In the wake of Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood<\/a>, the hotel giant will continue to focus on brand marketing, but also test\u00a0and lean on\u00a0new technologies to reach consumers in new ways. That includes both tried and true tools like email marketing, as well as cutting-edge ones that rely on location targeting and virtual reality experiences, says\u00a0Karin Timpone, Global Marketing Office for Marriott International<\/a>, in this interview with Beet.TV.<\/p>\n

When the two hotels merged<\/a>, the loyalty programs were also meshed, and that’s added even more weight to email marketing as a means to reach regular customers, she explains. “Our loyalty program is important because we\u00a0brought those together,” she says. “If we have a loyalty member we can target them with a very\u00a0personalized\u00a0email about an upcoming stay, and we might also buy advertising to introduce a new brand to them or to tell the story of how to link and join accounts.”<\/p>\n

Content marketing is vital too, and so is social, and that’s why the travel brand relies on a so-called “command center for social media.” That’s like a newsroom to monitor and manage social and contact with customers, and Starwood-Marritott counts those centers on the East Coast, in London, and in Hong Kong, and also has a Spanish-language command center.<\/p>\n

“If\u00a0we see a conversation coming together\u00a0in social media we might do some real-time buying\u00a0in digital to add more gas to the fire. If we hear something cresting in social it’s important to pivot quickly,” she says.<\/p>\n

Timpone adds that Marriott is studying\u00a0virtual reality opportunities as they may have key applications in the travel sector. “We are trying to take the aspiration of travel and use new technologies to expand the story. That can get shared socially too [as in] ‘Look at the cool places you can go.” The chain also continues to explore geo-location tools combined with targeting, she says.<\/p>\n

This video is part of Beet.TV\u2019s coverage of the IAB MIXX Conference, 2016, presented by The TradeDesk.\u00a0Please find additional videos from the Conference here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood, the hotel giant will continue to focus on brand marketing, but also test\u00a0and lean on\u00a0new technologies to reach consumers in new ways. That includes both tried and true tools like email marketing, as well as cutting-edge ones that rely on location targeting and virtual reality experiences, says\u00a0Karin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[5844],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}