5 Reasons Tour Management Software Should Include Marketing

The travel business has undergone a massive transition to the web in recent years. These days, customers can do just about everything online, from researching products to making travel plans. This means companies that do not have the right tour management software are probably losing a lot of business. 

Tour management software is essentially a reservation system. This program facilitates the management of online, mobile, and in-person reservations for the travel and tour industry. These online booking systems are similar to a self-service portal.

The tool allows users to make reservations for travel and tourism services based on the availability of those services on the dates provided by your tour operator software. While most of these programs are built the same way, some come equipped with unique features that can help boost online sales and even more. One such feature is marketing automation.

The term “marketing automation” describes the practice of automating regular marketing procedures. This could include simple tasks like email marketing, social media outreach, and many more.

Automated marketing has many benefits for providers of tours and other activities. In this article, we consider some of these benefits.

 

1. Reach a wider audience and increase visibility

One of the biggest problems in the tourism sector today is the loss of income.

Forbes estimates that the epidemic cost the global economy $935 billion in sales in the first ten months of 2020. As a result, the tourism sector is experiencing a severe decline.

That is to say, to increase profits, organizations in this sector need to put more emphasis on reaching more leads. One way to do that is to invest in marketing automation.

By streamlining the various manual processes between marketing and sales, your team will have more time to concentrate on the big picture. That is, cultivating the leads that have the most potential. This will help you increase the influx of potential clients.

In fact, automation in marketing can boost sales productivity by 14.5% while cutting marketing costs by 12.2%.

You may get more leads and boost revenue with automated marketing. While your sales team ramps output, your marketing team may focus on increasing conversion rates via strategic planning.

Marketing automation software can also help you increase your lead conversion rate. Using marketing automation software, you can monitor your leads and retarget those that visit but don’t buy from your site to boost your conversion rate.

2. Track and analyze customer data and behavior

Today’s IT industry is concerned with big data and its massive opportunities. However, big data is not just a buzzword for tech enthusiasts; it is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to boost all industries, including the travel and tourism industry.

With automated marketing in your tour management software, you can effectively gather relevant data and use this data in marketing and sales operations. The automation of these systems even allows you to better comprehend the data collected.

By collecting relevant information about your clients and what they want, you can quickly improve your marketing strategies. That is, you can create more targeted ads that address the pain points of your clients.

Automated marketing allows you to evaluate your marketing campaigns and predict the attitude or response of consumers. With that information, you can create comprehensive profiles of your prospects.

3. Automate repetitive marketing tasks, such as email campaigns and social media posts, to save time and effort.

Did you know that employees spend around 40% of their productive hours attending to repetitive tasks? Repetitive tasks like building email campaigns, social media campaigns, and landing pages may seem simple. In the true sense, they consume up to 40% of your employees’ productive time at work.

While these tasks take time and effort, they are crucial for your marketing campaign. If you need to handle these repetitive tasks without wasting time and resources, then you need tour management software that automates your marketing efforts.

With tour management software that has automated marketing tools, you can quickly design your email campaigns, social media campaigns, and landing pages with ease.

The good part is you do not need technical expertise or experience with artistic design. Automated marketing tools usually have templates and campaign builders to help your businesses save hundreds of hours of hard work each month.

Instead of spending time writing blog entries, you can arrange them all to go up at once or over the course of the next week or more. This gives you the freedom to focus entirely on planning tours.

4. Integrate their marketing efforts across multiple channels and platforms for a consistent and seamless customer experience.

Your objective as a tour company is to convert leads into sales. One of the most effective methods to do so is by giving each lead information that is relevant to their requirements and interests.

A widespread misperception is that automation leads to robotic, impersonal marketing. However, when done correctly, an automated marketing strategy helps you integrate your marketing efforts across multiple channels to cater to various audience demographics.

This means you spend less time evaluating your audience and its individual members. You can devote the extra time to writing and developing materials that various groups within your audience need to make purchases.

Automated marketing may thus be more personalized than human ones.

Personalization is an additional advantage of marketing automation that enables you to interact with site visitors by giving information suited to their interests.

According to a report from McKinsey, depending on the sector, businesses that use a personalized marketing strategy may increase their income by 5 to 25%.

Instead of landing on a generic site, users will receive individualized product offers and calls to action.

This will not only assist your company by sending prospective buyers to pages that boost conversions, but it will also benefit your visitors. Presenting relevant material up front makes it much simpler for people to discover what they want, which may generate a great first impression of your company.

Automation enables you to split your audience into distinct parts and deliver each section the most relevant message. It allows the use of personalization on a broader scale to nurture leads.

Integrate their marketing efforts across multiple channels and platforms

5. Collaborate and share information

Automation is a powerful tool in marketing. But even with its many benefits, it cannot replace human intuition and expertise. As a result, no matter how robust your automated marketing is, it cannot be solely accountable for your marketing effort.

This is a huge pain point because collaboration is essential in tour management. The situation becomes more problematic when everyone operates from their own unique systems.

Most tour companies make the mistake of using email. However, this practice is notoriously inefficient and often leads to missed emails and lost conversations. According to MailChimp, the average rate open rate for emails is about 21%.

On the other hand, an automated marketing system will make it possible for you to link everyone in a single location while also maintaining a running record of conversations between members of the team.

This will improve communication between team members and other stakeholders while improving coordination within the organization.

Be sure that the software provides you with the ability to regulate who has access to sensitive data so that you can avoid data from falling into the wrong hands.

Conclusion

If you run a business in the tourism sector and are experiencing a decline in income, automated marketing might be the way out. Automated marketing systems can help you boost consumer engagement, get critical customer data and increase your profit. Therefore, it is perhaps a good moment for businesses in the travel sector to start embracing marketing automation.