Collinson Latitude developed a multifaceted international campaign to ignite loyalty programmes among aviation and hospitality brands
Collinson Latitude is a leading provider of products that deliver incremental revenues for brands and enhancements for reward and loyalty programmes. The company targets brands across the travel, financial services, telecommunication and retail industries.
Maintaining loyal customers has been a particular concern for airlines and hotel companies in recent years. Both industries have been significantly impacted by the internet, with price comparison websites making customers shop around in search of the best deals to the detriment of brand loyalty. At the same time, the global recession has caused difficult trading conditions for all travel businesses, in particular aviation and hospitality organisations.
Industry challenges
One of the challenges with loyalty programmes lies in encouraging customers to spend the loyalty currency they have accrued. These transactions are essential to ensure customers maintain close and consistently rewarding relationships with loyalty programme providers.
Encouraging redemption has become even more important with the introduction of ‘IFRIC 13’ in 2008. This international accounting standard requires companies to reflect unspent loyalty currency as a liability in their accounts, thereby impacting corporate financial performance.
Collinson Latitude wanted to encourage airlines and hotels to tackle the issue of low loyalty redemption and help give brands’ loyalty programmes a new lease of life. In particular, it sought to raise awareness and understanding of its online shopping and rewards programme RewardAll and online redemption platform iRedeem, both of which are specifically designed to make customers more frequent users of loyalty currency.
Igniting the market
Working with digital marketing agency Vivid Lime, a sister company, Collinson Latitude developed a multifaceted, international marketing campaign to target decision-makers within airlines and hotels. The campaign was named ‘Ignite’ to reflect its aim of encouraging companies to inject new energy and activity into their existing loyalty programmes by making their loyalty currency ‘red hot’.
The campaign was rolled out across the UK and continental Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, India and North America, with Collinson Latitude’s London headquarters coordinating activities with local offices in Zurich, Singapore, Dubai, Mumbai and San Francisco.
Central to the campaign was a creatively executed direct marketing pack, sent in September 2011 to approximately 250 carefully targeted senior loyalty decision-makers. The pack, delivered in a metallic ‘heat proof’ padded envelope, comprised a high-quality, branded heat-resistant glove (e.g for use with barbeques); a branded glove tag; and a personalised letter conveying the ‘Ignite’ message. The letter encouraged recipients to visit the campaign website, whereby registering their interest they could claim a matching glove for their other hand and download a copy of a Collinson Latitude loyalty marketing trend report. The website also included further information and calls-to-action regarding RewardAll and iRedeem.
All direct marketing pack recipients were subsequently followed up with an email and phone call. The follow-up email had a 35 per cent open rate, more than double the 15 per cent industry norm.
Given the scale of many airline and hotel loyalty programmes, just a single multinational client can represent a significant commercial gain for Collinson Latitude. It is therefore a great measure of success that the campaign directly generated 34 high-profile opportunities, including a leading long-haul airline, a regional US carrier and an international hotel group.
Commenting on the campaign, Janet Titterton, director at Collinson Latitude, said, “The Ignite campaign opened doors for us in areas of the market where we had a presence but wanted to be further recognised, particularly for our commercial acumen and depth of industry understanding.
“We also needed to illustrate our ability to provide targeted solutions that address current market challenges for airlines and hotels. Ignite more than met our objectives with healthy projections for future long-term revenue.”
Ongoing success
In January 2012, Collinson Latitude launched a second phase of the campaign broadening the target market with deeper messaging relating to the challenges of retaining customer loyalty.
This second phase provided an opportunity to follow up with contacts made during the initial phase, while at the same time approaching new targets.
