Adobe Helps Heathrow Make Every Journey Better

My hol­i­days and busi­ness trips always starts at the air­port. From lux­u­ry shop­ping to cafés, pow­er sta­tions, restau­rants and bars, there is some­thing for every­one, and major inter­na­tion­al air­ports like Lon­don Heathrow — which host­ed a record 73.4 mil­lion pas­sen­gers across five ter­mi­nals in 2014 — have become des­ti­na­tions in themselves.

How­ev­er, the UK’s hub air­port doesn’t quite agree that my jour­ney starts there. For them it starts even ear­li­er — before I have even booked a flight — and Heathrow is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing me a seam­less expe­ri­ence from that point to get­ting on board.

This seam­less­ness is only pos­si­ble if Heathrow under­stands who I am as a cus­tomer, so they can give me rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and offers at the right point in my jour­ney, whether that is online of offline. Yet many large organ­i­sa­tions find the biggest bar­ri­er to mak­ing this hap­pen is get­ting that full view of the cus­tomer in the first place.

Heathrow and the airport’s ded­i­cat­ed rail con­nec­tion, Heathrow Express, are not alone in fac­ing this par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge. Tra­di­tion­al siloes of knowl­edge in the sales and mar­ket­ing teams, plus the chal­lenges of inte­grat­ing lega­cy tech­nolo­gies, meant that devel­op­ing this sin­gle view of the cus­tomer was vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble. Add to that the explo­sion of new meth­ods and chan­nels for reach­ing cus­tomers that organ­i­sa­tions now need to con­sid­er and it’s a minefield—but not one with­out mas­sive opportunity.

To over­come these chal­lenges; improve their under­stand­ing of each pas­sen­ger; and deliv­er con­tex­tu­al, rel­e­vant and real-time mes­sages; Heathrow is imple­ment­ing Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud, includ­ing Adobe Cam­paign, Adobe Ana­lyt­ics, Adobe Tar­get and Adobe Social.

Simon Chat­field, Head of eBusi­ness and CRM for Heathrow has been lead­ing on the project so Heathrow can appeal to the thou­sands of pas­sen­gers com­ing through their doors each day. He says, “While one cus­tomer will be look­ing for­ward to brows­ing lux­u­ry hand­bags, anoth­er will only be inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about our fam­i­ly facil­i­ties. What we want is for cus­tomers to only get mes­sag­ing that is right for them. Adobe Cam­paign will allow col­lab­o­ra­tion across the busi­ness to bet­ter under­stand what our cus­tomers want. It will also make us oper­a­tional­ly more effi­cient and allow us to gen­er­ate more upselling opportunities.”

As a plat­form, Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud solu­tions will also allow Heathrow to explore inno­v­a­tive new mar­ket­ing tech­niques, for exam­ple using bea­con tech­nol­o­gy for loca­tion-based tar­get­ing, whether on the Heathrow Express or in the air­port. By ensur­ing that the cus­tomer view is inte­grat­ed across all plat­forms, offers can be tai­lored to exact cus­tomer require­ments – whether that’s an offer on the new sea­sons’ per­fumes, or a kids-eat-free meal offer.

We will be work­ing along­side our part­ner Acx­iom to give Heathrow the best pos­si­ble view of their cus­tomers so they can deliv­er a bet­ter expe­ri­ence. Adobe Cam­paign will be inte­grat­ed with Adobe Ana­lyt­ics and Adobe Tar­get, which Heathrow is already signed up to, to pro­vide a plat­form far stronger than a point solu­tion approach. With Adobe Social also in place at Heathrow, the air­port is one of the largest organ­i­sa­tions har­ness­ing the pow­er of Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud.

We’re delight­ed that Heathrow has extend­ed its work with us to man­age cam­paigns across the air­port, its car park­ing and on its trains. And, with new tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tions on the hori­zon offer­ing huge poten­tial to make every jour­ney bet­ter, it’s an excit­ing time to be on board.