In a competitive and fast-moving industry, tour groups have to feel the pulse of the market and understand the varied and hard-to-predict preferences of customers.
This was the situation Hana Tour Group found itself in, despite being the undisputed industry leader in South Korea for 19 years in a row. The largest travel company in the country, with more than 30 global networks, had to find a way to better integrate the information it was getting from both online and offline customers.
As it sought to grow its business, it needed to increase the response rates for its marketing campaigns. Customers would make more bookings, it believed, if they were presented with deals that were more relevant and attractive to them.
Key to this was using the data on hand to more accurately target customers with the right deals.
This meant having a single data mart to integrate the distributed online and offline information on customers, reservations, travel and products. The tour company also needed streamlined product recommendation modeling, customer segmentation modeling results and campaign response.
The answer came in the form of an automated and integrated marketing performance analysis system that carries out targeted marketing in a timely fashion. This would help Hana Tour keep up with the trends and customer preferences that change from moment to moment, and analyze its data more precisely.
At the end of 2016, the company started using the SAS Marketing Automation solution, enabling it to rely on various product recommendation and customer segmentation models to carry out more efficient marketing campaigns.
It can now easily differentiate between marketing targets—for example, first-time and frequent users—and use differentiated campaigns and diversified communication channels to reach out to them.
Marketing teams can also check the status of campaigns and analyze their effectiveness much faster. The SAS solution monitors not only the progress of campaigns, but also the status of completed campaigns, and uses various analysis reports to track daily campaign results
Using the new tools, Hana Tour can also apply machine learning algorithms to target customers more accurately. And instead of another complex software to learn, marketing teams can easily find the data they need and zoom in on the segment they wish to target.
For example, to extract marketing campaign targets, a user simply drags and drops the best product recommendations for each customer through an intuitive interface.
At the same time, with the customer segmentation and product recommendation carried out automatically, campaigns can be designed and launched more efficiently.
After a campaign email is sent, a marketing team can monitor the effectiveness as well. By defining the campaign period and success conditions, it can have a return-on-investment analysis tabulated easily and quickly.
This means a successful campaign can be easily repeated. One that falls below expectations can be analyzed so it can be modified to be more appealing to customers.
Essentially, the SAS solution provided Hana Tour with three important types of insights that transformed its marketing efforts:
- Campaign email transmission status analysis: The campaign mail transmission status data is collected almost in real time, and the detailed campaign reservation profile can be checked visually through graphics and charts.
- Campaign performance analysis: Campaign targets and reservation performance are analyzed according to various criteria, such as campaign and filtering criteria entered by the user.
- Visual exploration analysis: The campaign/performance analysis mart can be used for unstructured analysis, and the model analysis results can be used for additional analysis of other trends, such as reservations and product attributes.
"We can carry out campaigns for our employees and agencies more effectively through interworking with the corporate messenger," says Park Seong-jae, director of Hana Tour’s e-commerce business division.
"Since setting up the new system, the reservation rates of customers targeted for the campaign has increased by about 20 to 30 percent," he adds.
The insights can be expanded beyond individual campaigns. Together, the monthly performance results can help Hana Tour predict its annual marketing volume. It can then establish long-term marketing plans based on actual results of previous campaigns, thus sharpening its focus and enabling a better ROI.
Indeed, Hana Tour is planning to expand the SAS system across all its marketing efforts. Eventually, the tour company seeks to recommend the best products to customers in all its business areas.
In doing so, it will move a step closer to its aim of becoming the world's best culture and tourism distribution service provider.
