Definition of Marketing: The activity of presenting, advertising, and selling a company's products in the best possible way.

It’s often quoted that “Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer” and T3 has powerful features to help you to understand and nurture your existing customers and to reach out to them in a number of ways.

Central to T3 Marketing is the Customer Database which captures new customers and records their contact information – this capture can be from any of the following actions:

·         New bookings – through T3 or on-line through WebRes.

·         Brochure Enquiries through T3 or WebRes

·         E-signup on a Web Form

·         Gift Voucher sales

·         Manually entered clients.

·         Bulk imported clients from legacy systems.

·         Temporary imports from purchased third party lists.

Irrespective of how the client data is captured, all your customers are located and managed through the Marketing System which can be found clicking the Letter Icon  on the main T3 Toolbar. 

Note that the Marketing Form can be re-sized and will remember it’s position provided it’s closed using the Close Button.

The Marketing Form is a springboard into a number of vital T3 functions including the configuration and execution of Marketing Extracts (both land mail and email) with all the regionalisation and campaign facilities to ensure a high degree of data mining of your clients and their history.  T3 is GDPR compliant and this entails an additional level of responsibility which must be understood and followed to avoid possible penalties for data mis-use.

On opening, the Marketing list initially appears empty as we haven’t yet told T3 what to look for, although the number of available clients is shown in the bottom right corner of the Form.  Note that the cursor is automatically positioned in the search box in the top left, so to find a customer called Smith living in the DN11 postal area, simply type Smith\DN11 and press the enter key on your keyboard – or click the Apply Search Criteria button  - and the list will then be populated by Smiths in that area.

The Client database can be searched on a number of different criteria by selecting the ‘Order’ from the list on the left.  Just select the chosen order, type in the search and press Enter.

To open a client record, double click on the line in the list of search results.  This Customer Edit Form is also available in other areas of T3, most importantly from within a Booking, so it’s essential users are familiar with the contents and understand the importance of the details held in the client record.

The Customer Edit Form contains a large amount of information about your customers and their activity.  In addition to the contact details – name, address, contact numbers, email address and more, there is general information in terms of booking frequency and value, plus essential Marketing Preferences as required by the GDPR Act.  The Customer Categories are brilliant for segmenting your client base according to interest and these are automatically populated according to the types of product the client has booked or enquired about in the past.

A more detailed analysis of the client’s activities is available from the History button on the toolbar, along with other useful utilities including Loyalty Club and Batch Payment Allocation feature.

Looking at the form in greater detail you will see a wealth of tools and features which all save time and improve the clarity and value of the client data.  It is essential that the client database is kept tidy and current as it’s a costly to fix and unprofessional to annoy people who are no longer  active (making bookings or enquires) and who have perhaps moved away or even passed away!

Clients Name & Address

Clients can be added by clicking on the NEW icon on the toolbar although more often they will be collected automatically through a new booking or brochure enquiry.   The first step is always to capture clients data cleanly and concisely and T3 support the use of AFD ‘Postcode’ and ‘Postcode Plus’ to rapidly capture addresses in a consistent format.   Simply enter the clients name (title, initials and surname) plus postcode, then click the AFD button and the address will be confirmed.  You will still need to add the house number if using AFD ‘Postcode’.

If the address is entered manually, or has been captured through WebRes, the casing might not be good, so the ‘Case’ button will set the casing to Proper Case or CAPITAL CASE as configured in the T3 System Settings for your company.

Qualification is a great tool to help you keep your client list current as it will remind users to periodically check a clients details and personal preferences when they are making a new booking or enquiry.  Asking a client to confirm their details only takes a few extra seconds but it is a great opportunity to show customers that you care, and helps maintain the value of your client base as you know the data is up to date.  Clicking the Qualify button when asked will reset the flags and park further reminders until a later date (18 months to 2 years is an ideal period.)

Additional Fields which are particularly useful are:

Email – Clients preferred email address.  Emails are instant and much cheaper than land mail so use them wherever possible BUT NOTE that the email is unique to a client.  You can’t use the same email address for more than one person and T3 is very strict on this for security reasons.

Next of Kin – details of a close contact in case of a problem while the customer is  on holiday.

Salutation – First name or nickname when addressing personised letters – for example Mrs S Smith might prefer to be addresses as  ‘Dear Sheila’ as opposed to ‘Dear Mrs Smith’.

Loyalty Club Details

T3 supports a number of Loyalty mechanisms, the most simple being the traditional ‘Travel Club’ where the client pays a subscription for an annual membership.  The Loyalty schemes are configured by clicking  on the Travel Club Icon on the Marketing Form toolbar and the setup is  covered in more detail in the Loyalty Club Section.

New Membership fees can be collected or lapsed memberships renewed by clicking the Renew Button with the necessary payment can be taken there and then. 

General Information

This is mainly read-only information, with the exception of the Client’s Date of Birth and Booking Note, a brief note which appears to the user when making new bookings to remind of a particular feature or concern.  It can remind of infirmities or important preferences.

Group Tour Operators can assign a Sales Person to a Group Organiser client so that certain actions and responsibilities for the client can be delegated to a ‘Account Manager’.

If Sales Regions have been defined, the region for the client-in-view will be shown in this section and will be derived automatically from the Postcode.

Marketing  Preferences

These are at the heart of GDPR legislation and are essentially a marketing contract with strict penalties for non compliance.  The details must be clearly ascertained from the client a

Qualification system is provided to remind users to periodically check with clients if their preferences have changed.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Marketing Preferences are Brand Aware, which means that a company operating more than one brand must qualify the client for each brand and take care to ensure marketing extracts are brand aware and that no cross-contamination of preferences occurs.

The user should be aware of and closely follow the hover-over ToolTips which accompany each tick box.  These preferences are laid down in law and we are not at liberty to change them unless instructed to do so by regulators.

Note that all changes to these preferences are noted against the relevant user in the T3 Audit Log and are available in the History Section for compliance checking.

Customer Profiling Categories – (Auto Assigned)

This is a list of Customer Interest Categories (which are set up in the Categories section of the Maintain Toolbar) and it shows all those available to the client in view. 

Ideally these categories should be assigned for every tour (through the F3 Settings button within the tour) and for every Brochure item (through Brochures on the Main T3 Toolbar).

Whenever a client books or enquires for brochures, the relevant ‘Profiling’ category is automatically ticked, allowing for the filtering by this data in the Marketing Extracts.  This is a very powerful addition to T3 and should be taken seriously to maximise the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Please note that the checkboxes can be changed manually to reflect the current interest profile of your clients.

A Few Extra Tips

After editing client details, please don’t forget to click the Save button on the toolbar, although T3 will remind you if you inadvertently attempt to move off the customer or close the Edit Form.

The arrows at the bottom of the Edit Screen are not decoration!  They enable you to move up and down the selected client list without having to close the form for one client and re-open it for the next. 

The  Notes button opens up a notepad to record simple notes. Just type a note in the bottom box and click save, and the note will is automatically assigned to the user and date/time stamped. 

The notes are read-only for most users but can be edited by those who have been assigned the privilege through the T3 Roles and Rights security system.

The  History button opens up a multi paned viewer into the various activities of the client within T3.

Travel shows details of all holidays or excursions the client has booked with you including duration, passengers, value and product/source categories. 

Note that bookings cannot be opened from this view.

Enquiries lists any brochure requests made by the client including product details and dates received and fulfilled.

Vouchers shows details of all types of voucher issued and has information about redemptions. 

Please note this is only available where the agent has declared the customer and the customer has a Marketing Record.

Sundry Items are sales of associated products and can include merchandise and annual insurance.  Further details are in the Sundry Section.

Data Protection shows an audit of any GDPR changes made for the client and are required in the event of an information request from regulators or questions by the client or their agents.

The  Loyalty button opens a Statement List showing the dates of Loyalty Statements with their opening and closing Loyalty Points values.

The  Batch button enables a single payment to be made for multiple bookings.  The list  shows only those bookings with balances and full or partial payments can be entered against each item.  Clicking the Pay All button adds together all balances and the clear button removes any selections.  To make a partial payment simply enter the amount in the Payment column and press Enter.

Marketing Form – Extended Features

In addition to servicing clients, the Marketing Form’s other main role is the production of Marketing Extractions and creating Mailing Campaigns.  The effectiveness of these extracts is built of several key considerations and the accumulation of customer history information – bookings, enquiries, profiles etc.

Regions and Ranges

T3 supports the Sales Regions – named geographic regions comprising one or more Postcode Ranges.  A Region can have any number of non-overlapping postcode Ranges, so for example DN1 – DN10 could be in Humberside while DN11 – DN22 could be in North Yorkshire and DN25 – DN30 being in West Yorkshire.  It is possible for a range to appear in multiple Sales Regions to support overlapping areas.  So, for instance, DN10 – DN11 can be in South Yorkshire or Don Valley.

Start by defining the Sales Regions.  They are simply names which divide your sales patch into easily recognisable segments.  Click the add button, enter the sales region name and tick the Current box to signify that the region is in use and will be included in selection lists.  To hide unused regions in the future, simple untick the current box and click save.

Next come the Ranges Make sure the required Sales Region is highlighted on the left, then right click on the Postcode Ranges list and select Add Item from the context menu.

Repeat the process for all the Postcode Ranges you expect to place there.  Items can be deleted by selecting Delete Item from the right-click context menu.

Finally select Rebuild Regions from the Maintain drop down list then check some clients to satisfy yourself they are in the correct Sales Regions.  This only has to be done after adding or removing Sales Regions.

Marketing Campaigns

All Marketing Extracts are now associated with Campaigns, so the best way to understand how they work is to create some! 

Click on the  Campaign button to open the Mailing Campaigns Form.

To create a new campaign click Add and enter the name of the campaign and select the Brand it will serve.  Please note that a campaign can serve only one brand in order to prevent conflicts for clients who happen to have GDPR qualified for multiple brands. 

If the same campaign is to be run for multiple brands, create an individual campaign for each brand.

To Edit a campaign, select the campaign in the list and click the Edit button on the Campaign Toolbar.

Please note that campaigns can be targeted for Direct Mail via Excel, Email via Excel or Direct Mail for Printed Labels. This tailors the format of the data export plus controls the deduplicating to one record per household for Direct Mail campaigns. Email records are not de-duped so you can expect a record for every client with an email address who matches the selected criteria. 

Marketing Extract Form

Click the  button from the Marketing Form Toolbar and you will be asked to select the Campaign from the Marketing Campaign Form as shown below.  Double click on the required campaign and the Extract Range Form will populate with the saved campaign name, target type and brand confirmed in the form header. The campaign name, target and brand can all be edited from here by clicking the Edit button.

The main purpose of the Marketing Extract Form is to allow the user to tailor an extract from a wide range of criteria drawn from the various tour, booking and brochure properties which comprise the clients history.  In addition, date ranges for travel and enquiry can be used to control the period(s) of activity plus Sales Regions and Lead Source can be brought into play.  In short, an extract can be as simple or complex as you wish to make it – and the extracts are all brand-aware to comply with the strict requirements of GDPR.

The Extract Range Form is a user defined list of filters and the control to the left contains a list of the various filters and actions necessary to drive the process.

A new Campaign is automatically assigned a ‘vanilla’ selection of filters and it is up to the user to refine the various filters to meet the needs of the extract. Filters can be added or deleted and those which are date-based can have the date ranges edited.  If no filter is selected for a particular class, an ‘All Class Types’ row will be inserted to signify that there is no specific filtering of that class.

To Refine a filter, click on the Filter Class in the list on the left and tick the filter conditions you wish to apply.  There’s never a need to tick all the items – if you want them all, don’t tick any as the default is for all in that class to be in scope.  To be clear, for example,  ‘All Customer Types’  indicates that no individual filters are selected – we want them all - everyone irrespective of their Customer Profile Category.

Double clicking on a date range opens a range box as below where you can specify dates and whether to include or exclude the range.

It is also helpful to note that a range row can be removed by right clicking on the row and select Remove Item.

The currently supported filter classes are:

Campaign:           The name, brand and target type for the extract.

Sales Regions:   All regions or a selection from the Regions & Ranges discussed earlier.

Lead Source:      All Sources or a selection of those defined in Maintain/Leads.

Tour Type * :      All Tour Category 1 types or a selection as defined in Maintain/Category.

Theme * :            All Tour Category 2 types or a selection as defined in Maintain/Category.

Customer Type: Customer Profile Categories as defined in Brochures and Tour Settings and can be seen in the ticked Profile Checkboxes on the Customer Edit Form.

Travel Range:     One or more Travel date ranges – can be set for Inclusion or Exclusion.   

Enquiry Range:  One or more Enquiry date ranges – can be set for Inclusion or Exclusion.

* Note: Tour category names can be user defined so in our example Tour Category 2 is defined as Publication.

Actions

The available actions are shown in the list on the left and perhaps the most important is Save as having created your selections, the last thing you would want to do is to lose them all.  You will always be prompted to save any changes before closing the Extract Form, and a red bar at the bottom of the form will remind you of any unsaved changes.

The actions are:

Run Extract:        Runs the saved Extract – see below.

Save:                     Save any changes and continue working.

Close:    Leave the Extract form – you will be reminded to save selections.  Next time you open the Campaign, all the saved selections will be restored.

Running the Extract sends your list of requirements and filters to the Database Engine which matches your selections to your client data and returns the data in an Excel Workbook in the folder specified for the chosen brand.  (See Brand in Maintain/Settings/Brand Tab for the user defined folder settings).

Custom Extracts 

Some customers require specialised marketing extracts which are not possible from the Extract Range Form, and these have traditionally been managed and delivered through Custom Extracts.  Please note that these are chargeable additions and are not included in the support contract.  Speak to our sales team for further information and pricing.

Like regular Custom Extracts from other areas of T3, the extract is identified by name and description from the list and the user is required to supply the required ‘Parameters’ using the simple Edit Box. Click the Execute Button to return the results in Excel Format.