5 Ways for Visitor Attractions to use Online Booking Data

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5 Ways for Visitor Attractions to use Online Booking Data

To establish safe visitor numbers for social distancing, getting everyone to buy tickets online has now become the norm.

This has opened up huge possibilities for smarter marketing at visitor attractions, whether you are a zoo, theme park, farm attraction or even indoor adventure golf.   Below are Agility’s top five marketing benefits … now all possible as 100% of tickets are purchased online.

1) Identify your geographical catchment area

Postcode mapping takes away any guesswork on how large your catchment area is.

We’ve always known (especially for outdoor attractions) visitors will travel further distance during summer as warmer weather increases the dwell time, however, now you can identify exactly how much further they will travel.   We also know Monday to Friday pre-school market is more local.. now you can find out exactly how local this is.

Geographical catchment will also vary between the holiday periods.  We’ve often found Christmas events pulls from a greater geographical area, but this isn’t always the norm.

Your data is unique to you and postcode mapping is the only way to answer these queries. We postcode map your data in Agility’s Marketing Review.

Doing the postcode analysis will inform your current catchment how this varies throughout the year and which areas you are most likely to succeed at increasing market share from.

2) Establish accurate cost per acquisition costs for digital advertising

Prior to COVID-19 we weren’t able to track visitors who turned up and paid at the gate.  Since reopening, tracking has enabled us to identify exactly the marketing cost per ticket sold.

Using these results give attractions a true picture of marketing effectiveness and reassurance that it is working.  

With a huge number of marketing channels available to us including  Facebook, Google, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and TikTok, we can be 100% confident which platforms are the most important ‘converting’ online marketing channels and the most important ‘converting’ audiences.

Unfortunately, the recent IOS update (currently being rolled out) to safeguard everyone’s privacy means less conversions can be tracked per URL unless customers opt in.  We will shortly be writing a blog about this change and the impact on the attraction industry.  If you wish to understand these changes, please sign up to our blogs.

3) Work out how often people return

We can now also use the data to work out how often people return. 

At Agility, we postcode map visitors into 4 different groups which show those catchments with the highest propensity of visiting.   Repeating the return visit calculation for each group can reveal some useful results and give opportunities for the email marketing to be adapted for those likely to visit once a year, compared to those who visit three to four times a year.

Some online ticketing systems are now becoming highly sophisticated and can automatically identify a customer who has been twice or more within a set period of time.  These customers should be ‘hot’ targets to buy an annual pass and go into an ‘automated’ email campaign to upsell to a season pass.

If your online ticketing system isn’t yet offering this capability, it is recommended you ask them to add it to their development list.

4) Convert most prospects by targeting those who start but don’t complete the sales process

Similarly, some online ticketing systems will enable you to trigger a customer service email if they start to buy an online ticket but don’t complete it.  If your ticketing provider can do this, make sure you update your privacy policy and use the appropriate method of consent for GDPR.   If you need advice on this, please contact the Agility team.

5) Use CRM to unlock more repeat business

This last benefit has always existed, however, with more email addresses for email marketing, visitor attractions should now be investing in their CRM.  You should be unlocking email automation and segmentation based on triggers.

In a tracking study measuring the impact of October Half Term marketing, we proved for a number of clients that email marketing is still the highest converting lead source. 

Please email us at hello@agility-marketing.co.uk if you’d like to understand more.

WRITTEN BY ANITA WADDELL, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF AGILITY MARKETING

With the same budget as the previous year, Agility have really taken our Digital Advertising to the next level. In fact, appointing Agility was the best decision we made for the business in 2019.

Chris Baily | Tulleys Farm