Hospitality Re-Imagined – Series Three
Many of you may have had the misfortune to hear me speak passionately on the subject of personalisation in the past, it is a topic close to my heart and one that is proving to become ever more important in the quest to differentiate business offerings in our very crowded marketplace. Personalisation helps to build meaningful relationships with customers and ultimately increases revenues, customer retention and advocacy, that holy grail of marketing.
Sometimes it is difficult to understand how to communicate to stakeholders in your business the absolutely non-negotiable requirement to personalise both your communications and your offering based on your customer’s needs.
A McKinsey[1] report helps us to do so and it showcased some startling statistics:
- 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions.
- 76% get frustrated when personalisation doesn’t happen.
- Personalisation drives performance and better customer outcomes with 78% of consumers more likely to refer friends and family to companies that personalise.
- Companies who use personalisation grow faster and drive 40% more of their revenue from personalisation than their competition.
With data like that, the only question we can really ask is can you afford not to be obsessed about personalisation?
But just what are consumers looking for in terms of personalisation and what does that mean for your business? Below we’ve outlined how you can take the top five insights and make them relevant for your tourism business:
[1] McKinsey & Company- The value of getting personalisation right or wrong is multiplying.
What sort of personalisation does the consumer expect of my brand? | What does this mean for my tourism or hospitality business? | |
1 | Make it easy for me to navigate in store and online | Your omni channel customer journey needs to be well thought out and flawlessly executed. |
2 | Give me relevant product and service recommendations | Seek first person information about what is important to YOUR customer and talk to them about that. Use data to understand previous purchases and deliver similar products to that customer. |
3 | Tailor messages to my needs | The cardinal sin of email marketing is a blanket message to your entire database- make sure it’s a specific meaningful message to appropriately segmented audiences. |
4 | Offer me targeted promotions | Understand your customer’s needs and how they use your products and services, deliver offers that are meaningful. |
5 | Celebrate my milestones | Perfect for hospitality businesses, we (should) have oodles of data relating to birthdays, weddings, family celebrations – use this to engage meaningfully with your customer. |
To read more on the report – click here
This is all fine and good, but how do we go about personalisation and how to we do it well?
In my opinion, it all starts with one word, Data. Collecting the right first person and GDPR compliant data, analysing it and using is well. Another favourite comment I make is that often we don’t consider the value of our customer data, but my advice to you is to develop it and then to protect it and as fiercely you would your company’s till. It is a huge asset and when managed correctly, it will reap real financial rewards for your business.
Contact us to learn more about how personalisation can positively impact your top line revenues and bottom line profits.
Author: Helen O’ Leary
To Learn more about Helen – click here