In 1955, a one-way ticket from London to New York was the equivalent of $7,026 in today’s money. You know how much the same ticket costs in 2024?
$265. There are vacuum cleaners that are more expensive!
So why aren’t travelers more satisfied? And perhaps more pressing: how are airlines surviving?
Offering more than simply a flight ticket requires two things – innovative campaigns with partners, and personalized targeting. Let’s dive into it.
Partner cross-sales, as well as ancillary sales, are, without a doubt, a huge part of the equation towards profitability.
After all, if you aren’t earning what you used to with ticket sales, you have to find another way to make up for it. It’s about more than making up for lost revenue, though; it’s about providing a personalized customer journey that will increase satisfaction and loyalty in the long run. Airlines are under pressure to boost revenue while also providing a customer-oriented journey from doorstep to doorstep (and beyond).
There are companies that are working to be innovative in this area. JetBlue, a New York City-based airline partnered up with Uber in 2013 to offer free rides to passengers whose flights were delayed or canceled overnight so they could expect a smoother ride going forward.
Another great example is the Flying Blue program by Air France-KLM, where customers can earn air miles and spend them at selected strategic partners including Hertz & Sixt for car rentals, or Accor Hotels and Booking.com for accommodation options.
What if airlines were to offer this kind of innovative journey to each and every one of their customers, every time they booked a ticket?
Instead of a one-size-fits-all campaign, or even a broad segmentation approach, what if you personalized it for each individual booking?
You could offer high-end hotels and dining packages to your business or affluent clients. You could make it easy for traveling students to book bus tickets from the airport to their hometown, and even benefit from airport discounts to pick up last-minute gifts during their holiday travels.
The good news is that airlines already have the data they need to achieve this. They’re just missing the technology to put it all together so they can perfectly orchestrate the journey.
A number of airlines are already using their wealth of customer data to roll out “personalized” bundling tactics, product-suggestion analytics, and dynamic pricing in the booking funnel and over the course of the travel journey.
But even these digital frontrunners aren’t yet doing it on a truly individual basis.
At best, airline marketers are offering cross-sell opportunities based on large audiences and general personas. This translates to a spray-and-pray methodology that, while getting results now, puts them at risk of losing customer trust in the long run.
What’s the alternative?
To begin with, make sure that you are making use of the whole breadth of your customer data to be able to create your personalized campaigns.
A strategic move here is to make use of a customer data platform (CDP) that gathers and organizes all of your customer data across channels and systems to create unified customer profiles. Predictive AI can then help you determine the best possible cross-sell, while also utilizing second-party data from your business partners into account.
Predictive AI models predict who and when a conversion will happen by analyzing each user’s entire history. This can make real-time decisions in the customer journey by predicting what their next move will be, and then recommend what the best possible product is to upsell or cross-sell at that moment.
As you make use of CDP technology to offer relevant and timely cross-sell options, you will:
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While this article provides some high-level ideas for how airline marketers can improve cross-sales and customer satisfaction, there is still so much to unravel about navigating your path towards truly personalized campaigns.
So get inspired by KLM, Transavia, and Air France to understand how they’re tackling customer satisfaction and personalization in their marketing campaigns utilizing the Relay42 CDP complete with our Journey Orchestration and Journey AI modules.
Read more about elevating your airline’s marketing strategies to maximize load factor, increase ancillary sales, acquire more customers, and boost brand loyalty via our e-book.