Auckland Airport is the second busiest international airport in Australasia, with over 14 million travellers passing through both terminals every year. Of all international visitors to New Zealand, 74 percent arrive or depart through Auckland.
The Challenge
One of Auckland Airport’s key revenue streams comes from the strong relationships it has with its retailers. It wanted to promote the airport as a shopping destination by highlighting the shops, brands and deals which are available while travellers are waiting to board their flights.
With the website attracting around 400,000 hits per month, Auckland Airport was eager to leverage the value of these visits to drive traffic and referrals to its retail partners. A referral could be a link to the retailer’s website, an email enquiry or a phone call.
The Solution
Datacom is considered a highly valued partner after designing and developing the airport’s international award-winning website in 2008.
The site is now a significant channel not only for passenger information but also as a revenue-generating channel, enabling users to book car parks and access the airport lounges.
Datacom has modified areas of the site to make use of the digital marketing and personalisation features of the platform and continue to build pathways that add value to users of the site. A centralised CRM system was implemented to capture user details from a number of touch points while building a single view of the customer for the airport.
In 2013, Datacom in conjunction with an external design agency redesigned and developed the retail section of the website. Key elements of the design were then integrated across the rest of the site.
To support this initiative, a retailer extranet was also created that enables the airport and its retail partners to communicate in a more cohesive manner. In 2014, the new retail site won Australia/New Zealand Sitecore Site of the Year in the Business Transformation category.
Auckland Airport has seen significant uplift in traffic and engagement to the retail sector of the site, as well as delivery of qualified sales leads to retailers. Careful planning, a personalisation strategy that aligned 100 percent with key business outcomes, and a powerful vision has enabled Auckland Airport to comprehensively enter the new world of Customer Engagement Management.
The Technology
- Sitecore Customer Engagement Platform and Analytics
- Rules-based Personalisation
- Campaign Management
- Email Campaign Manager
- MS Dynamics CRM Connector
- Engagement Automation
The Partnership
Datacom and Auckland Airport have worked closely together to maintain and develop these websites and a number of other digital assets.
While Datacom has worked primarily with the Auckland Airport marketing team for the traveller and corporate website, it has worked with other business areas within the airport to deliver a suite of targeted sites and services. Datacom worked closely with the Airport Route Development team to develop the Trip Guide website (www.tripguide.co.nz) and the New Zealand Journeys website (www.xinxilanlvcheng.com) – a website dedicated to promoting New Zealand to the Chinese market. The airport’s retail team were also involved with the Retailer Extranet design and development.
On all the projects the Airport Online Manager and business owners worked in close collaboration with the Datacom delivery team throughout the process to make sure the delivery was seamless. The often rapidly changing environment required Datacom to be nimble and responsive as the projects progressed while still delivering engaging, robust sites that integrate with many systems and services that power the platform.
“The new website has enabled us to showcase the retailer offering in a much more engaging and enticing way. Importantly, it is also driving active leads to our retailers and they are seeing the real value of digital.”
Ajay Dutta - Online Manager, Auckland Airport