Streamlining Marketing and Investment Returns of an Online Travel Agency

Our Client

An online travel agency based in New Jersey, USA, creating personalized travel experiences for their customers.
With over a decade of operation, they provide a range of services, including custom travel itineraries, a user-friendly online booking platform, and access to experienced trip planners or guides.
The company is known for its green travel initiatives and places a strong emphasis on responsible and sustainable tourism.

Despite having a fair marketing budget, the client faced these challenges:

Inadequate Revenue Growth:

Even with an increase in marketing spending to $13K, the client’s revenue only saw a slight $0.2 million uptick.
Heavy Dependency on Marketing:

The client heavily relies on marketing activities to generate sales leads in an intensely competitive travel industry, competing against giants like Expedia, Booking.com, Kayak, and numerous other OTAs and meta-search organizations.
Lack of Cost-Effectiveness:

The client was looking for solutions to reduce the escalated marketing expenditure without compromising the boost in sales, aiming for a more cost-effective approach.
Heavy Competition:

The client faced the challenge of competing with well-established industry leaders who have substantial market share and resources.
Unmet ROI expectations:

The client was seeking a strategy to maximize the return on investment (ROI) for the increased marketing budget while maintaining sales numbers.

Our data experts worked closely with the client to understand their situation and curated custom data solutions for them.

Reallocating Marketing Budget

- We understood the importance of marketing for acquiring new customers. Our approach involves smartly reallocating the budget from non-performing channels to high-quality lead sources.

Data Warehousing

Our data experts designed a data warehouse to consolidate data from multiple sources.
We set up an AWS server to centralize data, including Zopim chat data, Right Signature data, CRM sales data, marketing expenditure data, and call logs.

Data Visualization

We transformed data into structured tables/charts/interactive visuals within the central data warehouse and utilized the “Mirror” platform for data exploration, enabling insights into trends, correlations, and anomalies.

KPIs Identification and Monitoring

Identified high and low-performance channels, guiding cost optimization decisions.

Utilized channel conversion cycle and Adstock Rate to meet desired results within expected timeframes.

Our implemented strategies delivered significant business impacts that optimized their budget and customer targeting strategies.

Enhanced Audience Targeting: The client was able to target the right set of customers (First Time/Recurring Customers) with the right channel.
Cost Optimization: By deploying an acquisition vs. re-engagement model, the client successfully optimized their marketing costs, ensuring efficient resource allocation.
Reduction in Monthly Budget: The implementation of these strategies resulted in a substantial 30% reduction in the monthly marketing budget, decreasing it from $53K to $37K.
Slight Revenue Reduction: Although there was a small reduction in revenue from $1.2 million to $1.15 million, the cost savings significantly improved the overall profitability.
Real-time Results: The use of channel conversion cycles and Adstock Rate led to the achievement of desired outcomes within the expected timeframes.

This case study showcased how smart marketing data management saved costs and improved the travel agency’s overall performance. By using data-driven decisions and refining marketing strategies, the agency ensured long-term success and growth.