Travel Counsellors Embrace Digital Tools to Grow Their Business

The ‘myTC’ app is just one of the digital tools our Travel Counsellors have at their disposal to enhance the relationship they have with their clients. At our recent training days, we celebrated an increase in customer engagement via the app, alongside the launch of a suite of marketing tools designed to help our home-based business owners boost their booking figures.

Since its launch in July 2016, the app has seen a 20% increase in the conversion rate of quotes to bookings, when compared to other digital marketing tools such as email, with internal research also indicating that customers are more likely to book after downloading the app and receiving their travel quotation on their mobile phone.

During the Mini Conferences, Digital strategy and innovation director, Waseem Haq, announced an App Store customer feedback score of 4.8/5, telling Travel Counsellors; “Feedback from both customers and Travel Counsellors after using myTC app has been extremely positive. With over 14,000 users of myTC, it’s been really interesting to see customers engage with their Travel Counsellor through the app, and it has proven to be a fundamental tool in enhancing the personal relationship and enabling the customer to have their ‘TC in their pocket’ wherever they are in the world.”

“The app also supports the entire customer journey, from initial enquiry to landing back home and beyond, housing all travel documentation and enabling push notifications for travel alerts when needed. It’s fantastic to see that both our Travel Counsellors and customers are embracing all the features myTC app has to offer to make their travel experience as smooth, easy and enjoyable as possible.”

Embracing digital marketing tools

Establishing your business in a digital world and embracing technology was a key topic throughout the conferences as Travel Counsellors were encouraged to integrate social media into how they run their businesses.

It was revealed that Travel Counsellors who were taking advantage of the digital marketing tools available to them, enjoyed 55% more enquires, nearly 60% more bookings and a 10% increase in booking value when utilising our email campaigns to marketing to their customers.

Business Development Executive Jason Hylton explained how Travel Counsellors could progress from being a “Digital Adopter”, someone who is new to social media as a business owner, to a “Digital Native”, who lives and breathes social media and grows their business mostly through Facebook, utilising the training and assets provided by our Marketing Team. To support them, we were delighted to announce the launch of our brand new “Digital Marketing Accelerator” programme – a digital marketing focussed exclusive course, covering a wide-range of content from customer segmentation and blogging, to social media and email marketing.

Success with user-generated video content

With recent success in the use of user-generated videos, Travel Counsellors were encouraged to share video content that showcases the types of experiences they can tailor-make for their customers. Demonstrating the power of video on social media, Waseem shared the success of a customer-made video of a trip to Lapland which contributed to a 28% increase in bookings. The video generated over 35,000 views and 400 shares on our Facebook page. You can check out the video below:

Boosting customer engagement with marketing activity

“Our data tells us that customers who receive our marketing emails are more likely to go onto make a booking,” continues Haq. “And when the email or social post features video content from our customers or Travel Counsellor’s themselves, we see further engagement. We’re constantly designing and creating marketing tools that enable our Travel Counsellor’s to run effective marketing campaigns to their customer contacts, fans and followers, so that they can continue to grow their businesses from strength to strength.”