Travolution Summit: In a Big Data world keep focussed on what’s important

Improved data analysis promises travel firms need not be complicated, but must drive greater efficiency from their marketing spend on new and traditional channels.

Improved data analysis promises travel firms need not be complicated, but must drive greater efficiency from their marketing spend on new and traditional channels.

Russell Young, EMEA sales director of Sojern, said what has become known as “big data” is just the way information sources can be combined to provide insight into customer intent.

He said there was a tendency to overcomplicate simple things in digital marketing, adding that if data analysis doesn’t lead to actionable insights it is effectively worthless.

All marketing channels including display and even traditional TV and press are moving towards more performance-based approaches, powered by data, said Young.

“There are a lot of new buzzwords. As new technology develops and new opportunities are created it seems there are ever increasing numbers of buzzwords.

“They all have meaning but from a marketers point of view you can get lost and lose track of what’s important.

“From our point of view big data is about applying information, intent and knowledge to traditional marketing channels and looking at how to empower greater efficiency of marketing campaigns.

“It about understanding insights in to specific information acquired from one source and how that can be applied to another area to drive efficiency.

“Digital marketing has seen huge advancements in the last five years but it’s guilty of over-complicating really simple things.”

Young said as the online sector has matured so-called new media has started to move closer to traditional forms of marketing.

“The core thing you are trying to achieve is contact, one to one, with the most relevant customers to get them to engage with your product or service to get them to book with you rather than with a competitor.”

Young said while all companies were sat on their own rich source of data, the work firms like Sojern does is to combine that with data from other companies to provide advanced targeting.

“Through data-driven marketing we are now in an age where we can target individuals based on what we know about them in real-time in a way we have been previously able to do in Google search for some time.”

New forms of real-time programmatic bidding on marketing activity means firms can benchmark how much they are prepared to spend to capture a particular type of customer on various different channels, said Young.

“All of this is geared to making your display marketing activity much more efficient by using the data and looking at the clear intent to communicate on a one to one level.”