Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

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Five ways airlines could boost relationships and loyalty

Those who know their passengers best will always win

The growing scale and speed of digital transformation in the travel industry landscape is continuous. Recent data shows that digital travel sales are set to reach more than $600 billion in 2018. While travel businesses are moving rapidly to adapt and deploy new systems to meet digital consumer habits, the truth is that most airlines are not prepared for this new reality.

Results from Boxever's 2018 travel research, which surveyed over 1,000 U.S. consumers between the ages of 18 and 65, reveal a substantial disconnect between what today's traveler expects and what airlines are currently delivering. However, airlines still have an opportunity to better connect with customers by reimagining their approach to marketing and making better use of data.

Based on survey findings, below are the top five ways airlines can achieve a superior travel experience for their customers:

• Determine communication channel based on demographic
  Consumer preferences differ with age when it comes to communication with airlines. Over half of millennials primarily use email (57%), while Gen X prefers to communicate over the phone and baby boomers prefer to use the airline's website. To effectively engage with consumers, airlines must understand these nuances and execute accordingly.
• Remember personal details
  Nearly 60% of all consumers expect airlines they've traveled with previously to remember their seating preferences. Additionally, younger generations are more likely to book extra days on a business trip for leisure. Offering a preferred seat or options to extend a trip proactively are simple ways that airlines can impress potential customers.
• Respond quickly
  Over 60% of American consumers expect airlines to respond to a problem (such as a lost bag) within 30 minutes. Further, almost all consumers (96%) expect a response within 24 hours. As such, airlines must have systems in place to collect this incoming consumer data, filter it by individual traveler and respond quickly via the traveler's channel of choice in order for the customer to feel satisfied.
• Customize consumer loyalty perks
  Over one third of respondents said collecting airline points is important to them. Other areas of importance include flight upgrades (21%) and priority check-in (16%). To maintain happy customers, airlines should offer these types of perks and reward travellers for their loyalty.
• Keep customer trust through transparency
  57% of consumers said they will dump an airline over hidden fees and 44% won't re-book after unexplained delays. Therefore, airlines must be transparent throughout the entire booking and travel process to make customers feel informed and respected, increasing the likelihood they will re-book in the future.

"Higher consumer expectations place more pressure on airlines to understand their customers on a personal level and deliver the experience they"re looking for," said Dave O'Flanagan, CEO of Boxever. "This survey indicates that tailoring the experience for each traveler is the best way to establish long-lasting relationships. To accomplish this, airlines must re-evaluate their use of data and leverage the necessary technology to empower relevant, consistent experiences across all channels."

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Learn the insider's tricks and techniques to turn every customers into a 'super spreader' for your brand. It's better than free advertising. Once you start this ball rolling, your brand can grow rapidly through word-of-mouth, advocacy, influencers, and customer loyalty. Super-charge your company's marketing strategy, build up your market share, and make more sales through repeat business and customer loyalty.

Find out what works - and what doesn't - and who's succeeded, and how they did it. See how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds.

The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook walks you step-by-step through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations for successful marketing strategies - both traditional and emerging - with expert guidance from thought leaders in every major market. Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability. This is a marketing book you simply can't afford to be without.

This book aims to hand you all the facts, figures and research data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy. It also highlights all the facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, news, studies, research and articles, and presents you with an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook at your side, you'll have instant access to a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)