By Suzanne Mahoney, Co-founder of LiBi e-commerce platform (www.libiloves.com)
Businesses in almost every sector are increasingly utilising data capture in a bid to improve efficiency, provide enhanced customer services, and ultimately help with profitability and forward-thinking decision making.
And hotels should be no different – if the right digital tools to capture, analyse and report back are in place.
This has been a founding principle of our newly launched e-commerce model, as a service to the hotels, aparthotels and resorts signing up as our customers. Not only are we here to help our partners sell the things that guests have loved about their stay to take home, but we are here to help with business intelligence and learnings, too.
In the current competitive climate, every weapon, every validation or proof point behind choices, and every element of confidence you can instil in the background for your hotel decision making should be latched onto. Sometimes for endorsement of your thinking, sometimes to see something surprising you hadn’t thought of. Data is the lifeblood of making the right call, being hyper relevant for guests, and for reporting to your teams, managers, owners and stakeholders. For sharing success, and for recommending change.
With the right partners and the emergence of fresh smart-tech solutions, businesses now have a readily available way to access the customer data that counts. Below, we have compiled the top ways in which businesses can get to know their guests better through data capture techniques:
1) QR codes
People love QR codes for the extra info they bring, so why not work these into your marketing strategy? Effective QR codes can capture important insights that enable you to determine the success of your marketing campaigns. The codes capture the location and time of the scan, and whether the scan leads to engagement (e.g. in the form of app or product downloads). By implementing QR codes, businesses can learn who their customers are and how they’re interacting/engaging with products and services in real-time as well as over time.
2) Social media incentives
When submitting personal details, customers will likely expect something in return. To incentivise customers to input data, companies can introduce brand building competitions and giveaways on their social media channels, or trackable discount codes via simple-to-use webpage sign-up forms. By breaking the data capture process down into manageable chunks, the data flow is maximised, and you learn what the smartest triggers are for different audience types and channels.
3) Specific data capture technology
Commerce software apps are becoming increasingly popular due to their ability to capture unique customer data. They can analyse customer spending habits and identify trends, enabling companies to tailor their services/offerings accordingly, and can work alongside web or page tracking to understand customer digital journeys and dwell time.
Ultimately, the benefit of smart data use lies in staying relevant. Guests want to feel understood and listened to, and that the hotel has an approach that dovetails with their own wish list. With the right data partners, this becomes seamless. And, as no one wants to feel ‘sold to’, the natural fit that data can deliver is the ultimate win-win.
LiBi, which stands for Love It Buy, is a new e-commerce platform that enables hotel guests to buy the brands and experiences they loved on their stay away, and have them delivered to their home. Hotels need no stock on site, see no disruption to business, and need no time requirement from staff, yet earn income and insight from every sale made.
