when they have some new stock from your favorite designers.
So technology is no substitute for real consumer insight. Having said that, the technology is very useful in enabling a supplier/retailer to manage the inherent complexity of the travel category and find the right product, message and offer that will resonate against a particular consumer's "Travel Personality". The tragedy is that many travel companies are spending a fortune to try and develop systems that can in theory find any product in any combination and somehow price it in a way that is going to be perceived as 'value added' by the consumer - without having understood the very sharp differences in attitudes and beliefs that consumers bring to the process. So while they are developing capabilities that could be useful, they will not see the return unless they know who they should be targeting with what, and what sort of merchandising is going to resonate with that specific consumer - and no sniffing of the consumers "behavioural information trail" is going to give that to you with enough precision and accuracy to drive sales.
Is technology no substitute for real consumer insight. How do you think new technology in user profiling and CRM provide travel marketers with greater control and more targeted campaigns?
Tim Walters: I absolutely endorse this assertion. It's just about impossible to emphasise the importance of the research and planning stage for any customer-facing initiative. But then, since were talking about the web, one must also admit that all the consumer insight in the world is useless unless you have a way of transforming it into an engaging and effective online experience.
For travel companies aiming to create persuasive sites that have higher conversion ratios, it's essential to invest in user-centric design, persona analysis, attitudinal segmentation, or the profiling produced by a CRM system, in order to understand who buys your product, why they buy it, and how they buy it - that is, the psychological path they navigate to arrive at a buying decision and that you must accommodate if you want to convert them from a looker to a booker.
The next step is to preserve and leverage this investment in consumer profiling by transforming it into the actual user experience on the site. Currently there is often a disjunction between these two steps (planning and process), which we sometimes call the "persona gap." FatWire is aiming to incorporate the results of profiling and persona tools like Future Now's Persuasion Architecture directly into the data model and presentation templates of our CMS.
You had recently mentioned about hunger among travel providers to move from "display" to "persuade". As per your observation, most travel industry sites are not nearly as effective as they could be. Where do you think the challenge lies for Fatwire to exploit this opportunity?
Tim Walters: The biggest challenge is the perception that a web site is only a billboard for posting information, and that making it personal or persuasive is either too expensive or just impossible. There was a story recently in Travel Mole about a major UK tour operator whose chairman said the company didn't need a web site. There were dozens of responses pointing out that an ever growing number of travelers research and book online. But very few challenged his assumption that "individualised" service can only happen offline.
To what extent travel providers have been successful in responding to the specific desires of a given customer segment rather than showing general content for everyone?
So far, effective personalisation has been restricted to a few bigger vendors - Carnival Cruise Lines and Hilton are good examples. But as you noted in the previous question, there is a clear recognition of the value of targeted messaging, and nearly every travel vendor that we talk to is eager to make it happen - as soon as they are convinced it can be done cost effectively.
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