Case - Micazu
Case
Micazu
Micazu is an online platform that offers rental of Dutch-owned holiday homes abroad. By facilitating a connection between the holidaymakers and owners of holiday homes, each holiday gets a personal touch. Micazu makes sure that all holiday homes on their platform comply with their set of standards, this makes Micazu the perfect starting point when looking to book a unique get-a-way.
When visiting the Micazu website, a lot of effort is put into giving you the best experience possible. It is therefore no surprise that Micazu has previously won a “Website of the Year” award in the category “Hotels and Accommodation”. The award served as motivation for the Micazu team to perform even better and lift the Micazu customer experience to the next level. In 2019, Micazu started looking for a way to centralize their customer data in order to offer further personalisation in their customer journeys.
The Customer Data Platform (CDP) that they would eventually settle on, was to match a strict set of requirements. Firstly, good user experience was very important. Second, the CDP should be able to handle several tailormade solutions that had been integrated into the Micazu platform over the years. Third and last, it was important to settle on a partner who would collaborate in establishing a successful strategy for the years to come. For Tristan Albersen, Senior Commercial Operations at Micazu, the Squeezely CDP seemed to tick all the boxes and more. Thus the collaboration between Micazu and Squeezely commenced in the second half of 2019.
The collaboration started by discussing the personalisation goals that Micazu had in mind. It soon became clear that Micazu’s ambitions would entail more than just implementing a ‘standard’ set of website tracking. Squeezely’s flexible character slotted perfectly into Micazu’s data management preferences, this showed in the capability of segregating dataflows for holiday makers and landlords that both visit the same platform.
After forming a clear image of Micazu's use-cases, Squeezely presented an implementation plan. This plan would go on to form the blueprint for Micazu’s external IT-partners to channel their respective data into the Squeezely CDP.
A full 360 degree customer profile would now become visible within the Squeezely CDP. Amongst other data, these profiles provide a detailed view into which accommodations have been viewed and booked by customers. Which holiday periods customers are looking at. What the composition of their families is and even whether they are bringing along any pets. Squeezely’s data models further enrich these customer profiles by adding specifically derived online behavior, such as favorite destinations and desired types of holiday homes.
In order to fully utilize the 360 degree profiles for personalized marketing, the entire Micazu marketing ecosystem was easily connected to Squeezely CDP. Thanks to this deep integration, enriched data is now also readily available in Micazu’s email marketing platform Spotler, alongside other advertising platforms like Facebook and Google. In this scenario, Squeezely CDP can be viewed as the common denominator and enabler for all Micazu cross-channel personalisation.
Finding the exact holiday home that you are looking for isn’t always that easy when faced with over thousands of homes in 60 different countries. Micazu assists its visitors in finding more relevant offers by placing recommended homes on its homepage. These recommendations are based on similar behavioral patterns of previous visitors. Squeezely CDP is able to assess behavioral patterns in real-time and assist in providing exactly the right homes to the right people. This built-in website personalisation module ensures Micazu visitors get to view a unique set of homes, completely aligned with the looks and colorson the Micazu website.
In terms of email automation, recognizing which customers are visiting the Micazu website is quite important. After a website visitor is identified as being an existing customer or a newsletter subscriber, they will receive a follow-up email after they’ve left the website. This email will contain suitable personalized recommendations, based on the browsing behavior they’ve just recently shown. This feature is achieved by Squeezely sending a trigger to Spotler, containing the right recommendations. Spotler in turn, will pour this information into a beautiful email format that is then sent out to the customer.
This personalized approach ensures that at least 25% of recipients makes another website visit. Numbers and figures show that these recommendations are actively helping customers find the right holiday home. A quarter of all recipients eventually books a holiday home with Micazu.
A much used technique in online marketing is the See, Think, Do, Care approach. Within this approach, it is important for any company to remain favorable in the eyes of the customer. It’s the Micazu approach, internally known as the Tristan Albersen method, that combines all these factors and a little bit extra.
We build a trustful relationship with our clients, by offering them a platform where they can make the right choices for themselves without a doubt. This trust is established over several key moments, customer enticement is just one of these moments. Altogether, the platform establishes trust, a perfect holiday home for the holiday maker and a great booking for the owners.
Micazu compliments its visitors on their taste as they encounter popular holiday homes on the platform. Also, visitors are reminded of favorable cancellation policies that booking with Micazu is 100% safe. The Squeezely Journey Builder is put to work in order to get customers to leave a review after their stay. Micazu gathers ‘social proof’ on the go, which can later be applied to help new visitors make their respective decisions. Micazu’s marketing approach goes hand in hand with these enticement methods, without losing sight of Micazu’s core values.
Being involved in every step of the customer journey is an unmistakable part of a great customer experience. The Squeezely Journey Builder proved to be the ideal tool for Micazu. A personalized ‘abandoned shopping cart’ email campaign was quickly built. Squeezely provides Sportler with up to date information with regards to available homes, home photos, home descriptions and URLs. As soon as a booking is abandoned on the website, the Squeezely Journey Builder sends a trigger to Spotler. This trigger contains all the information that Spotler needs to send out a highly personalized email to the customer.
Micazu makes sure to stay involved after you’ve made a successful booking. The 360 degree customer profiles are enriched with all the holiday arrival and departure dates. This way, Micazu sends out personalized communication before and after the holiday commences. These pre- and post holiday campaigns help establish a valuable relationship with all Micazu customers.
Visiting the Micazu platform is not just the start of a single journey, but potentially the start of several journeys across multiple seasonal holidays. After all, the only thing more exciting than your last holiday experience, is where you are going next! Whether the customer would like to repeat the last experience or try something new, Micazu will assist in making it happen. The Squeezely Journey Builder will automatically ensure that former customers receive lovely Micazu holiday memories, just as they are starting to think about the next trip. Friends for life?
Micazu has the personalized approach embedded in its company’s DNA. Squeezely CDP offers all the tools for Micazu to keep innovating and exploring the possibilities of online personalisation. During Squeezely and Micazu’s periodic strategy sessions, Innovative use cases are the main subject. Both company’s help each other strive to achieve higher levels of innovation and marketing personalisation.
Micazu executes the implementation of new personalisation cases in the user friendly interfaces that Squeezely CDP offers. In doing so, built in A/B testing is applied to measure which cases are the most successful. The collaboration of Micazu and Squeezely CDP promises a lot more future personalisation innovation. We can’t wait to see what will follow!
