Van loyaliteitsstrategie en -programma naar een gepersonaliseerde customer experience in travel

Situation

Vacanceselect, operating in the competitive travel market, was facing challenges to realize their business targets. Also, their product portfolio was subject to erosion in a way that the difference between product categories were not so clear as they once were.

Achievements

Brand engagement and customer experience strategy

The holiday fair in early January and the traditional catalog traditionally kicked off the new holiday season. With market share under pressure, my team and I advised to take a different approach and pursue a strategy that builds on the holiday experiences and memories of those who previously booked their holidays at Vacanceselect. The strategy included a slight brand reposition.

Design and implementation of an experience-driven e-commerce platform

Roll-out of the strategy included the design, development, and implementation of an e-commerce platform. with content built around the experiences of actual Vacanceselect customers. With more dynamic content feeded from the back-end systems, triggered by the central 360-degree customer profiles.

Creation of a 360-degree customer view

An important part of the strategy was the implementation of a customer data platform (CDP) that connected with systems in the ICT infrastructure to pull relevant data from e.g. the e-commerce platform, website, and email into the CDP. And to push updated data back again after updating, cleaning and harmonization of the customer profile data. Push back of data included next best actions and personalized content.

Omnichannel introduction campaign

The customer experience-driven marketing strategy was launched through an omnichannel introduction campaign including targeted emails and online advertising for visitors to land on a gamified campaign website. Together with the launch of the new Vacanceselect holiday experience magazine the prize winners were rewarded at the January holiday fair.

Results

  • Omnichannel marketing strategy built around brand engagement and customer experience.
  • Clear and transparent product portfolio.
  • New customer experience-driven website and e-commerce environment.
  • A technical infrastructure in place with a 360-degree customer profile (single customer view) as the single source for all customer-orientated marketing and communications.
  • 5% uplift in holiday bookings in a declining market in the first full year after go-live.
  • Vancanceselect nominated multiple times for the DDMA Data Awards.

Competencies

  • Digital transformation
  • Marketing strategy
  • Omnichannel marketing
  • Customer experience management
  • E-commerce
  • Brand positioning
  • Brand activation
  • Customer engagement
  • Big data/artificial intelligence

Operating territory

The Netherlands

Period

2005-2007