International hotel chain leveraging Skai Social and Skai SmartPath in addition to the already deployed Skai Search software
London (November 28, 2013) – Accor, the world’s leading hotel operator and market leader in Europe, has signed a new, expanded contract with Kenshoo, enabling the hotel group to use Skai Social to manage its social media advertising globally. Accor will also adopt Skai SmartPath for dynamic conversion attribution modelling to analyse the contribution of different digital marketing channels on hotel bookings and optimise advertising spend.
Accor, whose hotel brands include ibis, Novotel, Mercure, Sofitel, Pullman, MGallery, Adagio and HotelF1, operates over 3,500 hotels in 92 countries. The company already uses Skai Search for managing global paid search advertising campaigns to drive increases of 149% in revenues year-on-year, as Daniel Morgan, Head of Search Engine Marketing at Accor, says:
“We’ve been using Skai Search since 2011 and have seen impressive results and massive increases in revenues. We’ve been optimising paid search spend using a combination of our own and Skai’s attribution tracking technology – which gave us interesting insights, such as 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.”
“We’re now starting to use Skai Social to manage social ad campaigns and Skai SmartPath to help us optimise our digital marketing spend even better by accounting for how different channels like search, social, and email influence bookings.”
Accor reviewed a number of tools for managing social advertising and selected Skai Social because of its global scalability, effectiveness at measuring and optimising social advertising campaigns, and ability to report on cross-channel attribution under one interface.
“Tracking the effect of our social advertising – whether it directly or indirectly results in bookings – in combination with other channels such as search and email is extremely important to us. Skai Social, in combination with Skai SmartPath, will give us an accurate way of doing this and making best use of our spend,” explains Daniel Morgan.
Skai SmartPath is the first form of algorithmic conversion attribution designed to improve digital marketing bid optimisation. Instead of relying on static attribution models such as first or last click, SmartPath uses machine learning technology to dynamically create a unique model to assign value for each interaction in any conversion path – based on customer data, market changes, and media mix effectiveness.
Yossi Synett, Director of Analytics from Skai, explains: “Skai SmartPath gives Accor a high level of accuracy in the way it measures the impact of different interactions when somebody books a hotel room through a cross-channel conversion path. For example, our sophisticated mathematical modelling process takes account of issues such as customer loyalty – has the user already stayed at an Accor hotel and does this affect the value assigned to a search or social ad when they book again? Another factor is causality – does someone click on an Accor search ad because they have already viewed a Facebook ad and, if so, how does this reflect on the value to be assigned to these interactions if it leads to a hotel booking? SmartPath answers these questions in real-time and Skai updates bids accordingly.”
Rob Coyne, Managing Director of EMEA for Skai, adds: “It’s very satisfying when customers such as Accor are driven to invest further in Skai technology after seeing real benefits from the products they are already using. It shows the value we’re continuing to deliver and is a testament to our focus on client excellence. Accor is quite an innovative company and Dan and his team are highly-regarded partners helping drive the Skai platform forward.”
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About Skai
Skai is a digital marketing technology company that engineers premium solutions for search marketing, social media and online advertising. Brands, agencies and developers use Skai Search, Skai Social, Skai Local and Skai SmartPath to direct more than €19 billion in annual client sales revenue. The Skai platform delivers Infinite OptimisationTM through closed-loop targeting, universal integration, and dynamic attribution. Skai’s adaptive technology, proven algorithms, and unmatched scale power campaigns in more than 190 countries for nearly half of the Fortune 50 and all 10 top global ad agency networks. Skai’s European clients include Accor, Burberry, GroupM, Havas Media, John Lewis and Tesco. Skai has 18 international locations and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Arts Alliance and Tenaya Capital. Please visit www.Kenshoo.com for more information.
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