The Advantage Travel Partnership has revealed details of a marketing programme which aims to help agents scale and personalise communications to their customers.
Speaking during the consortium’s annual Latitude cruise conference on board Ambassador ship Ambience, Advantage head of marketing David Forder said he wanted to “empower our members with the tools and resources they need to grow their business and deliver exceptional travel experiences”.
“This new data driven marketing programme gives members the benefit of our size and scale to produce high quality, targeted marketing at a low cost,” he told attendees.
He added this was the first time this sort of marketing programme had been used by a travel consortium and would support members in segmenting customer data in a privacy-safe way.
Currently there are 141 member branches already signed up to the Advantage Marketing Programme, with plans to maintain this number for 2025 and grow in 2026.
There are four options within the annual plan, which start from £99 per year per branch.
The all-inclusive package includes digital and printed direct mail with at least four personalised magazines sent directly to customers which are fully branded with the member’s logo, customer name and contact information.
There is a digital-only package which provides online magazines and emails, plus a simply cruise package which has tailored cruise marketing content like offers and magazines, and a printed Cruise Collection guide.
The last package is a store-only package with physical magazines and personalised copies of customer publications sent directly to store for distribution.
The Advantage Marketing Programme will also help members segment customer booking data by recency and frequency to help them make a more targeted approach in their communications.
The programme will score customers from 0-5 based on how likely customers are to rebook, from “newbies” who have not travelled yet to “scorching” who are the warmest leads and most loyal customers highly likely to book again.
Marketing activity will focus on four key seasonal campaigns like Turn of Year in January and February and September’s Cruise Month.
Members who sign up to the plan will receive the group’s publications like Journeys, Navigate and Cruise Collection.
Peat also announced the results of the consortium’s first consumer prize draw which ran during cruise month in September.
The competition received 13,825 entries from consumers entering to win an all-expenses AmaWaterways river cruise with flights, with members receiving personalised and trackable links to online competition entry forms and digital assets to promote the competition, and generated 2,000 immediate holiday enquiries for members.