Travel & Hospitality Archives | Sprout Social Sprout Social offers a suite of <a href="/features/" class="fw-bold">social media solutions</a> that supports organizations and agencies in extending their reach, amplifying their brands and creating real connections with their audiences. Fri, 03 Jun 2022 16:44:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2020/06/cropped-Sprout-Leaf-32x32.png Travel & Hospitality Archives | Sprout Social 32 32 How Allegiant Air’s customer relations team is taking flight with Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/case-studies/allegiant-air/ Fri, 27 May 2022 15:54:45 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=casestudies&p=160102/ “Together we fly.” That’s the philosophy that lifts Allegiant Air off the ground. Known for their low cost and à la carte service, this Read more...

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]]> “Together we fly.” That’s the philosophy that lifts Allegiant Air off the ground. Known for their low cost and à la carte service, this Las Vegas-based airline’s mission is to make travel more accessible. And as a direct sales company, being accessible on social media is a key part of their customer care and engagement strategy.

According to the 2021 Sprout Social Index, 31% of customers prefer to leave feedback on social media—and Allegiant’s social-dedicated Customer Relations team knows the importance of staying on top of customer comments.

We have drastically increased how many messages we’re replying to across platforms, especially on Facebook. And we’re servicing more customers even though our team has been consistently the same size.
Alyssa Salazar
Customer Relations Manager

“Having social media allows us to respond to and help retain our customers, as well as build brand loyalty,” said Allegiant’s Customer Relations Manager Alyssa Salazar.

The airline industry has been hard-hit during the pandemic, with ticket sales dropping and customer needs skyrocketing. Since 2020, Sprout Social has helped Allegiant organize thousands of messages, collaborate more easily and focus on customer retention. Amid the pandemic, Sprout empowered Allegiant to continue to connect people.

Forwarding the gold (wings) standard of customer care with Instagram DMs

With around 15% of their customer inquiries coming through social, Allegiant’s team knows that a seamless customer care experience is crucial—to them and their customers.

Salazar manages a team of customer service agents who provide coverage seven days a week answering messages on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The sharp increase in messages has meant an increased need for speed. In Q3 2019, the Customer Relations team responded to 8,185 messages across their social channels. In Q3 2021, that number nearly doubled to 14,490.

Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox helped them take off.

“We have drastically increased how many messages we’re replying to across platforms, especially on Facebook,” Salazar said. “And we’re servicing more customers even though our team has been consistently the same size.”

Weekend-bound. 😎📸: @ny_coronao

Posted by Allegiant on Friday, January 14, 2022

Having Instagram Direct Messages (DMs) in the Smart Inbox has also helped them, especially considering the fact that 35% of US consumers turn to Instagram for customer service. Salazar’s team used to answer Instagram messages natively on an iPad, limiting responsiveness and speed.

“Access to Instagram DMs has helped us tremendously,” Salazar said. “Our agents have all given us positive feedback about how this is pushing us forward, making our team more efficient and serving our customers faster.”

We have certain types of responses that we use for different questions. Tagging based on specific keywords clarifies what the issue or concern is about so we can quickly respond.
Alyssa Salazar
Customer Relations Manager

Tagging to avoid turbulent teamwork

With hundreds of messages divided across agents, staying organized is crucial. On top of maintaining speed with pre-crafted answer templates, Allegiant Air uses Sprout’s robust internal tagging capabilities to identify duplicate messages, prioritize DMs and organize workflows.

“When the agents start their day, they remove any duplicate messages and start assigning messages to themselves to work on,” Salazar said.

Using a tagging system featuring rules built around keywords helps them quickly identify what a customer needs and how to respond.

“We have certain types of responses that we use for different questions, so tagging based on specific keywords clarifies what the issue or concern is about so we can quickly respond.”

A conversation between a customer and Allegiant Air in which the customer is asking for assistance and Allegiant acknowledges that they have responded to them via DM

Building brand loyalty with customers on the ground and 30,000 feet up

“We’re not necessarily an everyday type of product,” said Content Marketing Specialist Tiana Schenk. “But we want to be top-of-mind when someone books a trip, so that we can connect travelers to the people, places and memories that matter most.”

It’s tough to build brand loyalty when your product isn’t one you use every day. “COVID-19 has definitely shifted how we operate and function as a company overall,” Salazar said.

Staying on top of inquiries on social has helped Allegiant better communicate options available to customers based on company policies and other factors. In some cases, that means offering customers options that allow them to maintain their ticket for later use, while allowing the airline to maintain crucial sales.

Sprout is also integral to another piece of the brand loyalty puzzle—celebrating customers who celebrate Allegiant. Sourcing and sharing user-generated content has become a smoother, more collaborative process between the Content Marketing and Customer Relations teams by assigning tasks in Sprout.

Putting the "sun" in Sunday. 🌞📸: @kmht.jake

Posted by Allegiant on Sunday, January 23, 2022

“When folks on the Customer Relations team interact with customers or when we search for content to publish on our social channels, having the ability to simply assign a task over to the Content Marketing folks so that we can ask for the rights to use those photos is a seamless process,” Schenk said.

Allegiant responding to a customer praising their airline and service

Sprout Social helps Allegiant Air keep customer service flying high

With Sprout Social, Allegiant Air stays steady. Using the Smart Inbox has made their customer relations strategy and team collaboration smoother, giving them more time to focus on nurturing their social channels and customer loyalty. Above all, they’ve found new ways to put the customer first by more quickly identifying their needs.

If you’re interested in seeing how Sprout Social can help make your customer service team’s and customers’ experience more seamless, request a personalized demo or start your free 30-day trial today.

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]]> Sprout Social helps keep NJ TRANSIT’s social strategy on track https://sproutsocial.com/insights/case-studies/nj-transit/ Wed, 28 Jul 2021 14:00:48 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=casestudies&p=149825/ In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted the transportation industry, but the nature of the unprecedented pandemic made it all the more important to keep customers informed Read more...

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]]> In 2020, COVID-19 disrupted the transportation industry, but the nature of the unprecedented pandemic made it all the more important to keep customers informed and safe. The previous year, NJ TRANSIT served nearly one million daily riders across its trains, buses and light rail each day. Those customers rely on these services and, through the upheaval of 2020, social media was the first place they turned with questions and concerns about their trips.

Customer experience is at the heart of the NJ TRANSIT brand. “Our company’s goal is to give customers the best experience possible through social media so they have everything they need for an enjoyable trip,” said Carol Mack, NJ TRANSIT’s Director of Events and Social Media. To deliver a great customer experience, NJ TRANSIT needed a social media management solution that would help them optimize customer care efforts, streamline response management and provide timely updates about their services. They needed Sprout Social.

When people think of transit, we don’t want them to think of just equipment and stations so we use social to give our employees a voice and to humanize them to the public.
Carol Mack
Director of Events & Social Media, NJ TRANSIT

Supporting cross-functional strategies 

While NJ TRANSIT uses Instagram as their primary platform for branding and LinkedIn is for more professional purposes, they’re most engaged with their customers on Facebook and Twitter. What’s unique about their Twitter strategy is that in addition to their main NJ TRANSIT Twitter account, they also run 14 accounts that are each dedicated to a specific transit line.

Their content strategy for each line account is simple: provide real-time updates for travelers. Having service-specific accounts keeps important, relevant information organized and accessible for transit riders. It also means that the NJ TRANSIT social team can focus their corporate Twitter handle on their brand messaging, news, initiatives and anything else that’s important to the customer.

Another important characteristic of NJ TRANSIT’s customer care and social strategies is how they draw attention to the people behind their brand. “When people think of transit, we don’t want them to think of just equipment and stations so we use social to give our employees a voice and to humanize them to the public,” said Mack.

For example, the NJ TRANSIT Police Department does much more than provide high-quality safety and security for the transit system. They also have an outreach program staffed by five outreach officers throughout the state that helps connect the homeless with necessary social and medical services, as well as housing opportunities. The police department’s Twitter account gives them a platform to share those lesser-known efforts, which has made a major impact on humanizing the department.

The Police Department has an intelligence division that uses Sprout’s powerful Listening features to monitor conversations across social. Using keywords and location-based searches provides the department with timely access to conversations occurring across the transit system. This intelligence gathering allows them to deploy resources to maintain the safety of our customers and employees systemwide.

Highlighting their people and initiatives also helps shape NJ TRANSIT’s employer brand and influence recruitment. “Hiring qualified people is very important to us. We’ve taken extra efforts to make sure we use social media to help our human resources department get the best talent that they can,” said Mack. “When we started using social to assist with hiring bus operators, we saw a 60% increase in resumes.”

We work directly from Sprout’s Smart Inbox and it’s straightforward just like a Twitter stream, so it’s also very easy to get people up to speed on how to use it.
Kevin Minott
Senior Communications Coordinator, NJ TRANSIT

Keep your wheels turning on social

While the content strategies differ between the line accounts, the police department account and their main account, the entire NJ TRANSIT social team uses Sprout’s Smart Inbox to monitor each account in a single feed. Before using Sprout, the team would have to log in natively to each line account to respond to customers, which negatively impacted response time—an important metric for the team’s customer service strategy.

The confusing, disorganized user interface of their former platform negatively impacted response time. “We work directly from Sprout’s Smart Inbox and it’s straightforward just like a Twitter stream, so it’s also very easy to get people up to speed on how to use it,” said Kevin Minott, NJ TRANSIT’s Senior Communications Coordinator. “I was able to get our SVP of communications and customer experience up and running on Sprout in just one day.”

I am in love with the Task feature. It ensures that all the information we need in order to respond stays with the right message.
Carol Mack
Director of Events & Social Media, NJ TRANSIT

Don’t lose your train of thought

Whether customers are asking about a technical issue or need information about a schedule change, they want to know they’re being heard. The NJ TRANSIT social team works to respond and communicate with empathy and accuracy, which often requires collaboration with other departments. For example, they are currently working with their IT department to build a comprehensive response team in Sprout. Sprout’s Tasks feature in the Inbox helps make that collaboration seamless.

If, for instance, they receive a message on social about a problem with their mobile app, the social team can assign a Task to the IT Sprout user. Then, that person will look into the issue and provide context or an answer to the social team in Sprout. The social team will polish the copy and respond to the customer.

“I am in love with the Task feature. It ensures that all the information we need in order to respond stays with the right message, ” said Mack. “Before using Sprout, we’d have to copy and paste from the platform we had into email and vice versa.” For someone like Mack, who gets around 400 emails a day, keeping that thread of information separate within Sprout is essential.

The results are in

According to the Sprout Social Index™, 76% of customers expect a response from a brand in the first 24 hours of sending their message. In the first half of 2021, NJ TRANSIT exceeded those expectations maintaining an average first reply time of 30 minutes.

It’s not just the Smart Inbox that speeds up processes for the NJ TRANSIT team. “Sprout has amazing analytics tools that we didn’t have access to with our last management platform. Now, we run engagement reports for our senior vice president of communications and customer service, monthly reports for our board, weekly communication reports, response reports and more,” said Minott. “Sprout has allowed us to do this with ease.”

“To give you an idea, Kevin used to spend three days on reports that now take three hours,” Mack continued. “We used to have to calculate response time manually because in our old platform, it would count us as being non-responsive when we were offline. With Sprout, we can put work hours in so the Engagement Report calculates our real response rate for us.”

Sprout Social, at your service 

Customer care and experience are what NJ TRANSIT’s brand is all about. When selecting a new social media management platform, they were looking for a software and team that would give them the same level of support. High-quality customer care was an important deciding factor in their decision to work with Sprout.

“Where Sprout came out on top was understanding us and treating us as individuals. They didn’t give us a one-size-fits-all approach or treat us like anyone else. We’re a transportation agency, so we have different needs, and that understanding of who we are really matters,” said Mack. “Every time we reach out, Sprout gives us the same customer care that we were promised from the first time we spoke to them. They really are just 100% there for us.”

Our team of experts will always respect your unique needs and treat your business with care. Start a free, 30-day trial today or request a demo to get a customized tour from our team.

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]]> Social Spotlight: Hilton’s pandemic strategy proves the business value of social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-spotlight-hilton/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-spotlight-hilton/#respond Thu, 22 Apr 2021 17:20:17 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=149886/ Overview For more than a century, Hilton has built its reputation on raising the standards of the guest experience. In fact, many of the Read more...

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]]> Overview

For more than a century, Hilton has built its reputation on raising the standards of the guest experience. In fact, many of the staple offerings in the hospitality industry today—room service, the minibar, central reservations systems—were once Hilton innovations.

And even though it’s been four decades since minibars made their glorious debut, Hilton continues to innovate. Several years ago, they introduced their Hilton Honors app and Digital Key technology to provide guests with a contactless check in/check out experience. Their Five Feet to Fitness™ offering includes 11 different fitness equipment and accessory options so guests can work out in the privacy of their room. And their recent CleanStay program promises guests more rigorous cleaning and inspection protocols in the wake of the pandemic.

As an industry pioneer, many brands look to Hilton as a shining example of how to address the evolving needs of today’s traveler, and rise to the challenge of reinventing the hospitality experience.

Challenge

While the effects of the pandemic have been devastating across the board, one of the hardest hit industries was Travel and Hospitality. Like most hotels, resorts and other travel destinations, the initial challenge for Hilton was managing the fallout from cancellations.

But as time went on, the challenge became (and still remains) the general sentiment toward travel. In addition to the everyday challenge of standing out among other hotel choices, Hilton also needed to overcome new hesitations and objections about travel during a pandemic. Their business depended on it. So, what did they do? In short, they listened.

Strategy

Hilton’s strategy to inspire renewed trust and confidence in both travel and their brand appears to include three insight-driven pillars: product innovation, marketing creative and customer connection. Let’s unpack each pillar and discover how your brand can use social insights to drive similar business strategies.

Product innovation

During a pandemic, travelers’ priorities change. When they’re searching for a hotel, they care less about amenities and service, and more about cleanliness and protection. In order to compete with the comfort and safety of people’s own homes, Hilton created a program that would ensure the same diligence and care in cleaning their hotel rooms. In partnership with trusted household cleaning brand, Lysol, the brand launched Hilton CleanStay in select hotels.

Most notably, the program featured the Hilton CleanStay seal, a product innovation that let guests know their room was professionally deep cleaned since the last guest—and that no one had entered their room since that cleaning.

To promote the program, Hilton shared the announcement on its social channels, as well as a video showing the cleaning protocols in action. Judging by some of the comments, this program had a direct affect on loyalty and revenue.

Using social to drive product innovation: 

Insights gleaned from social can tell a brand a lot about what their audience is thinking, feeling, wanting, needing, using, doing, etc. Although a desire for clean rooms may have been a no-brainer in the context of the pandemic, the knowledge of which cleaning brands Hilton’s audience trusted most and the desire for a visual cue could have come from social listening.

By listening to social conversations that included keywords like cleaning, hotels, virus protection, etc, Hilton may have discovered the insights that folks trust Lysol, and don’t always trust someone’s word that something’s been cleaned—leading to their choice in brand partnership and the innovation of the physical seal.

With a sophisticated listening tool, your team can set up queries to monitor specific topics and keywords, as well as sentiments toward your brand and others. These insights might just reveal a gap in the market or new opportunity to create something new for your customers.

Marketing creative

In October of 2020, Hilton announced its global marketing campaign, “To New Memories.” The initiative was driven by a customer survey revealing that nearly nine in 10 travelers say travel memories are some of the happiest of their lives, 95% of those who travel are missing it and 90% believe we are currently experiencing a travel memory deficit.

The campaign was created to reignite people’s passion for travel by reminding them of what vacations, adventures and getaways feel like. It appealed to Hilton’s audience’s emotions at a time when they were missing travel and the memories it created the most. Long story short: They used FOMO to inspire desire and action.

Using social to drive marketing creative:

For folks who aren’t as motivated by the promise of a clean room, Hilton went a layer deeper with this campaign by appealing to the emotions of their audience. In order to do that, they first had to find out how their audience was feeling.

While Hilton used an actual customer survey to glean insights around travel sentiment, not every brand has similar resources. That’s the beauty of social listening. You don’t need a lot of time or money to discover what your audience is feeling at any given time. People are telling us everything we need to know on a daily basis through their social activity. We just need to make sure we’re listening.

And when it comes to marketing campaigns, that emotional insight and connection is what will lead to messaging and creative that resonates deeply enough to inspire your audience to take action. It’s the difference between selling them on what you’re offering—and why you’re offering it. The “why” is always more impactful.

Customer connection

With so many folks working from home during the pandemic, Hilton identified an opportunity to provide their guests with a distraction-free environment for more productive remote working. The initiative is called Workspaces and offers day-use rooms that include a spacious desk, ergonomic chair and enhanced WiFi.

To promote Workspaces on social, Hilton asked their followers to send them a photo of themselves in their everyday workspace using #UpgradeYourView, and in return they’d upgrade it to reflect the “travel background of their dreams.”

Even though it was only a day-long initiative, the images created were highly-shareable, and gave the brand the opportunity to engage with their audience, promote their new program and stay top of mind during a decline in travel.

Specific Hilton hotel chains and locations have also mastered the art of genuine customer connection. When power outages in Texas displaced an elderly man from his home, his granddaughter checked him into a local hotel, which the family jokingly nicknamed “Waldorf Astoria.” When a real Waldorf Astoria property—one of Hilton’s most prestigious and luxurious chains—learned of his story, they reached out with a personal invitation to stay with them once travel restrictions lightened up.

Knowing that might be a while, the hotel decided to bring their signature luxury experience directly to him by sending him a Waldorf Astoria “care package,” including a bathrobe, slippers, luggage tag and more to use while he plans his trip.

These surprise and delight moments create lasting connections not only with the guests directly involved, but also with everyone who happens to hear about it. In this case, the story made it onto the local Texas news, giving the hotel some free, brand-building publicity. And of course, the story then makes for great content to share across their own channels.

Using social to drive customer connection:

It would be difficult to stumble upon these moments without a sophisticated social listening solution. People don’t always use your brand’s handle when mentioning you in their social conversations. By monitoring certain relevant keywords, the Rome Waldorf Astoria location was able to bless this man beyond anything he ever expected, and positively impact their brand perception in the process.

Travel and hospitality brands aren’t the only ones who can benefit from surprise and delight opportunities. Any time your team can add value to or solve a problem for members of your audience, you are building your brand and directly impacting your business through customer connection.

And there’s just no better way to do it than with social listening.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-spotlight-hilton/feed/ 0 Customer support and content solutions: Why Sprout Social is just the ticket for TUI UK https://sproutsocial.com/insights/case-studies/tui-uk/ Wed, 07 Apr 2021 14:00:14 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=casestudies&p=149391/ From hillside hideaways in soaring mountain ranges to enviable villas with ocean views and white sand beaches—wherever you want to go, TUI can take Read more...

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]]> From hillside hideaways in soaring mountain ranges to enviable villas with ocean views and white sand beaches—wherever you want to go, TUI can take you there.

TUI is the UK’s leading travel brand, serving millions of customers each year as they embark on holidays, flights and cruises all over the world. And with more than two million people following TUI UK and First Choice, a subsidiary of TUI, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, that’s a lot of holidaymakers to keep track of.

TUI UK’s social media networks are an essential connection point between the brand and its customers. On one side of social, the brand team prioritizes engagement, reaching new audiences, promoting their offerings and creating transparent content for their customers.

“We focus a lot on building confidence in TUI by being as transparent as possible about our offerings. We’re always drilling into what people are saying about our brand to understand key themes and sentiment, which informs parts of our content,” said Naomi Bressan, Social Community Manager for TUI UK and Ireland.

On the other side of social, TUI has a dedicated customer service team. The travel industry revolves around customer experience, and if things don’t go to plan, delivering top-tier customer service is a must. As social media becomes the primary destination for customer service, TUI uses Sprout Social to ensure its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram bases are covered.

When the global pandemic hit, we received customer queries on an unprecedented scale. Sprout enabled us to get our teams up and running as quickly as possible, with the Sprout customer support team going above and beyond to help us when we needed it most.
Nicola Smith
Senior Social Marketing Manager, TUI UK & Ireland

Creating stronger a customer support system amid global travel disruptions

The start of the new decade kicked off swimmingly for the TUI team. But then, COVID-19 took everyone by surprise and completely disrupted the global travel industry.

In February 2020, TUI received 53,900 messages across their TUI UK and First Choice social channels. By the end of March, that number increased by 269% to more than 198,000 messages.

At the time, TUI UK had 30 customer service agents, along with support from the Brand Social team, managing the increasingly overwhelming number of inbound social messages. As call volumes increased many customer service agents were moved to answer inbound calls so 61 people from across TUI volunteered to assist.

Sprout also provided immediate customer support, offering TUI UK additional user seats and efficient training for the volunteers.

“When the global pandemic hit, we received customer queries on an unprecedented scale. Sprout enabled us to get our teams up and running as quickly as possible, with the Sprout customer support team going above and beyond to help us when we needed it most,” said Nicola Smith, Senior Social Marketing Manager for TUI UK and Ireland .

Shifting gears to serve new content 

As the customer service team worked its way through the Sprout Smart Inbox each day, they’d tag inbound messages to categorize inquiries and keep track of recurring themes and topics. Meanwhile, as TUI’s brand team adjusted their content strategy, they were able to use insights from tag data to determine which kinds of content they should prioritize and proactively communicate.

Interspersed among posts about TUI’s dream destinations, they began sharing content highlighting new TUI policies, health and safety measures, refund information, travel advice and more.

TUI’s team also uses social listening to influence their content strategy, monitor brand health and glean insights about their competitors. “We regularly report on sentiment around our brand and in Sprout, we can see where there are dips and spikes. Then we can click in to view those messages to understand what’s happening and why,” said Bressan.

With regard to their competitors, TUI looks at sentiment, emerging topics and their own share of voice in travel-related conversations. “If people are asking about luggage, trip amendments or specific destinations, for example, we can see how frequently people are talking about us, compared to our competitors,” said Bressan.

Returning to high days and holidays

With Sprout’s powerful social solutions, TUI UK continues to connect with customers, navigate change and overcome new challenges.

“The Smart Inbox capability, along with Message Tagging, helped us to respond to over 500,000 customer queries in three months with a remote team of 61 people. We could not have done it without Sprout,” said Smith.

Sprout’s Engagement Report, which tracks response rate and reply times and the Inbox Team Report, which customer care metrics at an individual level, give everyone on the TUI team visibility into customer service performance.

In Sprout’s Tag Report, TUI can easily analyze the performance of specific content themes like “COVID content,” which garnered more than 28 million impressions and 3 million engagements between March 1, 2020 and August 31, 2020.

“I couldn’t recommend Sprout enough. Sprout support is so easy and quick,” said Bressan. “It’s got everything that social marketers and customer support teams could want all in one place, which makes it easier to do the job at hand.”

Take your content and customer care to new heights with Sprout Social. Request a personalized demo or start your free 30-day trial today!

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]]> To spring break or not to spring break? That is the question for brands navigating the pandemic https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brands-navigating-spring-break-2021/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brands-navigating-spring-break-2021/#respond Tue, 16 Mar 2021 14:00:29 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=149182/ Ten years in Chicago has taught me that, even though the temperature reads 60 degrees outside, there’s likely one more cold spell we have Read more...

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]]> Ten years in Chicago has taught me that, even though the temperature reads 60 degrees outside, there’s likely one more cold spell we have to endure before we finally get to spring.

Fake spring and second winters aside though, it’s safe to say we’re all eager to get out of our homes and celebrate outside after a year spent in lockdown. Brands are equally looking forward to real spring. The National Retail Federation forecasts the highest growth in retail spending in 17 years in the coming months as more people are vaccinated and the economy reopens.

Naturally, with spring comes spring break but with only 9.9% of the entire U.S. population fully vaccinated, the idea of a COVID-19 spring break has plenty of people worried. People are sharing their concerns about spring break turning into a superspreader event and some universities are going so far as to pay students to stay put during the break.

For many brands, spring break 2021 is a good first look at what they can expect and how they should balance public safety against consumer expectations as the world attempts to return to pre-COVID times. We used Sprout Social’s Advanced Listening to analyze over 205,000 messages across Twitter from February 10 to March 16 to highlight what brands need to know before going back to business as usual.

The light at the end of the tunnel

Thanks in part to the vaccine rollout and warmer weather, states known as college spring break travel destinations are rapidly welcoming tourists with open arms.

Texas and Florida, two states with lax COVID protocols, were the two most mentioned states in the conversation about spring break, with 3,559 and 4,596 mentions respectively. Bars are operating at about half capacity in parts of Florida and Disney World’s four theme parks are fully booked for spring break.

Conversations about spring break also sharply increased in message volume on March 2, when Texas’ governor announced they’d be reopening the state and lifting the mask mandate.

These reopening announcements, coupled with one survey revealing 34% of Americans are planning to travel out of town this spring, are music to the travel and hospitality industry’s ears. Anticipating an increase in travel, booking service Hotels.com debuted their “revenge travel” commercials ahead of the start of spring break while airline JetBlue launched its own spring-themed sales campaign.

Not so fast, spring breakers

Of course, not everyone shares the same level of optimism at the thought of spring break travel. With much of the U.S. still trying to get the pandemic under control, plenty of people are concerned the rush to return to pre-COVID times will undo much of the progress we’ve already made. This is especially true in states like Maryland where governors have lifted their COVID restrictions ahead of the spring break travel surge.

Others pointed out how COVID-19 variants, such as strains from the U.K., are continuing to spread and the increase in partying might lead to another spike in contracted cases.

While it’s understandable that people and businesses want to forget the past year, public safety needs to remain a priority. Conversations around mask wearing, for example, spiked the day Governor Abbott announced his decision to revoke the mask mandate in Texas. Unsurprisingly, these messages were largely negative (45% negative, 24% positive, 31% neutral), with some businesses explaining why this decision ahead of spring break travel is more harmful than helpful.

Better safe than sorry

Look: it’s hard not to feel like the country is finally turning the corner on this pandemic. But just because the end is in sight doesn’t mean we’ve crossed the finish line, and brands should proceed with caution until we’re in the clear. People are already worried about how businesses will treat the holidays that follow spring break, with St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and Passover on the horizon.

To alleviate these fears, businesses are taking simple actions like enforcing mask-wearing wherever possible and reducing the number of visitors allowed at a given time. Going one step further, some businesses are continuing to only offer virtual visits and concerts until further notice.

Reading the room and taking customer feedback into consideration can help businesses determine the best course of action as society goes back to normal. People are genuinely worried about the long-lasting effects of spring break travel and parties. Instead of ignoring these concerns, consider how you might address them directly and identify the steps your business can take to ensure everyone’s safety.

Proceed with cautious optimism

After a year filled with canceled plans and disrupted travel, it’s only natural that people and businesses are eager to get back to pre-pandemic times. But just because we’re starting to turn the corner on this virus doesn’t mean we can jump right back into business as usual.

Businesses should continue to keep a pulse on how their customers and local communities feel about the spring break festivities that are underway. Listen to their concerns and evaluate how safe people feel as travel increases and states continue to reopen. How businesses handle spring break 2021 will give consumers a preview of what’s to come as the weather warms and they start planning their summer vacations.

Having a reopening social strategy is paramount for any business as we slowly begin the transition out of quarantine life. To learn more about what you need for a post-COVID world, check out this article on how tools like social listening can inform your business’ reopening strategy.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brands-navigating-spring-break-2021/feed/ 0 How to sell on Pinterest: A step-by-step guide for brands https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-sell-on-pinterest/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-sell-on-pinterest/#comments Tue, 12 May 2020 18:13:27 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=117087/ What started out as a platform for finding new recipes and DIY ideas has turned into a major shopping search engine. In fact, 89% Read more...

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]]> What started out as a platform for finding new recipes and DIY ideas has turned into a major shopping search engine. In fact, 89% of US pinners use Pinterest to research purchasing decisions.

And with Pinterest boasting 320 million monthly active users, that is a lot of people going to this one platform just to shop.

This is all the more reason why your brand should make the most of this platform and, most importantly, learn how to sell on Pinterest.

Why you should sell on Pinterest

We’ve already covered that 89% of US pinners on the platform are using it specifically to plan out purchases and research products, but that’s not all you need to know.

Nearly half of all users are logging onto the site just to shop. Forty-seven percent to be exact. That’s about 150 million potential new customers buying your products.

So find your target audience, get your products in front of them and wait for those dollar signs to start rolling in, right?

Of course, it’s not quite that easy. In fact, the next section is the steps you need to take before you start selling on Pinterest.

Getting your brand ready to sell on Pinterest

We know you’re excited about the prospect of leveraging all of those shoppers on Pinterest. But before you take any action, read these four quick steps to help you get your brand ready for selling.

1. Determine your target audience

It’s always important to have a good understanding of a social media platform’s demographics before starting a new campaign.

Putting together a customer persona will help you make sure you know exactly who you need to be targeting on the platform. This will consist of your target audience’s optimal income, job criteria, lifestyle and more.

2. Set up a business account

Having a Pinterest business account is very different from having a personal account. You get access to more features, such as analytics, ads and other necessary elements for selling on Pinterest.

If you created your account as a personal profile, don’t worry. You can easily switch to a business account by logging into your existing profile and converting it.

Otherwise create a new Pinterest business account right off the bat. Just head over to Pinterest and sign up!

3. Brand your account

Each one of your business’s social media profiles should be immediately discernible to your customers and followers, and your Pinterest profile is no different.

To brand your profile, make sure your profile photo is a high-res logo or headshot of yourself (if you are the face of your business) and that it matches your other profiles, your bio is optimized, your cover boards match your brand, contact information is current and more.

You can learn all about how to properly brand your Pinterest profile by checking out our 5-step Pinterest marketing strategy.

4. Link and verify your website

The final step in prepping your Pinterest business profile is to link and verify your business website.

Adding your website through profile settings is simple enough, but then you need to claim your website. To do this, add a meta tag or upload an HTML file to your website. You can learn more about how to do this directly from Pinterest.

You can only verify and claim one website for each Pinterest business account, so make sure it’s your main site that you make sales from or else you won’t be able to create a shop and link products.

How to sell on Pinterest

Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s get into the important stuff – how to sell on Pinterest and start making money.

We have eight top tips for selling on Pinterest and really turning this visual platform into a new revenue stream.

Let’s dive in.

1. Create stunning visuals

First things first. Pinterest is a visual platform. Even before we dive into several types of Pins that can help increase sales, you need to make sure that your Pins are actually visually appealing and make someone want to click.

This means you need:

  • High-quality photography
  • Beautifully designed graphics
  • Optimally sized visuals
  • Bold colors and fonts
  • Graphics that match your branding

At least, that’s the starting point. We’ll show you a few examples of high-quality pins to show you what we mean.

One great way to stand out is by taking professional photography of your product in use, like all of these furniture companies did with coffee tables.

how to sell on pinterest - example of professional photography pins

You can also create a beautiful, branded graphic Pin like the one below that draws users in and entices them to save, click on and purchase what you’re promoting.

how to sell on pinterest - example of branded graphic pin

Or you can do a mix of both, where you create a graphic or text overlay alongside a professional photo, providing information on a product and a product photo.

how to sell on pinterest - example of graphic and photo pin

2. Focus on Pinterest SEO

Pinterest is a visual search engine, which means it has its own search engine optimization rules and algorithms.

Focus on industry keywords and use them strategically in your Pin titles and descriptions, as well as your in board titles and descriptions.

Make sure that you’re incorporating your keywords properly and naturally to help ensure your Pinterest SEO will work. This will expand the reach of your Pinterest content, increasing the likelihood that someone will buy.

3. Use Rich Pins

Rich Pins extract extra data and information from your website to display alongside the normal pin info (like photo, title, description, etc.).

It pulls in the price and product descriptions so that users are able to view this information within Pinterest itself. On mobile, users will even be able to click a blue Shop button to head right to your product and check out.

If the shop offers this info, these Pins will even let you know whether or not the product is in stock.

Here is an example of a product Rich Pin from Etsy.

how to sell on pinterest - example of a product rich pin

These types of Rich Pins work once you claim your website on Pinterest (see the “Getting your brand ready to sell on Pinterest” section). So take advantage of the platforms offering to draw in more sales.

4. Use promoted Pins

Want to push your Pins to the top instead rather than relying solely on your Pinterest SEO. Invest in promoted Pins!

These can be anything – a lead magnet, a blog post or a product.

Promoted product Pins can be helpful for generating more sales as they simply take the user directly to your website.

As you see below with Crate and Barrel’s promoted Pin, users will easily be able to see which company is promoting pins so they know which site they’ll be taken to.

how to sell on pinterest - promoted pin example

When creating promoted Pins, you’ll be able to target by interest, age and gender. You can create entire campaigns or quick ads for a one-off promotion.

5. Organize Pins into Catalogs

Catalogs are an excellent Pinterest business account feature to use if you have products to promote — which is likely true if you’re a brand or business!

As long as you have a data source of all your products and their attributes, you should be able to upload the file into Pinterest. Once the data source is approved, any product you add to your website will also automatically create product Pins which you can then use to create shopping ads.

One thing to note: If it turns out you do not have the right data source to create Catalogs, then you’ll have to use Rich Pins instead (tip #4 above!).

6. Tag products in Shop the Look Pins

Shop the Look Pins are a great way to link to several products at once in a single Pin. Whether it’s an outfit or home decor post, each product available for purchase in the photo is shown via a white dot that users can click on to see more.

Source

You can share photos of your models wearing an outfit of your latest collection or a room filled with your furniture or similar products to promote more products on the platform.

The process for Shop the Look Pins is manual, and once your Pin is linked to your claimed website, you can tag as many products as you’d like.

7. Share user-generated content (UGC)

Found a celeb or well-known influencer using your product? Use that to your advantage!

Better yet, set up influencer marketing campaigns to consistently generate content you can share on Pinterest and entice your audience to buy.

You can even use UGC as Shop the Look Pins or promote these photos to grab user attention even more. Social proof is everything, and if a user sees someone they follow wearing your products, they’re much more likely to buy.

8. Incorporate content marketing

Blog posts that are geared towards conversions are perfect to share on Pinterest. Think gift guides, product roundups or tutorials.

Mothers Day Gift Guide on Pinterest as an opportunity to curate and sell products

These are great pieces of content to save and promote on the site that will generate clicks, and if you put your content together properly, conversions.

Start selling on Pinterest

Learn even more about how to sell on Pinterest by checking out more Sprout Social Insights, like this post all about Pinterest ad targeting. Then get started creating content, saving to boards, promoting and targeting, then watch the sales roll in.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-sell-on-pinterest/feed/ 1 Your guide to Pinterest ad targeting success https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-ad-targeting/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-ad-targeting/#respond Mon, 17 Feb 2020 13:16:02 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=134043/ A huge part of social media advertising is making sure you’re targeting the right audience. Each social media platform has their own targeting capabilities, Read more...

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]]> A huge part of social media advertising is making sure you’re targeting the right audience. Each social media platform has their own targeting capabilities, and it’s important to know the best ways to target your people on each.

While you might know a lot about creating great Pinterest ads, are you showing them to the right people?

Understanding how Pinterest ad targeting works is key to creating great ads that generate the most buzz, awareness, traffic and conversions for your buck.

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about Pinterest advertising targeting and how you can put together the most effective Pinterest ads for your business.

Why use Pinterest advertising

Pinterest has over 320 million monthly active users, which gives you a large audience for your ads. Plus, 89% of pinners are using the platform to shop for future purchases, making the chance for conversion that much higher.

Pinterest ads show up natively in feeds, seamlessly fitting in with other content. This further increases the chances that users will click and convert, making Pinterest ads extremely powerful and effective.

Why your Pinterest ad targeting matters

Targeting your Pinterest ads is important because it helps you to find the best audience for your product, service or content.

Ensuring that you’re targeting people with interests, search behavior and demographics that match your business matters so that your ads are where they’ll have the biggest impact.

Placing your content in front of the people who may actually want to see it is the first step to creating successful Pinterest ads.

Let’s jump into the various targeting types and how you can ensure you find the right audience for your ads.

Pinterest ad campaign objectives

When you’re getting started with your Pinterest ad, the first step is to choose your ad objective. This is similar to other platforms like Facebook, where you need to first state the goal you’re hoping to achieve with your ad before moving forward.

In Pinterest, there are six different campaign objectives for you to choose from.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest campaign objectives

Brand awareness

This is the perfect way to just get the word out there about your brand. Brand awareness ads are top of funnel ads that simply help people learn that your business exists. You can lead to top level landing pages to introduce people that click through to what you do.

Video views

You can run video ads on Pinterest, and choosing this objective will help to put your video in front of the most people possible. It’s another awareness type ad, giving you the best chance to put your business front and center for new people.

Traffic

This is the best objective for you if your goal is to send traffic to a certain post, landing page, product or service. It’s more than just getting people to see your ad, but isn’t quite to the point of driving sales and conversions.

App install

If your brand is trying to promote an app and get Pinterest users to install it on their mobile devices, Pinterest has an ad objective just for you. Create an app install ad to see how successful it is for you.

Conversions

You need a verified Pinterest tag installed on your website in order to utilize this ad objective, but it’s a great way to track conversions from your ads. Use this objective to increase conversions like signups and purchases through your Pinterest ads.

Catalog sales

You will have to upload a data source of products to use the catalog sales conversion, but it’s a great way to showcase your products on Pinterest and increase sales. Once your data source is approved, product pins are automatically created and you can then sort products and create ads.

Pinterest ad targeting options

As soon as you choose your Pinterest ad objective, you move onto the targeting section. When selecting your targeting, you want to be as precise as possible to ensure the right audience finds your ads.

There are three main targeting categories to work with when pinpointing who to show your ad to – audience, interest and keyword targeting – plus a few extended targeting options to narrow your audience down even further.

Audience targeting

Audience targeting is where you can create an audience based on your website visitors, email list or existing Pinterest audiences.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest audience targeting

Once you click to create a new audience, you’re taken to a new dashboard to get started. Click the red Create audience button at the top to choose the type of audience you want to create.

pinterest ad targeting - types of audiences to create

Targeting a group of people gets you a basic audience before narrowing it down even further based on the specific ad, content or product/service you’re promoting.

After you select the group of people you want to target, click Next and name your audience. Then complete the rest of the steps before moving onto the next targeting option.

Interest targeting

The next Pinterest ad targeting option is based on your audience’s interests. What do they like? What types of pins are they saving?

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest interest targeting

Everyone uses the Pinterest platform in ways that are completely unique to their own personal interests. That’s why creating Pinterest ads by interest in the perfect way to target your specific customer base as well as people who are interested in your products or services.

As an example, if you’re selling wedding veils and accessories, selecting interests like “wedding” and “women’s fashion” could be beneficial for targeting the right audience.

Keyword targeting

The third main category is keyword targeting, which focuses on specific words or phrases that your target audience is searching on the platform.

Since Pinterest is a type of search engine, think of Pinterest keyword targeting being similar to Google and Bing ads. It will show your ads based on the search terms and keywords people are typing in.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest keyword targeting

Pinterest recommends using a minimum of 25 keywords, and it’s important to keep them relevant to your specific ad and not only to your business. You want your ads to appear when people are searching for the most similar keywords so that your ad answers their search query.

Not only can you add keywords that you want your ad to appear for, but you can set certain keywords and phrases that you don’t want your ads to appear for.

There are a few different types of keyword matches to use for Pinterest ad targeting:

  • Broad match: Reach the widest audience by having your keywords match similar searches.
  • Phrase match or exact match: Narrow in on a more specific keyword search.
  • Negative match: Choose keywords that you don’t want your ads to appear for.

The negative keyword matches are helpful when your product or service has a name that is similar to another and not accurate industry. By using negative keyword matches, your ads won’t appear in those industry topic results where they aren’t useful.

Other Pinterest ad targeting options

While audience, interest and keyword targeting are the most important categories to focus on, there are other targeting options that you don’t want to forget either.

You can set certain parameters and demographics when you’re trying to cater to a specific audience, like you see below.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest demographics

There are also certain ad placements that you can set to determine where you want your ads to appear. You can choose all locations, only when people browse through their home feeds or only when people search for something on the platform.

pinterest ad targeting - pinterest ad placements

And then there are Pinterest extended targeting options. With this targeting option, you allow Pinterest to use their algorithm and tools to automatically target your ad to the audience that it thinks will perform best.

This targeting option is unique to Pinterest, as no other social media platform offers an automatic targeting option. And it can be a great way for beginners with little to no ad experience to still see a great return on their Pinterest ads.

Get started with Pinterest ads

Knowing how to get your Pinterest ads in front of the right audience can make a different to your digital marketing campaign. Learn more about Pinterest advertising and creating a picture perfect Pinterest marketing strategy on our blog. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to learn more about social media and Pinterest marketing strategies.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-ad-targeting/feed/ 0 How to set up a travel social media marketing strategy https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-travel/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-travel/#respond Tue, 17 Dec 2019 13:18:26 +0000 http://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=93749/ We’ve all seen the social posts: selfies from a beach vacation, airplane wings en route to a faraway destination and delicious meals in a Read more...

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]]> We’ve all seen the social posts: selfies from a beach vacation, airplane wings en route to a faraway destination and delicious meals in a different city. Through all the changes and growth that social media has experienced in the last decade, some things stay the same. Vacations are posted about in all of their stages: planning, sourcing recommendations and the trip itself. Social media plays an important role in all of this and travel companies should recognize it or risk stagnation.

Whether you’re a luggage company or a hotel, our tips should give you some ideas to test out on social. You’ll notice that a lot of the ideas are centered around content and that is because travel lends itself to a more visual audience. People want to see what the experience will be like and they need to see it often. Read on to find out how to take advantage of social media to get the message out about your travel brand.

Basics: Set yourself up for success

If you’re starting your strategy from scratch or just looking to update your current one, taking a look at the resources available to you is always step one. You can’t manage four different social networks by yourself if you have a large and active audience. Responding to comments alone would take up a lot of your time. So what kind of resources are we talking about?

Staff is the most obvious one. How many people do you need for your company to successfully meet goals for sourcing and creating content, posting, managing comments and DMs and keep an eye out for complaints? Is your company large enough that you need a 24-hour watch on social media? Managing a single-location company is far more different than managing a multi-location one, especially if it spans multiple time zones.

The next basic resource to pay attention to is skill. This ties closely to staff because you want to make sure you have all the right skillsets to execute your strategy. And if you don’t, then you’ll need to be comfortable outsourcing. Social media managers tend to have a lot of different skills, including excellent communication and writing.

Third, get your budget in order. Ads are an important part of the travel industry. If you’re running flash deals on social media, ads are the way to go and you need to make sure you have the budget to promote them.

Lastly, document your strategy with goals. Without clear social media goals per network, your strategy will flounder. The best way to set these up is to evaluate your current audiences and see how they’re using each network. For example, if your customers like to use Twitter for direct customer service, set up goals on response time and a feedback loop of how well your responses are performing. Have a response plan in place for common questions and complaints.

Setup might take a while and you’ll go through several iterations in trial and error, but having a basic plan in place will save you wasted effort in the long run. Having a total picture of the resources available to you will help you know if you should be active on that additional social network or not.

Plan posts for each portion of the purchase cycle

For more expensive getaways and items, the purchase cycle will be longer. For travel brands, this means you’re playing the long game and need to make sure you have posts targeted for each stage.

At the beginning of 2019, Pinterest released their travel personas and trend report. It noted that “69% of Travel Pinners use Pinterest to discover travel services when deciding what to book.” The Pinners typically booked within two months of starting research and research included everything from what to bring to what to do.

carnival cruising tips pinterest board

Instead of directly promoting their services to customers, cruise company Carnival created a “Cruising Tips” Pinterest board for those still thinking about going on a cruise or have recently booked. The guides are a nice mix of what to expect when you go on a cruise to how to stick to your exercise routine.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a hotel or a travel backpack company. The principles of targeting consumers at each part of the purchase cycle remain the same. Don’t forget that you’re not done when they’ve made the purchase. You want to keep them constantly engaged and reminded of your product or service.

Understand different generations

Millennials and the younger Generation Z groups have more spending power now but to market to them, you’ll need to understand their social media use. An Expedia study of millennial and Gen Z travel behaviors found that they were heavily influenced by social media.

expedia study

Eighty-four percent of Gen Z and 77% of millennials surveyed had been influenced by social media when planning their travel. More than 70% surveyed were open to help and inspiration during the planning process.

expedia study on travel and social

Both Gen Z and millennials named appealing imagery and deals as the two most informative pieces of social media content. Photos and videos maybe costly to create and produce but they will be worth it in the long run.

To ease the content sourcing pain, include user-generated content from past customers. This works particularly well for high-ticket purchases. Potential customers get to see what they’ll be buying through the lens of someone who’s already been. It establishes credibility to your brand so you’re not the only ones talking about you.

Marriott Hotels consistently uses user-generated content to promote its various hotel locations. They give glimpses into what it’s like to stay at a location. While some photos and videos on your account will be staged, you can bring in additional authenticity by reposting ones created by their guests.

Respond to reviews

Reputation management is important in travel and this doesn’t mean only responding to complaints. According to a Harvard Business Review study with TripAdvisor, it found that once hotels started responding to reviews, they saw a drop in the amount of short negative reviews. Knowing that management was reading and responding to reviews made for more thoughtful posts.

In a 2019 study, TripAdvisor noted that 81% of respondents frequently rely on reviews before booking a hotel. Travel purchases represent a major investment of money, time and even the emotional expectations people place on anticipating a great vacation, so your audience depends on feedback from reviews and social media to figure out how to spend their money and effort. This is why staying engaged and responsive on both social networks and review sites is key to building a travel brand’s presence.

Sprout review management

To make it easier on yourself, use Sprout’s new review management tool to respond to reviews on Google My Business, Facebook and TripAdvisor all in one place.

The next essential step is to create an online review management strategy. This involves coming up with tone, vocabulary and common scenarios that might need addressing.

how reviews influence decisions to use local business

Online reviews do influence consumer behaviors so it’s best to approach them like any compliment or complaint you might have in person. Be sure to respond in a timely manner, listen to what they’re saying, offer a resolution if you’re able to and e sure to avoid a defensive tone. Pretend that you’re being recorded and the video will be posted publicly for eternity–this will help you avoid lashing back at difficult customer feedback in the heat of the moment. Future customers will read your responses, so how you respond is important.

Divide & conquer

For multi-location businesses, it’s sometimes best to create separate accounts for your national and local brands. The national brands can amplify local messaging and connect with loyal brand advocates while the local brands can address in-the-moment customer service queries and promote their immediate area.

Following the lead of other large corporations, you may even set up a separate account to address customer service inquiries. All of this is up to your company and your available resources. For whichever circumstances you fall under, Sprout makes it easy for enterprise companies to post in a cohesive and collaborative manner. Divide your local branches up into groups but still give them access to your Sprout Asset Library.

Ace Hotel does a good job of creating a cohesive national brand presence while their local accounts focus on what’s happening in that location or city. Each local account also runs promotions to make following them more appealing to those who are thinking of booking.

Conclusion

The travel industry is large and encompasses many different types of companies. But whether you’re a single-location vacation rental or a multi-location global company, travelers still want to hear from you. Your best bet is to plan carefully and get creative. Take inspiration from other companies and be sure to invest in a strategy and professional imagery.

idyllcove social presence

Idyllcove Vacation Cabin is a great example of one location doing their best at promotion. The shots posted are always on brand even when they’re user-generated content. To help potential visitors cement their decision, they created a highlight that tours the cabin. And the Guest Snaps highlight makes use of user-generated Story content.

Airbnb, on the other hand, is on the opposite end of the vacation rental spectrum. The company uses Instagram to highlight its many available places to book and what you can expect out of each one. In the above example, you can not only picture yourself there but you also get ideas on what you can do while you’re staying there.

Whatever your specialization is in the travel industry, the basic tenets are the same: get your basics down, respond to reviews in a timely and gentle manner and don’t forget the newer generation.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-travel/feed/ 0 Customer success is the new sales https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-success-new-sales/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-success-new-sales/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:00:24 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/adapt/?p=961 Sales without success can fall flat. But success without sales can still be a thriving business.

The post Customer success is the new sales appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> I stayed at Hyatt’s Andaz hotel on my last trip to London. My room wasn’t quite ready when I’d arrived. A minor inconvenience, but they’d set me up with everything I needed in the gym to refresh while they stored my luggage.

Before I’d even finished an impromptu workout, my room was ready. And not only ready, it was stocked with healthy snacks to make my stay sweeter. The cherry on top was a personalized email they sent me after check-out, making sure I’d enjoyed my time with them and asking me to share any feedback.

This level of personalization isn’t reserved for the hospitality industry. It is the new world of customer experience we live and play in. And if your business isn’t playing on this level, it’s not playing at all.

Sales has long served as the foundation for growing companies, bridging the gap between customer needs and products or services. But social ushered in the era of the consumer, giving way to a new growth engine: customer success.

Historically, customer success has been defined as strictly a business function; a designated team responsible for ensuring customers get the most value out of the solution you’re providing to them. But it’s more than a function, it’s a philosophy:

How do you ensure your customers are getting maximum value in every interaction with your company?

 

By that definition, every person in your organization is accountable for customer success. And that’s the way we have to look at it or we risk not meeting our consumers’ increasingly high expectations.

Sales without success can fall flat. But success without sales can still be a thriving business, especially with the rise of product-led growth models. Companies that haven’t evolved to meet this standard are the ones ripe for disruption. The value that an integrated customer success philosophy brings to your business isn’t just stronger customer relationships, it’s also the positive impact it has on customer adoption, loyalty and the bottom line.

It’s a human thing

Today, people’s access to information has drastically changed buying behavior. Customers have already done their research before you even know they’re a prospect. Comparing competitors, scouring social, reading reviews—by the time people connect with your business, they’ve already gone through stages of awareness and evaluation, even some consideration.

This is where the emphasis on connection and relationship building starts to evolve in business models. When trust is high, people are more likely to take risks and engage in a sale. It makes you think about the emergence of subscription-based businesses. In the old transactional world, I’d already achieved the majority of my financial success with you after you’d paid one lump sum up front. But in this environment, success requires that we meet (and exceed) our customers’ needs every single day because they now have choice and flexibility.

By 2020, all new entrants and 80% of tech solution providers will have adopted the subscription-based model, making the reality of disruption that much more relevant to our jobs today. The onus is on us as salespeople to understand more about the customer and constantly bring them deeper levels of value than anything they can find on the homepage.

The perks

Customer success affects every aspect of your business, from revenue to customer adoption to brand loyalty.

The more you help customers succeed early on, the more likely they are to grow with you in the long term. As you continue to evolve your offering, engaged customers are more likely to consume those new features and services because they’ve built a level of trust with you.

But it’s not simply about trust. It’s about anticipating and staying ahead of changing needs. The very function of success ensures your customer stays your customer, no matter what breaks, changes or evolves.

This level of long-term relationship building is vital to the bottom line. It’s easier to sell to current customers than it is to new customers—sales cycles are lower, the value of those deals is greater and it comes with a lower customer acquisition cost. But it goes beyond that.

From a brand perspective, voice of the customer (and the access we have to it today) is so powerful. Twenty years ago a customer looking for a peer-to-peer review of a product or service would have to turn to his or her personal networks. Today, that person can go online and find feedback on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor—there are countless public hubs where the relationships you’ve built can shine and inform more potential customers than ever before.

The pitfalls

If you don’t change the mentality of your organization, you’re forfeiting your success. Every member of your team needs to understand the philosophy of focusing on the customer.

At Sprout we realized this from our own experience with customer onboarding. We pride ourselves on customers being able to get into a trial, connect their profiles and start using our platform within minutes. But we also made assumptions about how simple that was on the customer’s end.

We came to recognize that as we continued to add more value and sophistication in the platform, our customers weren’t organically using all of these new capabilities. So if we’re not investing in onboarding and training services for all of our customers, they may never reach the level of value that they came to us for. That realization was a great driver for us to set the goal of onboarding 100% of customers so everyone (regardless of spend or size) has access to resources that will maximize their time spent in our product.

We learned that if we put that effort in, the customer’s rate of success goes through the roof and they’re even more likely to find unexpected value in our product.

A new frontier

If I was to start over in my career, I would go into customer success. There are books and resources and experts galore in every other business function, but there’s still plenty of room to pioneer in this one. The definition of a great customer success strategy is still evolving, and that’s exciting.

The demand for this kind of customer care is only growing. Every company is now faced with rethinking their business model and prioritizing customer success. Because being easy to do business with is table stakes. It’s about being a joy to do business with that makes the difference. Beyond technical support, customer success is the miracle of all your business functions coming together with one overall goal: making your customers wildly successful.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-success-new-sales/feed/ 0 How Loews Hotels & Co succeeds at scale with Sprout Social’s all-in-one platform https://sproutsocial.com/insights/case-studies/loews-hotels/ Tue, 13 Aug 2019 18:05:46 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=casestudies&p=129546/ With 24 hotels and counting throughout the US and Canada, Loews Hotels & Co understands how vital the human touch is to delivering exceptional Read more...

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]]> With 24 hotels and counting throughout the US and Canada, Loews Hotels & Co understands how vital the human touch is to delivering exceptional experiences to its guests.

At the same time, the company knows first-hand the important role technology plays in helping a company of its size stay organized, create time efficiencies and discover valuable business intelligence.

That’s why Loews utilizes Sprout Social to connect with customers on their communication channel of choice: social media.

Having a platform which would allow us to collaborate, to have visibility into what’s happening at the hotels and have analytics all in a one-stop shop, that was one of the main reasons we went to Sprout.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Confronting complexity

Director of Social Media & Content Strategy Simon Kopec oversees the company’s social media team, working with a marketing manager who focuses on analytics and tactical execution across Loews’ primary social accounts.

However, each property also has its own dedicated social media specialist.

“For example, for our Loews Hotels @ Universal Orlando properties, social is handled by three individuals across what’s soon to be seven hotels,” Kopec said. “They have a single Instagram account that goes across all hotels, and each hotel has its own independent Facebook Page. Of course, there are situations with certain hotels where they may have additional social accounts running at the same time, so it’s all about partnership and collaboration efforts across all our hotels.”

Properties are split into two sub-categories: those under the core Loews consumer brand and Immersive Destinations, which are branded collaborations.

“All our hotels take the strategy outlined by the brand and are able to pull down from that,” Kopec said. “In terms of the tactical components, we do have variances when it comes to each hotel’s target audiences and marketing communication priorities.”

With Sprout we are able to get all our social messages in a single location, and not only see who we need to respond to, but know what actions have already been taken by other team members.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Supporting collaboration, driving adoption

With social specialists who handle multiple hotels and report into several entities, tools that support streamlined collaboration and communication are essential.

“We wanted a tool that could bring us together—that was one of the top priorities we were looking for in terms of a social media management platform,” Kopec said. “Having a platform which would allow us to collaborate, to have visibility into what’s happening at the hotels and have analytics all in a one-stop shop, that was one of the main reasons we went to Sprout.”

Ease of use was exceptionally important to Loews Hotels & Co as well. Regular promotions are the norm and using a platform that could be easily adopted by new team members was a must.

“It was important for us to cater to the various needs of our users, from the social media pro to a more novice lead to a new hire,” Kopec said. “Our workflows and how we gather content from different properties, it’s all through Sprout.”

Beyond a user-friendly interface and approval functionalities, Sprout’s collaboration tools also enable Loews to assign tasks across different teams, route incoming messages for proper and immediate response and measure workflow efficiency by analyzing how long it takes team members to complete tasks.

Previously we had a social management tool and a separate analytics tool. Having everything live in a single location, that was a big value proposition for us.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Streamlining engagement, simplifying workflow

Engaging with potential and current guests is as important to Loews Hotels & Co as maintaining oversight and optimizing efficiency.

“Our hotels are in the epicenter of their destinations, and we really want to build communities around them—it’s part of the ethos of the company,” Kopec said. “Whether it’s answering customer service questions or responding to an inquiry, we want to make sure we’re visible, available and relevant on the social channels our customers are using.”

This focus on customer care is vital, as social is the No. 1 channel for addressing customer service issues among Millennials, and the No. 2 channel overall. Additionally, 50% of consumers will boycott a brand if they receive poor responses on social, and 38% expect brands to respond to their inquiries within 5 hours.

Loews Hotels image

“With Sprout we are able to get all our social messages in a single location, and not only see who we need to respond to, but know what actions have already been taken by other team members,” Kopec said. “That level of collaboration and visibility across multiple people wasn’t something we had before and was something we were really looking for.”

In addition to helping the company stay on top of incoming social messages, Sprout’s Smart Inbox empowers Loews Hotels & Co to monitor keywords, hashtags and locations to discover unique engagement opportunities. Along with Sprout’s publishing, analytics, listening and advocacy tools, these features helped the company consolidate the number of different softwares it was using in favor of an all-in-one approach.

“Previously we had a social management tool and a separate analytics tool,” Kopec said. “Having everything live in a single location, that was a big value proposition for us.”

We use social listening to look for a lot of different things. The happiest of them all, obviously, is identifying opportunities to surprise and delight our guests.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Identifying opportunities, serving customers

Social listening in particular has been a major focal point for Loews Hotels & Co.

Using Sprout’s Advanced Listening tool, companies are able to tap into the world’s largest and most diverse focus group to evaluate brand health, discover competitive insights, access industry intelligence and more, all by analyzing publicly available social conversations.

“We use social listening to look for a lot of different things,” Kopec said. “The happiest of them all, obviously, is identifying opportunities to surprise and delight our guests.”

Kopec shared a recent example in which a woman tweeted at her friend about visiting a theme park in Orlando, asking for recommendations.

“We found the message using Advanced Listening, and we sent her a tweet with a number of links to our blog specifically about the travel needs she had mentioned,” Kopec said. “Included were articles about restaurants that are available within the park, an article about new attractions, some tips and tricks on how to get through the lines quicker, and which attractions to visit at which times.”

For enterprise-level companies with many team members, it’s important to find companies like Sprout that are there to support you. I can count on Sprout to be a reliable vendor, great supplier and true collaborator.
Simon Kopec
Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Loews Hotels & Co

Crafting strategy, strengthening scalability

Loews Hotels & Co relies on Sprout for more than software, however.

The Sprout Social Professional Services team provides customers with actionable insights, strategic recommendations and critical data to help them thrive both on and off social. In the case of Loews, this took the form of “report cards” for individual properties.

“We knew that on a quarterly basis we wanted to provide social leads and our field teams with easy-to-understand benchmarks in terms of what’s working best at their hotels,” Kopec said. “We worked with the Professional Services team to identify the key indicators we should be looking for.”

The company also turned to Professional Services for assistance with quarterly marketing campaign analysis to evaluate performance.

“The team at Sprout helped us realize we could maximize even more potential, walking us through what data might be useful based on their expertise,” Kopec said. “It’s not just the data, but the knowledge and experience and best practices Sprout brings, not only from an industry perspective, but from outside it as well.”

Loews Hotels image

For enterprise companies, it’s not enough for software partners to provide valuable tools and services. They must also deliver them at scale.

“Sprout offers hands-on support, and is eager and willing to train our team,” Kopec said. “For enterprise-level companies with many team members, it’s important to find companies like Sprout that are there to support you. I can count on Sprout to be a reliable vendor, great supplier and true collaborator.”

At the end of the day, beyond all the bells and whistles, Loews Hotels & Co knows social media is about real-life connection.

“All this technology is a way to enable human behavior at our hotels,” Kopec said. “Removing humanity through tech is not what we’re about. It always comes down to how we can make your experience better. Everything we do, especially in the digital world, is looked at through the lens of: How is this going to improve the human experience?”

With the help of Sprout Social, Loews Hotels & Co will continue to empower its teams to deliver that human touch.

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