Midcounties Co-operative Travel is linking up for first time with its entire co-operative membership via a new customer relationship management system.
The move will allow it to tap into Midcounties Co-operative’s half a million members and target those within the group who are likely to buy holidays.
Group general manager for travel services Alistair Rowland said: “Travel is going to be a big winner from this. We’ve always mailed members in the past and put offers in, but it’s never been cleverly targeted before. Now it can be and we think this is a really exciting opportunity for us.”
He said he anticipated seeing an impact from the new kit from January next year.
“We have half a million members of the Co-op, 100,000 of them buying travel. Currently, there is less than 10% cross trade and the target is to double our cross trade to 20% of people trading with more than one business within the group,” said Rowland.
He said he saw the Co-op’s energy customers as a prime target for travel.
“Our energy business has grown to 250,000 customers in three years and 100,000 of those were added last year. Our energy is currently the cheapest in the UK and a higher demographic of people are keen on that and on the fact that we’re the Co-op and we do the right thing. These are cash-rich BC1s we’re talking about which is why it’s so exciting as we can target them with a range of holidays.”
Rowland said customers would arrive via the web, and would be directed to Midcounties’ shops if they live in the Midlands, or to homeworkers if they are from nearer London or Scotland.
He said Midcounties has set a significant growth target for its consortium next year. “Turnover is at 100 million and now we have Alison Holmes on board and a number of business waiting to move across to us and just going through their notice periods, we believe the business will grow by 50% again in 2015.”