TUI Start their Journey to Data Excellence

Building a Data Driven Business

Challenges

• Manage and unify the extensive volumes of data collected in data silos
• Minimise the effort required to extend and scale data driven business solutions
• Failed Adobe Analytics implementation
• Ensure data quality across the business

Solution: Tealium Customer Data Hub

• Tealium iQ™ Tag Management – quality data foundation, control and tag management
• AudienceStream™ – single customer view, real-time personalisation and segmentation
• DataAccess™ – adhoc analytics on raw data with integration into the TUI data warehouse
• Cloud Delivery – server-side integration to move tags away from client-side delivery

Results

• Client-side data collection via Tealium iQ constantly scaling
  – 77 active Tags, 133 load rules with 385 active Extensions
• Launch and management of multiple onsite personalisation campaigns
  – Ongoing campaigns on TUI’s homepage and various landing pages. TUI have looked to approach this by making small and regular updates rather than opting to tackle one big campaign.
  – This resulted in a CTR of 3.4% compared to a non-personalised CTR of 1.8%
• Using the Doubleclick connector TUI were able to:
  – Use Doubleclick in all cases since the connector was implemented
  – A super last minute audience where TUI reach an 3 times higher CTR
  – Enrichment of new users via the similar audiences
  – Using it as a tool to build more complex audiences than TUI would be able to only by using Google analytics
  – Audience planning as part of campaign planning
• Migration of client-side tags to server-side, cloud delivery improved page load performance
  – The first use case in eCRM saved TUI 10 requests per month from the live page

Start the Journey

TUI, the largest global travel brand, is often best recognised for their smile. Operating under numerous brands such as Thomson, First Choice and Riu they collect a vast amount of data across all of their sub brands, which is to be shared for sales insight and digital distribution throughout their organisation. Only 1% of TUI website traffic converts into customers so TUI turned to Tealium to help better control their data and understand visitor intent. TUI was looking to improve the user experience and increase customer conversion rates.

Recovering from a Rough Ride

After struggling to implement Adobe Analytics, TUI drastically reviewed their approach to data. In 2012 they started working with Tealium to build a foundational data layer so they could deploy analytics and other marketing technology vendors with ease. Since deploying Tealium iQ, TUI now has a strong data foundation, a reliable, yet agile tag management system in place, improved data quality and greater compliance control.

Data management has been paramount for TUI to understand the intent of visitors on their website. Data volume had grown organically with the business but now that TUI is leveraging Tealium iQ they are able to better maintain, control and unify data from their disparate data sources.

A New Route for the Road Ahead

With a better view of visitor data, TUI realised they needed to move towards a more data driven, yet, customer centric approach. This meant improving their view of each customer to allow for a more advanced level of personalisation. In 2016, TUI added Tealium AudienceStream to their marketing stack. By building and testing segments in an agile style – fail fast, fix quick – TUI was able to launch onsite personalisation campaigns. Since using AudienceStream to stitch visitor engagements across their digital estate, the editorial team at TUI has been able to multiply campaigns with the flexibility to update and amend at any point.

TUI has taken advantage of the integration connectors available with AudienceStream to align and stitch individual interactions with other touch points across the business. The enriched insight into visitor behaviour has given TUI a next level understanding of individual brand engagement, despite TUI having previously used a Data Management Platform (DMP).

“DMPs have limited purpose, lack flexibility and have generic connectivity compared to other systems. They are good at providing additional data, finding similar segments and leveraging external sources, however, there are questions around the quality of and use of third party data.” – Nicole Emer, Web Analyst at TUI

Being unsure of where DMPs will fit in the marketplace longer term, TUI has been using AudienceStream for greater data unification and stitching user profiles across multiple data points to provide website visitors with current, relevant content.

Share the Experience

TUI has significantly changed the approach to data management, so much so they have coined the term ‘Data DNA’. This reflects a firm belief from TUI that data should be at the core of any business with everything else being built out from the central point. TUI’s ability to view data in its entirety and to understand the insights that data provides is a unique competitive advantage. Data is therefore made readily available across TUI.

“Limiting access to company data will only limit the impact you can create” – Nicole Emer

In recognition that change is a constant and a consistent brand experience is vital, data at TUI is managed by a central team with distributed responsibilities. Sharing data with the wider team required additional or deeper insights and analysis of new or previously under used data points. To overcome this, TUI purchased Tealium DataAccess in early 2017. Acting as an extension of Tealium iQ and AudienceStream, Data Access has given TUI the ability to consume clean, relevant data about their visitors within their data warehouse and chosen business intelligence tools.

Soaring in the Clouds

Since deploying Tealium the volume of data that TUI collects and is able to act on has significantly increased. Despite unrivaled visitor profiling, TUI’s next challenge was to look at other areas of the user experience that would benefit from improvement. At the beginning of 2017, TUI started using Tealium Cloud Delivery to move tags away from the front end and give them more control. Google Analytics was the first tag for cloud delivery testing and following a successful migration TUI built a migration plan for their other vendor tags. Cloud delivery has given TUI more control and provided ‘next century tracking’ but additionally, has managed to improve page load speeds, reduce battery taxation for mobile visitors and further optimise website performance.

The Path to Success

“We actually don’t know how long the journey will be so we consider ourselves always at Day 1” – Nicole Emer

Business, technology and innovation are continuing to evolve at a great speed and TUI is fully embracing this. Having realised the scope of data that can be collected, and with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation, TUI has overcome data management challenges, leaving them confident for the road ahead. Even with the tightening of consumer consent, TUI is confident that their actionable insights will enable them to deliver a favourable and data driven value exchange for their customers.

As the use of mobile and IoT devices rises, TUI is preparing to expand their use of DataAccess by integrating their DWH Systems. Secondly, any remaining visitor profile logic from 3rd party systems will be ported to AudienceStream to further enrich visitor profiles and maximise the potential return on data actioned. Finally, TUI is continuing to implement more cloud delivery use cases and migrating client side tracking to server side in order to reach new User Experience targets. Their next steps are to exclude further eCRM Tags, Analytics Tags and Remarketing Tag Requests from the page.

About TUI

TUI Group is the world’s number one tourism business. The brand portfolio, gathered under the Group umbrella, will consist of strong tour operators including 1,600 travel agencies and leading online portals, six touristic airlines with around 150 aircraft, over 300 hotels with 214,000 beds, 16 cruise liners and countless incoming agencies in all major holiday destinations around the globe. This integrated offering enables TUIto provide to our 20 million customers with an unmatched holiday experience in 180 regions. A key feature of our corporate culture is our global responsibility for economic, environmental and social sustainability. This is reflected in more than 20 years of commitment to sustainable tourism. In 2015/16 financial year the TUI Group with a headcount of 67,000 recorded turnover of €17.2 bn and an operating result of €1 bn. The TUI Group’s share is listed on the London Stock Exchange in the FTSE index and in the Quotation Board of the Open Market on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

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