Force24’s Adam Oldfield and Real Response Media’s Richard Seal reveal the first step to truly personalised communication 

Did you know there are an estimated 4.4 billion active email addresses globally? Or how about that people spend as little as 10 seconds on average each day reading brand emails? This underlines the issue many travel marketers are experiencing today, where they’re tasked with delivering relevant, authentic content to databases populated by potentially hundreds of thousands of email addresses.

Adam Oldfield, founder of email marketing platform Force24, and Richard Seal head of digital at Cruise Trade News publisher Real Response Media reveal how brands can use data to deliver personalised content to an army of consumers.

What does personalisation mean and where do brands tend to get it wrong?

Adam Oldfield: Usually when people talk about personalisation they tend to think ‘Hi [first name]’, but it goes much deeper than that. Even deciding when not to send an email to someone is personalisation. Deciding whether you want to send an email, direct mail or SMS is personalisation.

Where brands can fall down is when they hold on to their data too dearly. Imagine, for example, someone bought a cruise to the Mediterranean from an online travel agent in 2019. You’ll often see that company only talk to them about Mediterranean cruises moving forward. They miss out on the opportunity to go around the houses and inspire them to try different cruise holidays based on what their interests might be today.

How has Force24 helped Cruise Trade News and sister title World of Cruising in our own email marketing?

Richard Seal: We’ve worked very closely with Force24 to look at our data and segment our audience into smaller groups based on their needs, ensuring our users are getting what they want. If they want to learn more about Mediterranean cruises, for example, we can deliver that content to them.

One recent campaign that worked particularly well was for an ultra-luxury cruise line who wanted to drive sign-ups to its online brochure. We were able to serve its target audience with relevant content that educated them on the types of destinations it sailed to and what the onboard experience was like. The client got a fantastic response as a result.

How do brands execute genuine personalisation when many have enormous databases?

AO: Let’s assume nobody knows what we’re famous for. Our objective initially is to drive brand awareness, then once audiences have engaged, we get them to look at a specific destination or cruise. We do that by using offers, which are a great way to ascertain what kind of cruise someone is interested in. Now we’ve moved them from new-to-brand into knowing what type of cruise they’re interested in, which gives us an opportunity for a sale.

So it’s about asking questions to develop a greater understanding of your database?

AO: That’s correct. And the thing is, you don’t actually have to ask, you can just observe while placing content in front of people. However, one thing I see a lot of travel companies do is overburden their databases with emails. The more I say, the less I get, so say less.

RS: That’s why the work we’ve done to build out these segments is so important, now we know who’s interested in articles around the Caribbean and who’s interested in a specific cruise line. There’s a criteria there that allows that segment to continuously build because they’re giving us the answers without us actually needing to ask any questions.

People are inundated every day with emails. Is there a hard and fast rule when it comes to volume?

AO: You need to be looking at the date an email was last opened or the last time they looked at your website; that’s the base tier of engagement. Once you’ve identified someone who ticks either of those boxes, that’s when the cadence of emails should increase.

In that scenario, 14 days after the web activity you should have reached them six times in that two-week period as a minimum. If they’ve not engaged with you on the website but they have opened your email in the last, say, 30 days, it should be one or two per week. It’s about trimming the volume down to focus on the people who are engaging, because they’re the ones with high potential.

How can Force24 help cruise lines and agents develop their marketing strategies?

AO: It feels like there’s a lot of work involved but, in fact, a lot of it is automated. The biggest problem we see is marketers looking at their data in its current form, assuming that’s all they have to work with and not building an onward strategy to improve it.

What we do is we provide brands with a set of tools that means they can set simple rules and triggers based on what actions they want people to make and as they engage with the emails or the website, the platform automatically guides audiences down the funnel. The technology does everything.

For more information, visit force24.co.uk