How to prepare for Blue Monday?
Blue Monday is said to be the most depressing day of the year. It typically falls on the third Monday of January and will land on the 17th January in 2022. The reason this day is known as Blue Monday is related to a range of factors including a change in the weather, the distant memory of the cheery Christmas period, and low levels of motivation.
In recent years, the concept of Blue Monday falling on this exact date has been debated; however, what cannot be debated is the change of consumer purchasing patterns as we look to raise our spirits and overcome this period of glumness. This change is particularly evident in the travel sector, and per our own usage statistics, we can see a pronounced rise in traffic for companies operating in the travel and hospitality sector.
But despite January indicating a period of peak trading for travel operators, they often fail to take full advantage of the opportunity. Form abandonment rate in the travel sector is at 87%, indicating there is plenty of room for improvement.
The good news is there are a few simple steps that travel companies can take to capitalise on this peak period of trading, driving more users online and converting web visitors into paying customers.
If you are planning to ramp up your marketing efforts, a data cleanse is necessary to improve the efficiency of your campaigns. Business data degrades by up to 40% every year, so data cleanses are necessary to ensure that your messages are reaching the intended recipient.
Further to this, by getting a handle on your data now, you will be able to gain insights on what works and what doesn’t when you plan your campaign for the summer holidays. With a thorough data cleanse, you will see a marked improvement in your ROI and reduce mailing wastage.
Once a customer has started searching for a trip away, you want the process from browsing to booking to be plain sailing, eliminating any unnecessary friction. Address capture is a handy tool in this regard by providing users with a faster way of entering their address details from the very first keystroke. Our advanced address capture solution has many features to help ensure address details can be entered quickly and correctly, such as fuzzy matching and Unicode support.
In addition to address capture, our email and phone validation solutions allow you to verify the validity of other customer details at the point of entry, ensuring that you have all the correct information from the start of the transaction.
Customers are acutely aware of the challenges of entering their addresses. Up to 40% of travellers experience slow or confusing user experiences on travel websites, and this is a figure that must be improved upon by travel companies if they are to increase conversions.
Despite Blue Monday representing a time of glumness, this period does present a fantastic opportunity for the travel industry, but given the issues with form abandonment, many companies are not taking advantage. However, with a few changes, any company can improve its messaging and UX to boost its conversions in January.
To understand your data quality you can request a free data health check or if you wish to enhance your user experience you can make use of a 14-day free trial or request a personalised demonstration where one of our experts will talk you through our range of solutions.