A journey of discovery.
Australian Traveller Media uses customer data on traveller behaviour to deliver tested digital insights to industry players.
70%
Doubled the percentage of total revenue coming from digital advertising
Objectives
Thrive by offering news services in a changing digital media world
Leverage audience insights and data to connect travellers with travel industry providers
Understand different types of travel audiences and where they are in the customer journey
Results
Increased digital advertising revenue from 33% to 70% of total revenue
Helped Tourism NT generate more than $1 million in direct travel bookings in a year
Tests and optimises marketing strategy recommendations for customers
Defined analytics models to identify audiences with Helium
Like many adventurous Australian teenagers, Quentin Long dreamed of leaving his home country to see the world. And so soon after graduating high school, he did just that. He explored Europe and the United States, cutting loose in Amsterdam and celebrating his 19th birthday overlooking Madison Square Garden. He then took a job in publishing that took him to Singapore and London, further feeding his appetite for travel.
But for all his years of travel, Long experienced one of the most impactful trips of his life at home in Australia. While flying into Broome, the beautiful beach town in Western Australia, Long was awestruck by the sight of the sandy beaches and clear blue water.
“Looking out the plane window, I couldn’t believe that I had traveled the world and somehow missed such an amazing view right in my own country,” says Long. “Why had I spent a decade trying to leave Australia when there was so much to see and do? That’s where the idea for Australian Traveller was born.”
Australian Traveller began in 2005 as a magazine and website aimed at reaching people like Long: Australian travel enthusiasts who had seen the world and were ready to start exploring their own backyards. In the 15 years since, Australian Traveller Media has grown into a mainstay travel brand with a strong subscriber base and even more travel fans visiting online. A sister travel brand, International Traveller, was launched in 2012 to bring the brand’s fun, inspirational, and honest views to international travel.
“Helium was critical to our success. They understood the technical side, but more importantly they knew how to translate the technology into our business goals.”
Quentin Long
Co-founder, Australian Traveller Media
Launching new services built on data
With the growing digitisation of the publishing industry, Long recognised that Australian Traveller Media needed to evolve to stay relevant. One valuable resource the company has is its customers. Providing data-driven insights based on what it knows about travel customer journeys could help travel companies across Australia and around the world better connect with travel-seeking Australians.
“Many travel companies actually have difficulty getting visibility into the full customer journey,” says Long. “They often can’t tell how long travellers were looking for a holiday or what other options they looked at. We have both the audience and the platform to give companies better understanding and visibility of the market beyond their ecosystems.”
Long decided to launch a new service that would provide audience insights and cross-channel marketing for travel companies, advertisers, and partners. After researching data solutions in the market, Australian Traveller decided to build the service around Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager, part of Adobe Experience Cloud. Partner Helium provided the technical knowledge and digital best practices needed to create a visionary new service.
“As a small business, we don’t have a lot of technical resources to dedicate to new services we want to introduce,” says Long. “Helium was critical to our success. They understood the technical side, but more importantly they knew how to translate the technology into our business goals. Helium has helped us make a long-term solution that has helped increase our digital advertising revenue from about 33% to 70% of our total revenue.”
“We give our business customers optimised recommendations about how to create content and messaging across their own digital platforms.”
Quentin Long
Co-founder, Australian Traveller Media
Testing audiences in the Australian Traveller sandbox
Helium worked with Australian Traveller to design analytic models and identify audiences. Adobe Analytics looks at customer behaviours online in real time and creates in-depth reports that tease out insights about travellers. These behaviours feed into Adobe Audience Manager, combining with subscriber data and other customer information to identify, segment, and manage different types of traveller audiences. Audiences are defined by categories such as whether they’re a family or couple, looking for a budget trip or luxury stay, and where they are in the purchase funnel: dreaming, planning, or booking a trip.
“Australian Traveller gets more from its Adobe Analytics implementation than any other customer I’ve seen,” says Puneet Srivastava, chief data officer and co-founder of Helium. “Australian Traveller is digging deep into Adobe Analytics and showing how much insight and value can be obtained for customers.”
Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager serve as the backbone of several services that Australian Traveller offers to its business customers, who include many of the country’s leading lodging, adventure, and travel planning organisations. These customers can request insights into audiences and content that will help them improve their marketing strategy. They might want to know what type of content attracts affluent families or ask for insights that will drive more visitors to their website.
For example, Australian Traveller noticed that one popular type of content on its website is the itineraries. Taking a closer look at audiences, the company noticed that itineraries are particularly popular for travellers moving from the dreaming to planning phase of their holiday. When one business asked how they could drive more booking revenue, Australian Traveller made recommendations for how the customer could build its own itineraries.
Australian Traveller also optimises marketing for its business customers across social media, email, display, and other channels. The company might use data to identify marketing opportunities for target audiences or test different types of messaging to find ads with the best performance.
“One unique thing about Australian Traveller is that we’re not just providing insights, but we can test them by using our platform as a sandbox for experimentation,” says Long. “We give our business customers optimised recommendations about how to create content and messaging across their own digital platforms.”
“Using Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager has helped transform our digital business. We’ve developed a reputation for our ability to deliver campaigns for our customers, backed by detailed reporting that helps them perform even better.”
Quentin Long
Co-founder, Australian Traveller Media
Tracing the customer journey
Tourism NT, the tourism authority for the Northern Territory, wanted to know what content it should deliver at each stage in the customer journey to drive more travellers to Tourism NT. Australian Traveller dug into the data and looked for interactions across its websites, social media, email, and advertising campaigns that led to travellers visiting the Tourism NT website. Then Australian Traveller started looking deeper: who were the audiences? What type of content were they looking at? Australian Traveller tested content, visuals, and campaigns to optimise leads.
The insights helped Tourism NT generate more than $1 million in direct travel bookings from more than 33,000 leads in one year.
“When we first met Quentin, we knew his vision was bold, but we had the perfect mix to pull it off,” says Harold Janson, chief personalisation officer at Helium. “His wealth of experience, his passion, his choice of tools, and our knowledge of digital insights and audiences. We’re delighted that through this solution we are helping local and international travellers discover great experiences.”
“Using Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager has helped transform our digital business,” says Long. “We’ve developed a reputation for our ability to deliver campaigns for our business customers, backed by detailed reporting that helps them perform even better. As we continue to grow our digital magazine footprint, our digital services built on Adobe will play a role in the Australia Traveller journey.”
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