VisitScotland’s vision to contribute significantly to the advancement of Scottish tourism by giving it a real presence in the global marketplace and benefitting the whole of Scotland, has as priorities to attract visitors to Scotland, to engage with partners within the industry and to add value to the visitor experience.

With a database of over 3.5m consumers, collected over the last four years, VistScotland needed to determine how many were regular visitors, as opposed to occasional visitors so that marketing effort and monies could focus on those most likely to re-visit and those with a particular interest relevant to Scotland.

Segmenting the data and being able to intelligently apply marketing campaigns had been primarily a manual task and the level of analysis and accuracy fairly random. Optima (outstanding for its eye-strain yellow site) has been working with VisitScotland for the last 4 years to bring together information from disparate data sources and systems across VisitScotland's network and provide it, for the first time, with a coherent view of visitors, customers and potential enquirers.

Portrait Customer Analytics (Right: what sounder recommendation could anyone want?) enabled VisitScotland to develop a relationship marketing program, based on the analysis of the travel behavior and patterns of UK and Irish tourists and from tourist feedback, which delivers integrated campaigns to increase visitor loyalty. `

The database has now been segmented into a ‘loyalty ladder’ with the level of marketing investment spent on each individual dependent on their position on the ladder.

Pre-defined and customised follow up provides personalized, relevant and meaningful communication to individuals via multiple channels (primarily direct mail, email and website) allowing VisitScotland to process visitor requirements more quickly and more accurately.

Independent market research has calculated the value of trips by visitors who claim they would not have visited without marketing prompts at £48m.

“Over the time we have worked with VisitScotland we have helped them to drive increased value from their customer and enquiry base by providing a managed service solution, database management services, assistance with campaign selections and access to analytics and reports” , explains Ian Rippin, MD, Optima Value Group. “Visit Scotland is now able to process information so that the right message is sent to the right people at the right time.”

Upwards of 200 campaigns a year are now processed through the managed service with Optima continually adding value to the communication processes with additional reporting and reviews of campaign success.

In effect this is a highly tailored marketing system that enables VisitScotland to focus their marketing efforts on consumers who are most likely to visit a particular part of Scotland or respond to a particular offer, based on their preferences.

(Below: Portrait Software credit Scottish viewpoint)
“Through investing in technology and innovation we are bucking the trend of the downturn economy and have achieved results beyond our expectation,” said Lynsey Fusco, DM manager, VisitScotland.

“The hosted service provided by Optima Value Group enables us to maintain business momentum and incrementally add new marketing functionality with minimal impact on internal resources.”