How Leisure Resorts Will Enrich its Customer Experience Strategy in 2020: Q&A; With Izzy Rudman

“We will be utilizing the automated campaigns functionality with Force24 to communicate messages to holidaymakers throughout their stay.”

Izzy Rudman, Digital Marketing Executive of The Leisure Resorts, discusses how the 5-star holiday experience provider plans to ramp up its multi-channel and multi-device digital environment. From building brand awareness to connecting authentically with customers, Leisure Resorts has set out to finalize their new customer experience (CX) strategy for holidaymakers in 2020. MarTech Advisor caught up with Izzy to understand how the 5-star holiday provider will execute seamless CX across each location, the benefits of purpose-driven brand loyalty, and more.

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Key takeaways from this Q&A; with Leisure Resorts on Customer Experience Strategy:

• Insights on the rapid evolution of multi-channel devices
• Top tips to create scalable influencer and word-of-mouth marketing strategies
• Latest trends to follow in customer experience for 2020 and beyond
   

Highlights of the Q&A; With Izzy Rudman of Leisure Resorts
 

Here’s the edited transcript of Izzy Rudman’s conversation with us on The Leisure Resorts’ customer experience strategy for 2020:

How have you seen the concept of ‘customer experience’ evolve in the last decade or so, given the rapid evolution of the multi-channel and multi-device digital environment? What have been the biggest areas of transformation?

The evolution of the multi-channel environment has provided companies with an incredible opportunity to interact with their audience via a whole array of non-traditional marketing platforms. More informal channels of communication such as Instagram Stories are a brilliant way to connect authentically with customers, building brand awareness naturally and genuinely, which traditional advertising campaigns struggle to do.

There are many more touchpoints for consumers to interact with companies now, and one of the biggest areas of transformation is that potential customers looking for information, reviews or to get in touch with the company will look to do this via social media channels. This is brilliant for industries such as ours, as when guests are staying with us on holiday, if they do have any feedback or issues they can communicate easily with us and the team can quickly rectify any issues, thus ensuring a 5-star holiday experience and preventing any negative feedback post-stay.

Staying engaged with the customer through their journey and delivering delightful customer experience (CX) is an imperative today. What are the basic principles that Leisure Resorts follows in CX design?

We are currently finalizing our new CX strategy for holidaymakers in 2020. We will be utilizing the automated campaigns functionality with Force24 to communicate messages to holidaymakers throughout their stay, ensuring they have all the information they need. This journey will continue after their stay, allowing us to inform our guests of our returning discount and other events and offers. The functionality within the F24 system will also allow us to provide email reminders on the anniversary of their stay. 

With our digital communications, one of the main principles which we always try to ensure is very clear messages and CTAs linking back to our website and social media platforms. F24 shows you specifically which links have been clicked on within email campaigns, so it is easy to evaluate which types of CTAs work the best.

How did you create unified processes across Leisure Resorts to execute CX so seamlessly that customers leave equally delighted at each location?

We strive to create a consistent 5-star experience at all our parks, and it is so important to us that customers can visit each of our parks and they will instantly be recognized as a Leisure Resorts Park. All our signage and communications around each of our four parks have all been created by our designer, so they are all on-brand and have the same look and feel. Regular meetings of the general managers allow for them to share best practice and myself and the other members of the marketing team regularly visit the parks to ensure the customer touchpoints are consistent throughout.

What opportunities has purpose-driven brand loyalty opened to Leisure Resorts? How can legacy brands accomplish the shift in this direction effectively?

Sending out regular, direct and personalized communications via F24 has assisted us in creating brand loyalty. It allows us to quickly and easily communicate with our holiday homeowners and our holidaymakers. Being able to easily segment our audience means that we don’t overwhelm our database with emails, instead we can focus on sending out relevant messages to the correct audiences.

Legacy brands need to be willing to plug in automated methods if they want to appeal to a more segmented audience, but they need to start by addressing their in-house systems, ensuring their CRM works alongside marketing automation and that they have the personnel in place to be able to push the brand messaging forward through direct email communications.

What are some of the practical challenges you faced with driving the selection or adoption of marketing technology tools in your organization?

The initial couple of months were spent carefully integrating F24 with our CRM to ensure that all the information was syncing to the correct aux fields, allowing both systems to work together seamlessly. From the recommendation of F24, we implemented Zapier to automatically transfer leads acquired from our social media marketing campaigns into our CRM. It did require quite a lot of work initially, however, it was an interesting project and the team at F24 were incredibly helpful. We’re always looking to challenge the norm and discover new and innovative ways to enhance customer experience, so we’re delighted with how well this partnership is working.

What are your thoughts on influencer and word-of-mouth marketing? Do you believe these are scalable strategies with revenue outcomes? Have you tried them at Leisure Resorts?

Of course, word-of-mouth marketing is the type which consumers trust the most, so we endeavor to make our holidays, short breaks and ownership experiences brilliant for everyone. We were delighted to receive the Trip Advisor certificate of excellence at Aysgarth Lodges due to the large number of positive reviews, and I am so proud of the staff at all of our parks for providing such a quality service, it certainly makes our job as marketeers much easier! When we launched our brand-new holiday park, Ullswater Heights, in the summer we worked with a variety of influencers and publications to raise initial awareness. The downside is that it is quite difficult to accurately establish the correlation between influencer posts and bookings, however I believe it to be worthwhile.

What have been your biggest learnings about transitioning to data-driven decision-making in the marketing organization at Leisure Resorts?

It is always important to constantly review data from campaigns and website traffic to ensure our communications are correct. Implementing F24 into the business has enabled us to provide much deeper insights into the effectiveness of our campaigns and allows the sales team to ensure they are communicating with the customer in the right way and at the right time.

What are the latest trends in travel and hospitality marketing that you’re tracking? How have you seen the space evolve in the digital era?

In 2020 we are hoping to utilize VR solutions to take to trade shows to provide a ‘virtual tour’ around the park and our lodges. This will also be useful on park for potential new owners to see how their lodge will look on their new pitch and to showcase future developments.

This year we’ve worked closely with a brilliant video production company, Adamedia, to produce promotional films for each of our parks. We plan to create more video content for SMM in 2020 to portray the Leisure Resorts experience for both holidaymakers and owners.

Neha: Thank you, Izzy, for sharing your insights on customer experience strategies in the travel and hospitality industry. We hope to talk to you again soon.

About Izzy Rudman:

Izzy is the Digital Marketing Executive for Leisure Resorts. Her role focuses on email marketing campaigns, social media marketing, customer and owner engagement and monitoring and increasing brand awareness online. 

About Leisure Resorts:
Since their inception in February 2017, Leisure Resorts have grown their portfolio of award-winning holiday home and lodge parks in the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District. They provide luxury hot tub holidays in partnership with Hoseasons and offer the opportunity for holiday home ownership. Their parks are family and dog friendly, and have brilliant on-site bar and restaurants serving fresh, local produce.

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