Do you want to receive targeted follow up after you visit a travel site?
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Online travel marketing is moving toward behavioural marketing . If you are in a travel site, technology can track what you have researched but did not purchase. You can expect to receive a personalised targeted follow up with information relevant to your search. Companies using this technology have reported a tenfold increase in conversion rates.
When I read this article it is not clear to me how the technology could legitimately gather a browsers email address in order to deliver the future targeted follow up. I found an article which explained that browsers were willing to consent to receive relevant advertising in exchange for the free download of computer software. However the article concludes that bombarding potential customers albeit with relevant advertising is not the way to build loyalty.
Would you be happy to receive these follow ups? I think it could be annoying if say you did make a purchase on another site and then receive more adverts about something you have already purchased. Some travel browsers visit so many sites when they are researching a trip that I don’t know if their inbox could cope with the aftermath! I also think that this technology will pretty expensive to buy so I assume it will be used mainly by large companies. That could turn out to be a good thing for small businesses like mine if potential customers know they can visit my site without fear of receiving more adverts in their email.
February 15th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
It might be using cookies and other information that is commonly shared by the browser. Whether it picks up emails is news to me because I don’t know how your web browser would share this information without some sort of software download or plugin or extended scripts.
It would irate the hell out of me if websites start to tailor sites according to what I researched. I have several holidays a year, all vastly different from one another in every way, and I sometimes research for three holidays at once, so how is it going to help people like me?
February 15th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
If you have security set up properly, cookies can’t collect e-mail addresses.
However, some sites already require you to lower your security level settings to access them. At present these sites are, on the whole, shooting themselves in the foot as few browsers from their workplace can access them which is something of a downer as the majority of browsing for holidays and the like is usually done whilst the people are at their desk in work.
I dread to think of the number of pointless contact e-mails the likes of myself would end up getting as I am, like yourself, constantly looking at potential holiday ideas for future guests. What would probably happen is that I’d end up having to have something like today’s anti-spam software installed.
February 16th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Yes, this too would annoy the hell out of me if this was to happen. Looking from the “other side of the coin” how do you keep loyal customers, when as consumers we are educated to search for the best deal on sites like travelsupermarket, sidestep etc.
People don’t mind getting a newsletter with a few deals and news about the travel company providing the newsletter has useful content. Just slapping late deals or company news is not going to be successful but adding content within the newsletter might keep people subscribing it.
I’m going to test this out with my main business, for people who have subscribed when they have made an holiday enquiry.
February 16th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Darren, it will be interesting to hear the results of your trial, let’s hope it is a tenfold conversion rate increase. However the concensus so far seems to be that we do not wish to be bombarded by follow ups from the multitude of sites which we visit.