HOW TRAVEL AGENCIES CAN UTILIZE SMS MARKETING?

SMS marketing must be an essential part of the marketing strategy for all industries especially travel agencies. Ensuring a superior customer service is essential for a business’s future success. Only through an effective customer support, a travel agency can have repeat customers and improve its reputation in the industry.

Here are some ideas on how successful hotels and travel agencies are using SMS marketing for their business.

• Confirm bookings
Travel agencies use SMS services to reduce the stress level of the customers.Customers make their bookings months in advance and tend to forget the exact dates of the event or holiday due to their busy schedule.

Ensuring everything is properly organized is time-consuming and that’s why sending a booking confirmation and keeping the customer updated regarding their booking via SMS is very beneficial. Probably, customers will never be annoyed by such messages.

• Live travel updates
Send real-time SMS updates if there is any unexpected traffic causing disruption.

• Streamline your communications
Make your customer communications process smoother with API integration.

•Improved Customer Loyalty
Text message services can increase customer loyalty by making them feel special. Here are some ideas on how you can do that via SMS services:

• Special offers – send exclusive offers to your customers. For example, informing your customers about a special trip that is available for a limited time only or sending them a special promo code valid for specific trips and bookings.

• Rewards – another way is to reward your customers since it is a way of saying thank you. This will create a special bond between you and the customer.

• Hints - as your customer approaches again, consider sending them helpful tips and bits of advice about the destination.

• Handling Emergency Situations
SMS marketing have an immediate access to the mobile phones of their customers. Thus, it is the fastest and most effective source of connecting with people and informing them about any emergency situation.

• Brand Building
Brand building is related with emotional attachment you're developing towards your company. As a travel agency, you need to be trustworthy and reliable. Providing continuous customer service via SMS increase trustworthiness towards your business. Therefore, they will be more loyal and the retention rate will be higher as well.

• Feedback
Gathering feedback is essential for a business in order to have a long-term success. There are higher possibility that the customer will respond to the survey when it’s sent via SMS. Feedback is very useful for getting closer to the customer and to improve your business.

• Advertise
SMS is also a great way to inform customers about upcoming sales and promotions. You can use past information, geographical tracking and other tools to offer great deals which can also enhance your sales.

• Send Helpful Reminders
Send your customers general or uber-specific reminders Some ideas could be:

• Giving them weather updates for their destination

• Giving them travel tips for their destination

In a nutshell, SMS marketing provide numerous benefits to travel agencies and updated services will automatically increase customer satisfaction.

Is your company fully utilizing SMS marketing? If not, maybe now is the time to act and take full advantage of the use of SMS marketing in your business.