We recently released the Skai Guide to Big Data, and in this Guide, Dan Morgan, Head of Search Engine Marketing at Accor, contributed a Marketer Perspective on the power of Big Data within the brand’s marketing programs. We’re excited to share an excerpt of Dan’s perspective on our blog to keep you “In the Loop”. If you enjoy this piece, be sure to download a copy of the full guide and the corresponding supplemental materials. Remember, you can view all the topics featured in the Skai Guide Series by visiting Kenshoo.com/Guide-Series.
Big Data is a critical topic for our business. The Accor family is made up of more than a dozen brands that operate over 3,500 hotels in 92 countries — this translates in to a complex digital environment filled with a tremendous amount of data. Thinking about the different interactions a consumer has when booking a hotel room through a cross-channel conversion path, we must ensure we are properly tracking, optimizing, and attributing credit in a holistic manner.
Like many marketers, when we began to explore the idea of attribution, we turned to the industry standard of last click. As time went on, we began to realize that we were missing out on the journey leading up to the conversion and the cross-channel influences.
Now, Skai’s dynamic attribution solution, SmartPath, gives our team a high level of accuracy in the way it measures the impact of Big Data across our programs. We’ve gained new and interesting insights, noting the fact that people who’ve viewed our ads are also more likely to go on and book hotel rooms when they subsequently see Accor in emails, maps, or on affiliate sites, for example.
By analyzing the contributions of different digital marketing channels, particularly search and social, on hotel bookings, we are able to more precisely optimize our advertising spend and improve campaign performance. In fact, we’ve seen through Skai’s technology we’ve been able to drive increases of 149% in revenues year-on-year.
We’ve been on the Skai platform since 2011, and during that time, we’ve seen the industry evolve and the topic of Big Data come to the forefront. Skai helps us to stay innovative, breaking through the question of attribution and delivering strong, automated data-driven analysis and actions across both search and social channels.