Increasing Direct Bookings with Email Price Alerts
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Summary
PROS and Volantio partnered to integrate their solutions to deliver relevant, real-time flight deal alerts to Japan Airlines’ travelers. PROS products enable real-time low fares to be broadcast across digital marketing channels, and integrated this fare content into the Volantio SmartShopper Platform which alerts travelers of relevant offers based on their interest. By adding the real-time fares to Volantio’s SmartShopper Platform, Japan Airlines was able to deploy an opt-in for price alerts on their website where users could subscribe to receive weekly emails on fares for flights they are searching for.
Through this partnership, Japan Airlines is seeing a growth rate of 79% for price alert subscriptions, active user growth is at 67%, and revenue per active subscription is growing at 30% per month.
Challenge
Flight shopping is a lengthy process. Engagement at the top of the purchase funnel is important, however, airlines like Japan Airlines have been disrupted by Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and metasearch engines. The third-party disruptors are capturing traveler demand for flight deals and have impacted the airline's relationship with customers, reducing direct bookings and the lack of real-time low fare information causes the airline's email marketing campaigns to often have conversion rates because they can not promote the best deals.
Solution
airWire is PROS’s solution to enable airlines to place real-time fare content anywhere across their digital marketing channels, such as social media, paid search and retargeting ads. With FareWire providing the fare and flight content, Volantio’s SmartShopper Platform could now include real-time fare content in the offer alerts it sends to customers.
How it works
Volantio added a button to “Watch Prices” across Japan Airlines website:
When a traveler clicks on that button they are prompted to put in the dates dates of travel origin and destination, how flexible the dates are, and their contact email address.
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Once the customer is subscribed to fare alerts, SmartShopper will send them an email with the most up-to-date low fare for the route and dates they are looking for using airWire information. Emails with real-time prices have improved
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This partner integration enables PROS and Volantio to offer airlines an instant solution to deploy price alerts, with concierge-style guest service that provides only relevant information designed to elicit customer loyalty. Traffic from the price alert email is highly qualified, with demonstrated intent to purchase.
The solution also encourages travelers to opt-in to emails from the airline, increasing brand engagement and creating opportunity to share additional information on deals and offers with travelers.
PROS Products
AIRTRFX
Create a Fare Marketing infrastructure with airTRFX. Leverage airTRFX pages to scale your site, online presence, and improve engagement.
AIRMODULES
Conversion-oriented flight search tools with real-time fares that can be deployed on any web page.
AIRSEM
Airline-specific Search Engine Marketing tools to build, launch, and manage ad campaigns with real-time fares in ad copy.
AIRWIRE
Display real-time fares on social media, emails, retargeting ads, and on any webpage with airWire. Powered by user-search data without additional calls to your GDS/Res System.