With travel starting up again, it is time to get back on track with your marketing. There are a lot of aspects to the travel and hospitality sector in general, from finding a location, to booking flights, hotel and tours. All these have given rise to a huge industry ranging from Ticket booking, Hotel Booking, Tour Operators, Holiday Planners among others.
Each one is a competition, and while the classic marketing channels are still working, they are used by every single one of them. Web push is the new kid on the block, it is immediate, innovative and direct. Compared to display advertising, web push brings in 20-30 times better click through. With easier subscription, more engagement, greater user-retention, its high time you started looking at web push notifications for your Travel business.
This is our handy guide for the Travel industry to build your subscription base, and create marketing campaigns using push notifications on the web.
Web Push Notification Templates for Travel And Hospitality Industry
Advertise Travel Offers
The first step is always choosing a destination. From there a hotel and then travel plans. Your customer found a great hotel, but it is a bit too expensive. They can either look for deals or check back every day to see if there was a price drop. A simple way for would be to send a notification whenever the price drops for hotels in that region. Also, consider sharing best time to visit the searched destination, days when flights are cheapest and other travel tips.
Travel companies can also target people on destinations and interests based on previous searches making the entire booking process easier for the customer. Consider that a customer is looking for a hotel which is pet friendly, and there happens to be a deal in the searched location. Your customers would love the help in planning their holiday, which is always the most painstaking part.
With push notifications, travel companies can increase their conversions, cross sell packages and engage more customers with price drop alerts, and holiday deals.
Booking Reminders
Travel industry sees the highest cart abandonment in the entire e-commerce space. With over 82% of carts being abandoned, a channel is needed to immediately reach out to the customer to fulfil their query. The major reason behind cart abandonment in the online travel industry is that people tend to look at a lot of websites before finalizing on their booking.
With web push you can reach you can reach out to potential customers to help them pick up where they left off. You can re-target these users with details on the their destination along with potential recommendations. Such a personal touch in helping them plan a holiday will be greatly appreciated and would in turn boost conversions.
Sharing Helpful Information
Once a trip is booked, the next step is to keep your users informed of any changes or provide helpful tips about their upcoming trip. With so many distractions plaguing us every day, a reminder about the holiday can go a long way. You can share trip related information about upcoming events, best places to visit, some hidden markets to explore and helpful tips on what to do when they reach there.
Consider sharing helpful content with your customers. You have a blog article talking about the top 10 restaurants in Lima, Peru, why not share that with your customers who have booked a flight to Lima? This will not only boost traffic on your site, but also add value to their travel.
Depending on the trip the user has booked (if they have just booked flights tickets), you can cross-sell hotel reservations through web push along with day trips like spas, adventure trips, cruises among others.
Just be sure not to overload customers with information, each notification should add value to their trip and make it more memorable. A single notification close to the travel date with things to explore and other details should be the perfect starting point.
Share Travel Information and Updates
Updates to travel information with notifications are a great way to keep users informed and engaged. You can share flight details, or let them know if their flights have been delayed. Similarly you can share information about hotel check-in times and how to reach there from the airport.
Real-time alerts with web push will help build a rapport with your customers, making their experience smoother and increasing chances of future bookings.
Reward Program for Members
Loyal customers and members can be pampered with personalized offers. This makes them feel special, and increases the changes of engagement. You could offer discount on flight tickets, converting their membership tokens into miles, free spa or travel coupons in the hotel among others. Seeing useful rewards would entice other customers to become members as well.
Getting Reviews and Boosting Reputation
Now you have a lot of campaign ideas to send your customers, its time to get some reviews. Ask your customers to share their experience on social media or your own site.
Reviews are a great way to find shortcomings and get real feedback from users. Send a timely notification after the customer has finished their trip to get feedback on their experience with you. This can be used for both public reviews about your service and also to gauge customer sentiment.
Best Practices for Travel Industry – Web Push Notifications
Get more Subscriptions
Converting website visitors to subscribers is the easiest with web push notifications. There’s no personal information required, no UX friction. Just a simple click.
Web push for travel sites have generally shown 7-15% opt-in rate. However, the timing of the opt-in makes a huge difference here. Showing the permission prompt as soon as the users land on your site is always discouraged. The opt-in should be shown after the customer has spent some time on the site or has looked through some pages.
Have a look here for some tips on how to increase web push subscription rate on your website.
Segment Users into Audiences
Segmentation is the key to drive conversions. All customers are different from each other,. Use search behavior, destinations, previous travel itinerary, location, personal preferences and other parameters to segment them.
Consider the following example, a customer has booked a flight ticket with you and previously they have booked 3 or 4 star hotels with you. You can therefore send a targeted notification for deals in 3 or 4 star hotels in their booked destination on the day they land. This will encourage customers to start their booking process.
Targeted push notifications have 2X better click through than mass broadcast notifications.
Get the Timing and Frequency right
While push notifications can be a very lucrative channel to boost conversions, things can go out of hand very quickly. Remember, web push notifications are direct messages delivered on the user’s desktop or mobile device.
You need to be mindful of the timing when notifications are sent. Use A/B testing to find the best time to send notifications and the content that works for your customers. Keep a watch on your subscriber churn to figure out the frequency. As a rule of thumb, marketing messages should be limit to no more than 2 notifications in a day with at least a 4 hour gap between them.
Here are five points to help you improve push notification experience for your customers.
Use Social Proof to your Advantage
Share your social media pages, online reviews with your customers to boost engagement and build trust. Social proof can go a long way in helping new customers make their first booking with you. If they see that you have a great track record from your online reviews and social media profiles, they are far more likely to travel with you.
You can also get users to review your service once they complete their booking or travel.
Wrap Up
The travel industry can easily boost engagement and conversions with web push notifications. Sending personalized offers and content through notifications at different stages of the customer journey can make the booking process easier and reduce friction.
Just be mindful of the notification frequency and always use segmentation.
Get started with PushAlert today.