Discovering the beauty of Queensland.

Tourism and Events Queensland works with Louder and CHE Proximity to attract traveller with help from Adobe Experience Cloud.

Established

2012

Employees: 136
Fortitude Valley, Queensland
https://teq.queensland.com/

CHE Proximity
Melbourne, Australia
https://www.cheproximity.com.au/

Louder
Sydney, Australia
https://louder.com.au

20%

Rise in page views per session

Products:

Objectives

Create reliable and proprietary data to generate new datasets and consumer insights

Use data-driven marketing to personalise the customer journey

Consolidate marketing efforts across channels onto a single platform

Reach locals to encourage travel and activities during a pandemic

Results

Creation of new and real-time proprietary datasets that were actionable through multiple technology solutions

Quickly adapted marketing campaigns to attract locals when travel restrictions affected tourism

Drove 20% rise in page views per session and near record web traffic

Personalised experiences for 150 customer segments, using look-alike modelling for first-time visitors

Tested nine variations on a call to action, improving conversion up to 30% as part of continuous test and learn approach

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Capturing the beauty and excitement of Queensland

Julian Croft describes his job as a dream. Croft has worked in marketing for two decades, primarily in the finance sector. When he got an offer to work for Tourism and Events Queensland - the lead marketing and experience agency for the Australian state of Queensland - he jumped on the opportunity.

“Working in tourism is a dream for many marketers,” says Croft, Platforms, Media and Partners Director for Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ). “People love to travel and they really respond to marketing campaigns that capture travel’s beauty, excitement and fun. Since starting this job, I’ve spent more time travelling around Queensland and seeing some truly magical places including the Daintree Rainforest. It’s a world of untouched beauty.”

TEQ partners with government organisations, regional tourism groups and businesses to promote events and develop tourism across Queensland. The organisation’s marketing efforts focus on connecting locals with exciting experiences around the state, as well as encouraging traveller from other areas in Australia and around the world to explore all that Queensland has to offer, from the Gold Coast to the Great Barrier Reef.

Under the Marketing leadership of Michael Branagh, TEQ CEO Leanne Coddington and the TEQ Board committed to a multi-year marketing and data transformation. The goal was to ensure the experience of all that Queensland had to offer through the activation of the Queensland Experience Pillars. TEQ appointed Louder to design a technology and data strategy and architecture to deliver the TEQ experience.

Croft was brought in to execute the strategy, which was centred around the creation and maintenance of proprietary data assets for TEQ ongoing. Based on this data, TEQ could gain new and actionable insights to help the organisation personalise and refine the customer experience of potential and returning visitors. With each channel run separately with its own technology and data systems, TEQ set the goal to bring everything together on a single martech platform. This would help marketing teams create and deliver cohesive, end-to-end initiatives built around data-driven marketing.

TEQ was already known for its solid approach to marketing. Its hallmark slogan “Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next” is synonymous with Queensland. Marketers connect with audiences across channels, including its flagship queensland.com website and highly creative social media and email campaigns. But the organisation recognised that it needed to do more to make experiences truly personal for its various audiences.

“Working with a single platform allows us to have a full view of the customer and sync the customer journey across channels,” says Croft. “The key was adopting a cutting-edge digital platform to support all of our marketing efforts. We decided to replatform on Adobe Experience Cloud for its ability to create powerful marketing experiences across any channel.”

“Choosing the right partners was critical for us. Louder and CHE Proximity worked exceptionally well together, combining strategic thinking, creative talent and technical skills to help us to realise our digital transformation vision.”

Julian Croft

Platforms, Media and Partners Director, Tourism and Events Queensland

Putting the customer at the centre of the journey

Croft had led digital transformation efforts before, so he knew that TEQ was up for a challenge. Executing the strategy and solution design developed by Louder, his focus was on the delivery of the customer experience and user experience through the appropriate use of technology. This included redesigning and redeploying the website using Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Assets. Email marketing would move to Adobe Campaign while Adobe Target would add personalisation and testing capabilities for the website based on audience profiles developed using Adobe Audience Manager, the organisation’s new data management platform (DMP).

“Massive digital transformations like this can be a huge undertaking, but it’s also an incredible opportunity to rebuild everything from the ground up,” says Croft. “Choosing the right partners was critical for us. Louder and CHE Proximity worked exceptionally well together, combining strategic thinking, creative talent and technical skills to help us to realise our digital transformation vision.”

After designing the strategy and architecture, Louder was retained to deliver the data components to activate the digital experience. This included enriching the analytics required to measure the effectiveness of content and personalisation, which underpinned the understanding of what behaviours and aspirations inspired traveller to take action.

CHE Proximity understood that personalisation and customer experience were at the core of the digital transformation and dived into consumer research. The agency held multiple focus groups and one-on-one interviews over four months to better understand traveller.

While TEQ previously created targeted messaging for three primary segments, the new solutions and the data centric approach broke down the audiences into much more discrete segments to provide more accurate recommendations. For example, TEQ previously curated experiences for families, but CHE Proximity developed this further - families with adventurous teens will want a very different type of holiday compared to a family travelling with toddlers.

CHE Proximity also took a close look at the different stages in the travel cycle and suggested that the organisation’s greatest value comes from the unique perspective it offers to traveller dreaming of going on holiday. TEQ gets recommendations for events, restaurants, activities and locales directly from local organisations that are tuned into the pulse of Queensland itself. By leaning into a wealth of knowledge, TEQ can help people go off the beaten path and find the unique experience of their dreams.

“During our research, we discovered that experiences are particularly important for traveller, even more than location,” says Olivier Laude, Client Partner at CHE Proximity. “The trick is surfacing the right experiences to the right people. This is where Adobe Experience Cloud comes in. Adobe Experience Cloud gives us the power to personalise experiences in great detail for all TEQ audiences. We can understand people’s travel aspirations and then deliver content tailored to their dream holidays.”

“Adobe Experience Manager shows what a difference agility and flexibility can mean for website traffic.”

Julian Croft

Platforms, Media and Partners Director, Tourism and Events Queensland

Record-breaking web traffic, even during a pandemic

In less than a half a year, CHE Proximity migrated the 5,000-page Queensland.com website to Adobe Experience Manager Sites. The new website is built around beautiful visuals aimed at capturing the imaginations of traveller from near and far.

Mobile compatibility was a must, as up to 75% of the web traffic comes from mobile devices. CHE Proximity created responsive templates in Adobe Experience Manager that allow the website to display beautifully on any size screen. The dynamic media feature in Experience Manager Assets further supports mobility by rendering video and image assets in the right format and size for any device — a critical performance boost for the visually rich brand.

The replatformed Queensland.com website came out at just the right time. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Australia, triggering lockdowns and strong travel restrictions. Small businesses that relied on tourism were struggling. The new website became a critical communications platform for the government’s continued efforts to support Queensland travel and tourism operators and businesses, even during difficult times.

While TEQ had originally intended to commemorate the website launch with new national and international campaigns, the pandemic led them to focus increasingly on Queenslanders who were less affected by travel restrictions. The “Good to Go” campaign, developed by Brisbane-based agency Rumble, encourages people who cannot holiday abroad to explore locally instead.

“The tourism industry changes fast—even without taking pandemics into account,” says Croft. “CHE Proximity and Adobe Experience Manager helped us shift quickly by creating new landing pages and new campaigns faster than ever. Even though the number of international website visitors has dropped dramatically, we’re close to breaking records for web traffic. We’ve also seen a 20% rise in pages viewed per session, indicating that people are staying longer and exploring more. Adobe Experience Manager shows what a difference agility and flexibility can mean for website traffic.”

Providing personal recommendations for 150 segments

TEQ switched over to Adobe Campaign for consumer email marketing around the same time as the website renewal. With Adobe Campaign, TEQ takes advantage of automation to direct audiences into email campaigns with targeted messaging. Campaign also makes it so easy to create and manage emails campaigns that TEQ now handles email marketing entirely internally. This allows the organisation to align email marketing more closely with other channels and adjust messaging quickly.

Most importantly for Croft, having alignment between website and email marketing supports TEQ’s goal of improving personalisation across channels. All information about the customer and the customer behaviours, including how they’re responding to emails, what terms they’re searching for and what content they’re consuming, feeds into Adobe Audience Manager. This creates a fuller picture of what customers want, allowing TEQ to assign customers to one of 150 segments for more personalised experiences and retargeting. If a customer reads about scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef, the next time they visit the website, the banners might highlight diving tours or link to ideas about day trips in Cairns.

Using Adobe Audience Manager capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei, TEQ is also starting to build look-alike models. This helps TEQ find the right segments for people, even when they visit the website for the first time.

“We want to use the data for more than just personalising messaging on our website and digital marketing channels,” says Croft. “We want to activate partners across Queensland to boost tourism at regional and local levels. With Adobe Audience Manager as our DMP, we have a central home for audience insights that we can use to personalise journeys across channels and even across organisations.”

Making experiences better

Now that the new website is online, TEQ is working with Louder and Adobe Target to test and optimise experiences. For example, the organisation is testing nine variations on a call-to-action on a page for operators.

“While we have just started testing, the winning variation so far shows a 30% lift in conversion — just from changing the call to action,” says Croft. “It shows that even small changes to the website can make a big difference in experiences and behaviours.”

As travel restricts begin to lift, TEQ is preparing to greet an influx of potential visitors from across Australia and around the world. With Adobe Experience Cloud and support from partners CHE Proximity and Louder, TEQ hopes to help more traveller experience the beauty and excitement of Queensland.