As one of North America’s growing - and Canada’s largest - hotel brands, Coast Hotels will soon be implementing new technology to optimize its customer relationships by integrating email marketing, guest satisfaction surveys and loyalty rewards into ZMail
[HALLANDALE BEACH, FL- SEPTEMBER 23, 2014] - With hotels throughout Western Canada and the Western U.S., the Coast Hotels brand is growing and investing in systems that will add value to its expansive portfolio and its valued guests. Through a new partnership with ZDirect, the hotel franchise, ownership and management group has entered into an agreement to launch a holistic customer relationship management initiative that will eliminate disparate solutions and bring all digital marketing, surveys and loyalty onto one platform.
“Coast Hotels has a strong focus on development, and we are continuously working to add value to our hotels and improve on the guest experience by being as responsive as possible to our customers,” said Sarah Kirby-Yung, Coast Hotels executive director, marketing and communications. “To better communicate with our guests, we needed to do away with disparate systems that didn’t talk to each other. We had one vendor managing our loyalty and rewards, others initiating our email campaigns and a third distributing surveys and reporting results. Doing business this way was very cumbersome, and it kept us from having a full view of the guest. ZDirect came highly recommended by one of hospitality’s top technology consultants as a company that can provide complete hotel marketing automation on a single platform.
“While searching for an integrated relationship management solution, we found that some Email Service Providers include surveys as a service, but few, if any, included loyalty,” Kirby-Yung said. “ZDirect’s ZMail platform not only integrates all CRM functions, but they offered to customize their existing loyalty program to fit our unique brand needs. This level of service, combined with ZDirect’s comprehensive solutions that drive revenues and loyalty, resulted in our selecting a new partner that is different from others in the market and who we believe will exceed our expectations.”
Working in conjunction with Coast Hotels, ZDirect will begin enhancing its loyalty management platform to contain a more powerful guest portal for customers to access and revise their loyalty preferences. The solution will feature simple account creation with social login integration. The loyalty program will be enhanced further to include full customization and design of the program by Coast Hotels, and an easy-to-view report dashboard will be added. The augmented solution, when released, will enable Coast Hotels to stay informed on how its loyalty program is performing, including receiving reports to see how often guests are using it, who signed up, and the value of those guests. The social login feature will also provide guests with direct access by logging in via Facebook or Twitter. Guests will be able to check their loyalty account status and activity from their mobile devices and receive real-time notifications on any activity. This strategic loyalty management program is gearing up to be even more comprehensive than the legacy loyalty solutions in the market today and will automate many of the tasks that are still manual.
Relevant Communication
“As a hotelier, creating direct relationships with guests is an ongoing challenge,” Kirby-Yung said. “To do this, systems need to be nimble from a marketing perspective to give the marketing team and our hotels the right information for the right guest. Whatever the communication, it needs to be targeted and customized according to each guest’s profile and interest. We believe that ZDirect’s ZMail platform will not only make two-way communication with guests - and from guests - easier, but the solution will provide us with the actionable guest insight we need to communicate with these loyal customers in a more meaningful way.”
Using a dynamic content engine, PMS integration, and the practice of Hospitality Marketing Automation, ZMail automatically sends intelligent and personalized confirmations, pre-arrival emails and post-departure emails with guest satisfaction surveys via email, mobile communication, SMS, social networks and more. The integrated platform enables hoteliers and marketers to learn about the real people behind every reservation, while Hotel Marketing Automation helps optimize resources. With ZMail, Coast Hotels will soon be taking its CRM initiative to new levels.
Through ZMail, Coast Hotels will receive:
- PMS/CRS Integration
- eCRM Database
- Profile Consolidation
- Guest Stay Communication
- PMS Integrated Marketing
- ROI Dashboard
- Advanced Filtering and Segmentation
- Dynamic Content Engine
- Web Forms & Surveys
- Customer Feedback Management
- Guest Portal
- Loyalty Program
“ZMail’s easy-to-understand analytic tools will enable us to clearly see who we are reaching and if they are responding,” Kirby-Yung said. “This will be really helpful in determining how effectively we are communicating with our guests. By enabling us to customize all communications based on calendar- or event-driven based variables, such as arrival date and guest segment type, or based on guest profile data, we will be able to identify more clearly who our loyal customers are or do what is needed to turn transient customers into returning guests. We are eager to get started with ZMail and begin building relationships like never before.”
ZDirect Vice President of Sales Caren de’Ath had this to say: “ZDirect is much more than an email service provider—we actually pioneered the practice of Hotel Marketing Automation for the lodging industry. Where other companies concentrate on communicating with travelers before they arrive, ZDirect keeps the targeted communication going before, during and after each guest’s stay on a single platform. This is our point of differentiation, and the way that ZDirect will be helping Coast Hotels increase revenue and drive loyalty by building long-term guest relationships.”
For general information on ZDirect, visit www.zdirect.com. For details on Coast Hotels, visit www.coasthotels.com.