In the hospitality industry, every experience is temporary.
Your customers are constantly on the move. They’re staying at a hotel, running through an airport to catch a flight, or hopping into a rental car. During that experience, every interaction matters. Whether a customer is talking to staff, tweeting angrily, looking for information on their phones, or checking in through an app, it’s up to you to be there every step of the way.
Customers don’t see every channel as a different point of interaction. They see the brand as one entity. So wherever they’re engaging, they expect a response that matches their point in the journey.
That’s why companies need to focus on the link landscape in 2017. The link is the one marketing asset that cuts clear across every channel and offers a transparent view into how customers engage with the brand.
Here’s how hospitality brands can make the most of the link in 2017:
1. SMS
A customer is running through the airport, trying to make the gate. Her phone buzzes. A text shows an updated time and a link leads to an updated status page with more information.
Can you track how many customers clicked the link? Can you create thousands of individual links for every text you send?
By using the Bitly API, one major airline sends out flight status updates with customized links personalized to each user. On the back end, the airline is also able to track the results in real-time.
Hospitality brands depend on SMS to stay in touch with customers, from hotels and airlines to rental cars and apps. With data from Bitly links, you can track how many customers click through on those texts. And, with the API, you can create individual links mapped out to individual phone numbers to see how different accounts are engaging.
2. Cross-Channel Branding
Someone who missed a connection or had a bad stay at a hotel might complain to management, tweet about it, and fill out a complaint on the website. Where does that customer journey start? Where does it end?
When I stayed at a Marriott in Cambridge last year, the reception desk had a stack of survey cards. You could fill out a survey by using a customized Bitly link:
If every Marriott hotel has survey cards at the front desk and they’re all branded like this, corporate can see how many customers are filling out surveys from every location. By correlating that with the results of the surveys, this can provide really interesting customer insights.
Customized links are important on every channel. Bitly Branded Short Domains generate up to 34% higher click-throughs and, at the same time, the branded short domain itself (like hot.el) tracks all organic and earned media engagement through the Bitly Network.
3. Email Marketing
Email Service Provider (ESP) sprawl is a real problem. When you’re a global brand, the odds are good that you’re using multiple ESPs that have different analytics systems. Start segmenting and targeting customer groups and you have a big mess of numbers that can be nearly impossible to decipher and consolidate.
By using Bitly links in your emails, you can create a dashboard view of all of your email engagement by different customer groups. With Bitly Enterprise, you can use Brand Manager to group various internal teams that are running different email campaigns and measure the results side-by-side.
Just by using the link, you can create a single source of truth for all of your emails, so teams don’t have to hop around between spreadsheets and analytics systems to figure out which customer segments are opening which emails.
4. Affiliates and Influencers
Most travelers aren’t going directly to an airline or hotel website. They’re searching on Google for the lowest prices or using a third-party vendor. So hospitality brands have adjusted by working with affiliates, influencers, and partners to promote deals across satellite web properties.
When you don’t have direct access to the site’s analytics, analyzing the true impact of an influencer or affiliate is a mix of faith and correlations, not causations. But with a Bitly link, you can actually create true influencer marketing campaigns by tracking all of the clicks being driven by each specific affiliate.
5. App Downloads & Engagement
Every major travel brand has an app that makes it easier to book, manage, and track flights and other accommodations. But how do you keep customers engaged with the app itself?
Bitly Mobile Optimizer enables all of your links with deep linking, which means that your links will send mobile users to the app every time. This is especially useful if you’re trying to re-engage app users through email and social media updates.
The Associated Press, for example, uses Bitly Deep Links so that whenever someone shares an article, that shared link will send mobile users directly into the app – a tactic that helped generate 500,000 app opens in just one month.
The True Travel Experience
Just about every traveler has a third-party mobile device on-hand as a tool to make each trip even better. Hospitality brands have always worked hard to help. But, as that travel experience becomes more digital, brands have to follow customers there.
With Bitly links, you can see exactly how your customers are engaging as they plan a trip, take the trip, and, ultimately, plan for the next one.
