Wilson | Destination Marketing Technology

By wilson | Destination Marketing, tourism marketing, Travel, travel and tourism, travel marketing

ARE THEY HERE YET? YES—AND TECHNOLOGY PROVES IT

As your messaging begins to take hold, the right destination marketing technology tools enable you to track visitors actual experience before, during, and after their visit. Thanks to technology like predictive analytics and others, we can know with certainty when members of our audience are planning a trip, what their interests are, and when they will arrive. “Listen to what they say, but watch what they do” isn’t just an adage anymore. In many instances, we can watch and tell precisely what they did while they were here through their digital footprint.

That knowledge enables us to tailor experiences now and in the future, ultimately creating loyal fans and increasing revenue.

TECHNOLOGY RIGHT MESSAGE AT THE RIGHT TIME

Because you’ve established channels to communicate with your audience on a regular basis, you can see who is looking and interested in your destination. Social platforms are generally pretty clear and offer some built-in collection and analysis. But for all of your properties, including web, you’ll want to add additional technology.

By now everyone should be familiar with Google Analytics. It is a free and powerful tool but constantly changing. This will reveal rough numbers and locations that are great for high-level reporting and synopsis. But to be truly effective you’ll want to invest in some type of marketing or email automation that can identify individual contacts.

Programs like Mailchimp, Hubspot, Marketo and open source Mautic provide increased levels of sophistication and detail. These programs enable you to clearly identify potential visitors’ interests and communicate in a more personal and conversational way, delivering the right message at the right time.

You’ll also see triggers that indicate that a particular audience member is ready to take the next step. This could be requesting a planning guide, visiting a certain number of pages, or returning to the site for the third time.

Of course, big data is taking hold here as well. We know that every digital touch creates a data point (or several) about that person and their activity.

Whether we can see it, and better still, take action on it, are another story. But we’re getting better and better every day.

Two Advanced Examples:

AirSage can employ mobile data to reveal how active an area is, how those visitors arrived, when they arrived, and even their movements within 100 yards. Other services can monitor and track what influenced their behavior.

Arrivalist can measure the way network-enabled devices change locations after being exposed to your communications. This provides direct insight into how your message has impacted their actions far beyond the last click.