This is an excerpt from our report with Loyalty 360, download your report here.
Travel, hospitality, and ticketing marketers work in one of the most exciting industries yet face unique challenges.
Consumers vary tremendously. From eager travelers with wanderlust to business travelers, each presents a distinct set of needs. Some prefer to make reservations based on price or through their favorite online travel agency (OTA), whereas brands prefer that travelers book directly through their websites. Each traveler’s motivation is different; tapping into that is a significant challenge.
Moreover, travel and hospitality marketers face similar difficulties as their colleagues in other industries. A shift toward consumer privacy and the deprecation of third-party cookies is changing the way all marketers operate. It is also difficult to understand who is visiting a brand’s website, as even the most loyal customers can appear anonymous, making it arduous to deliver an optimal experience.
Safari and Firefox have eliminated third-party cookies while Google has flip-flopped on their demise. Consumers will most likely soon be asked to opt-in or out of cookies, per website, which will see a mass exodus of consumer data. Apple’s ‘Ask Not To Track’ consent on apps saw opt-out rates as high as 90%. The shift will move away from marketers gorging themselves on—often inaccurate—third-party data and toward building a relationship with consumers that also respects their data preferences.
Right now, marketers have the opportunity to not only circumvent the third-party cookie problem but to also revolutionize the way they execute marketing strategies. Marketers can easily spray out offers to everyone, hoping to get a few clicks. But what if they prioritized understanding who is visiting brand websites along with data revealing what persuades each consumer to convert? What if marketers understood the motivations of consumers and then delivered hyper-personalized messages to them as individuals?
This is possible with identification resolution technology, a robust triggered messaging program, and then feeding consumer data into AI engines. Identity resolution is a method of identifying users on digital properties (websites, apps, etc.) that fully respects the privacy and consent of a consumer. Beyond simply matching a visiting device to an email or mobile number, the right identity partner brings rich, historical context on consumers gleaned from their browsing, clicking, and purchasing habits across thousands of websites.
This is data that a single brand could never collect on its own. That intelligence can be used to craft the perfect offer that converts to a marketing opt-in, as well as informing highly optimized messaging via email and text channels. This is a data-driven strategy that is not reliant on third-party cookies but rather brings brands closer to their audience and builds better relationships that lead to growth. Brands that adopt this identity-first approach have an opportunity to ditch third-party cookies, rather than feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them. It puts customers first, delivering best-in-class experiences while respecting their privacy.
In this report with Loyalty 360, we’ve uncovered some of the challenges travel, hospitality and ticketing marketers are facing, along with an understanding of how marketers are using technology like identity resolution to capture the attention of travelers in a brand new way.