Resort CRM best practices

The result quickly spread through not only the mountain resort industry but golf, beach, and hotels as well.  We’ve worked with Ryan Solutions with a number of resort clients over the years and recently got together with Corey Ryan, founder of Ryan Solutions (and now Chief Commercial Officer as Ryan Solutions was recently acquired by Inntopia) to get some insight on the current trends in the world of resort focused CRM including automation, data visualization, and data convergence.

Automation

One of the first things we hear with most of our new partnerships is that the partner “just doesn’t have enough staff to get this done”. We love hearing this, not only because we take it as a challenge and it fits our business model of providing hands-on strategic and tactical support, but because it’s a problem so easily addressed by data and message automation. Each bit of small data we get from our clients has the potential to trigger a highly targeted, highly relevant message to improve the guest’s experiences while generating incremental commerce opportunities for the client.

Let me provide examples of three automated campaign scenarios that have proven profitable to our clients:

For two generations, the Johnson’s have vacationed at Meadow Mountain. They visit the first week of January every year. Similarly, they have booked this trip by September 1. This trip is a Johnson family birthright!  On September 2nd, when they are not on the books, an email is sent out to the Johnsons, reminding them that’s it’s time to book their trip. There is no discount in this campaign, it’s just a reminder of the great time they had last year. The Johnson family quickly calls the resort and books this trip. Side note: this campaign generated $440 in return for every $1 spent on it!

Kristin Smith just checked in to the Lodge.  We see this by integrating data from the Property Management System every minute or two. So we automate a warm and personal message to welcome her and encourage her to reach out to the Concierge if she has any needs. If she has shown an interest in spa services (either in a past visit, or having spent time on the spa page of the property’s website), we can version that message to include spa specials. If she already has a spa appointment, we can remind her of the appointment time and encourage her to make her dining reservations.  This campaign significantly increases the average ancillary spend of guests and is a driver of increases to the Net Promoter Score.

Todd Jones just boarded the tram and is using his pass for the sixth time this season. The sixth usage is the point at which the pass holders effective ticket price (ETP - price paid for each day they’ve used their pass) has dropped below that of the window rate. Todd receives a message that welcomes the guest to the resort that day, reminds him that he made a wise decision to buy a pass this year and informs him of the best runs that day (thanks to input from ski patrol). For the Resort, this campaign significantly increases their renewal percentages.

Visualization

Big data presents challenges for many marketers.  While we prefer small data (single data points that are actionable - see booking anniversary date, check in date/time stamp, or scan + pass use count above), it’s rare that any one factor is responsible for the overall success or failure of a property at a macro level. Our clients need a quick and visual way of seeing what’s going on.  This is why we’re currently pouring a massive amount of resources into our newest portal. It’s no longer good enough to give marketers a spreadsheet loaded with rows and columns of numbers. There are three key drivers for the latest push for visualization or ‘Business intelligence’ tools. They are as follows:

• We are visual learners - spreadsheets might have all of the information and more, but we remember images. A heat map showing where customers are coming from will always outperform a spreadsheet with location data.
• Our customers are not financial analysts, or statisticians. They pay us to be those people. They are marketers and while science and marketing are converging, at the end of the day, we’re still dealing with creative, right-brain people. We need to modify our presentation to play to their strengths and capabilities.
• Visualization grabs your attention. Outlying numbers of a spreadsheet won’t jump off the page. Conversely bright heat maps, stop light images, speedometer images and crazy graph results can jump off the page, getting the immediate attention this topic deserves.

Data Convergence

As marketing has continued it’s evolution away from outdoor, direct mail (‘snail mail’) and point of purchase towards the immediate and systematic channels (email, SMS, Social, display, interactive), the need to bring all of this data into one repository has grown. Consumers are being exposed to our clients’ messages from all angles.  Frequently, the attribution models are cloudy, at best. When a guest sees an ad in Outside magazine, gets an email, views high google search rankings, visits your website and is subsequently retargeted online - where is credit assigned when that guest shows up at your property?

The most simplistic answer is - it doesn’t really matter so long as they showed up - the strategy is working. While many will accept that response, it is, quite simply, not good enough. For starters, that may be an inefficient approach that is unnecessarily eating through limited marketing budgets. More and more, we’re having to refine our attribution models and bring data points into a centralized database from multiple, external systems. We’re frequently being asked to work with other agencies - media buyers, online advertisers, and numerous others. Those meetings can be contentious - with multiple parties claiming each success and further confusing their clients. It’s the responsibility of the marketers to serve as traffic cop, and get all players working on the same page, and help move towards integrating all of the data into one source. Marketers should structure their agency relationship to account for this, and make very clear the roles, responsibilities and collaboration necessary to retain their support.

All of the data is converging - find partners who recognize this and are confident enough to play well with others. Especially in an environment where no one partner will be an expert at every channel. If they tell you they are, then it’s really time to look elsewhere.