Segmentation, personalisation and optimisation are the three areas of focus for the US household name

Repeat customers can deliver huge value but only if the data assets are in order, finds a new white paper from Reuters Events. The website of Caesars Entertainment, which took part in the report, has six to seven million visitors every month. The company is also home to 13 different brands and over 40 properties with five lines of business including hotels, gaming, entertainment, retail, food & beverage. Not that long ago, visitors to the website were being served up the same promotion.

My team’s challenge is to ensure that we are conveying the brand in a way that is true to the in-destination experience

Jeffrey De Korte, VP Advertising & e-Commerce, Caesars Entertainment 

Jeffrey De Korte, the group’s VP Advertising and e-Commerce, who was interviewed for the report, says: “The website is the first place that many potential customers will experience the brand. My team’s challenge is to ensure that we are conveying the brand in a way that is true to the in-destination experience.”  

One of the key findings of the report – which includes interviews with Xanterra Collection, Vacasa, WhyHotel and Diamond Resorts – is the importance centralising data sources. Although Caesars may not have it all figured yet, the digital marketing and advertising team is focused on three things: segmentation, personalisation and optimisation.  

• Segment: The ability to identify segments of customers and tailor offerings based on their preferences is important to a brand like Caesars, which has multiple lines of business. Because of its scale, it has chosen to license the Adobe Experience Cloud as its e-commerce partner. The platform has the ability to aggregate a number of data sources – this is useful for segmenting customers, personalising the experience and selling to multiple lines of business in real time.

• Personalise: Getting this right is not simple but starting with small incremental changes is De Korte’s top tip. Two years ago the group started with ‘binary personalisation’ of the website. In Vegas, for example, there is a ‘drive market’ and a ‘fly market’ and for each campaign the picture would change. For the fly market, the image showed somebody on a bed reading a magazine and drinking coffee, while the drive campaign was of people driving into Las Vegas in a convertible. “It was a small change that led to a nice lift in conversations,“ he says.

• Optimise: Caesars also uses multivariate testing and technology capabilities to optimise Internet marketing objectives, and is actively looking for cross-sell opportunities. The objective is to be able to poll a variety of data sources from dinner reservations to room bookings and past history. As the white paper finds, the race to real time data is becoming another competitive differentiator – something that all successful travel brands of the future must be aware of.

This new white paper is published by EyeforTravel by Reuters Events, which is now a part of the Reuters News division of Thomson Reuters.