How Real-Time Monitoring Will Save the Day for the Tourism Industry

The tourism industry is booming and, nowadays, more and more people decide to spend their free time on a paradise island or on board a cruise ship (who wouldn’t?). This increasing urge to travel has contributed to a more competitive industry, where companies need to stand out and keep up with the trends.That means tourism companies have to move fast, be flexible and react to their customer’s actions right away to be successful and perform better than their competitors.

Transactional emails: the key to success

Transactional emails contain information following a transaction your client has started, either to complete it (like account creations) or to confirm it (invoices, for example). Payment and booking confirmations, travel documents or plane tickets are common transactional emails, which get send out to an individual recipient instead of a big group of contacts. You might have also heard about them under the name trigger emails before, since they get triggered by a customer’s action.

So far so good, but why does the tourism industry have such a big need for transactional emails?

Transactional emails in the tourism industry are key, yes. It is now inconceivable to have a travel company operating online and not working with this type of triggered messages. But that’s not it.

Transactional emails are much more than necessary, they are like champagne on an airplane. Without champagne the airplane ride is just a boring and never-ending trip and you end up thinking you might never arrive. But with a glas of the finest champagne, even people with fear of flying start enjoying the trip and the flight seems to fly by (see what we did there?).

Transactional emails are like champagne. They make it so much easier and faster for your customers to actually enjoy the vacation, without having to worry about whether the travel documents will ever arrive in their mailbox.

In the era of digitalization, more and more clients are booking their holidays online to save money and time. To keep up with this trend, tourism companies need to send their booking confirmations, travel documents as well as tickets per email, instead of using the old-school mailing system.

Even travel agencies that offer offline services shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to send all important information via email. Just imagine how good it would be to end the struggle with your printer.

Your transactional emails only have to be designed once, and will be sent out to your customers automatically after every booking. That way, you can save time and focus on more important things.

Never leave your transactional emails unattended

Most tourism companies recognise the value of transactional emails for their business, but still don’t know what consequences they could face if they don’t track these emails regularly.

“Don’t be so negative! What could happen? All my transactional emails are designed and optimized, nothing’s going to go wrong…”. So you think.

Let’s have a look at the following scenario:

Summertime is fastly approaching, the temperatures keep rising and the desire for vacation gets bigger. One of your users finds an amazing trip for a great price on your website. Everything seems perfect, he books the trip, which is just two days away. He patiently waits for his confirmation email but it never arrives, so he gets worried. Your new customer starts losing trust in his booking decision and in your company. Without a booking confirmation, he can’t be sure his trip is actually booked. So he could:

1. book another trip somewhere else, and cancel his booking on your website,
2. get so angry that he calls your support team or goes on social media to complain about your reliability,
3. do nothing, but tell all his friends about what a bad customer experience he had, and how he will never book a trip with you again.

No matter what happens, your company’s reputation is damaged and your customer satisfaction decreases. Because of that, your number of bookings drops, and so does your revenue.  

And all this, just because you never noticed that your transactional email didn’t get sent, got blocked or landed in Spam.

But don’t worry, there is a way to ensure you’re ready to take action before it gets to this. The solution is called Real-Time Monitoring.

So what is this magical tool, Real-Time Monitoring?

Real-Time Monitoring is a tool developed by Mailjet to track all your transactional emails in real time. It allows you to set alerts that will notify you by email, Slack or SMS* if there is any kind of issue with your transactional emails. So whether it’s unusual statistics, non-delivery, blocks or delays in sending, you will be able to react quickly and prevent these issues from damaging your business.

For tourism companies, this means the possibility to control all transactional emails, to be able identify problems right away and ensure customers receive their valuable travel information.

Real-Time Monitoring also allows you to identify what type of transactional emails didn’t get send, so you can set specific alerts for your company’s most critical messages. You’ll be able to group these important documents, or divide them in different categories such as billing, travel documents or booking confirmations, to ensure you’re tracking these messages together so you can react quickly to solve problems before they become serious.

With Real-Time Monitoring, you’ll gain more flexibility and will be able to ensure that all your customers receive their booking documents. Your customer satisfaction and the trust in your company will increase. And as a result of this, your number of bookings will rise and so will your revenue.

Sounds good? Mailjet’s Real-Time Monitoring is available on Crystal Premium and above. Create an account today and try it out alongside our other Premium features, with our free 30-day Premium trial. Start tracking your transactional emails and take your tourism business to a new level!

Have you already started tracking your transactional emails with Mailjet’s Real-Time Monitoring? Share your experience, ideas and thoughts with us on Twitter, or just come along and say Hi.