Summer is fast approaching and for the travel industry it’s peak season. Undoubtedly, months of preparation will have gone into making sure your company is ready for a highly successful summer. Your website will have been updated with the latest list of flights, destinations and prices and your marketing campaign will be sat in the pipeline waiting to be launched, boasting a colourful mix of digital and direct ploys to entice customers to book their holidays with you.
Whilst we’re on the subject of your customers, have you ensured the data you hold about them is clean and accurate?
We all know about the importance of having accurate data, but one vital aspect of data cleansing that you may have overlooked, is checking for duplicate entries. Due to the various touchpoints your customer base has with your business, duplicates do occur, especially if your company data is siloed in multiple locations.
Here are three reasons why duplicate records can have a detrimental effect on your marketing, and why you’ll want to get rid of them before your summer campaign.
1. Duplicates can cause misdeliveries
It’s only natural that a number of the customers in your database will move house at some point or another. In this instance you may find that both their previous and new address is saved in your database if they have made bookings with you whilst residing at each location. Whilst this may not affect the delivery of important holiday information to current holidaymakers, as flight tickets are often sent via email, your marketing campaign to prospects may suffer as a result of delivering mail to the wrong address.
If your direct mail lands at a customer’s previous address, your company risks losing a sale from the intended recipient as well as annoying the new residents of the property. In an industry where competition is high, word-of-mouth marketing plays a significant role when consumers are choosing who to book their flights and holidays with. Therefore, it’s best to verify the correct address before sending out marketing to them in order to maintain your reputation.
2. Failing to deduplicate your data can harm ROI
There is of course the possibility of the same mailing being sent out to the same person more than once if your data is duplicated. Direct marketing can be expensive if you have a large mailing list, so it isn’t really budget-friendly to send out marketing more times than necessary. As marketeers, you will be striving to maximise on ROI for the success of the campaign and overall business, therefore you’ll want to mitigate any wasted expenditure.
By irritating prospects with repeated messaging, not only will you be wasting your marketing spend but you may push them towards competitor travel companies, meaning you aren’t likely to achieve ROI. The travel industry is already facing challenges in the form of Brexit and last year’s heatwave, with companies such as Thomas Cook suffering from major financial losses.
3. Achieving a single view will be difficult
Having a single view enables businesses to operate much more efficiently. If your data is spread across multiple databases, information can easily become siloed, causing duplicates and making it virtually impossible to achieve that all important single view.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, 49% of respondents claim their data is siloed and it’s one of the reasons why their records are inadequate and can hinder people receiving information. This is the complete opposite of what your travel organisation will want when sending out marketing to potential customers.
Not achieving a single view also lacks professionalism, thus not doing your brand image any favours. If mail lands on the wrong doorstep, or doesn’t get sent out at all as a result of siloed data, then people aren’t likely to take you seriously.
The solution
Hopewiser has over 37 years of experience in the data cleansing arena, and can help your travel business deduplicate your databases to help achieve a single view and ultimately maximise ROI on your summer marketing campaign. Our installed AtlasDedupe software is a sophisticated tool for intelligently identifying and eliminating unwanted duplicate records. The solution will significantly reduce mailing costs if you have large volumes of duplicates, not to mention your customer relations will benefit too.
Alternatively, we also offer a hassle-free Bureau service whereby our experienced production personnel can merge all your disparate data into one standard format before cleansing. Not only will this get rid of duplicates, but will also help your business achieve that imperative single customer view.
If you want to get the best out of your data and your marketing campaign, contact Hopewiser today in order to see your customer base more clearly.
, updated 21st February 2023.
