Overview of CruiseTraka. Sales Lead Generation for. Cruise Travel Agents. Version 1.3. Released October 10 th 2013

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1 Overview of CruiseTraka Sales Lead Generation for Cruise Travel Agents Version 1.3 Released October 10 th 2013 TrekTraka LLC w: Introduction

2 2 What is CruiseTraka? CruiseTraka is a social media and marketing service that provides cruise travel agents with a stream of identified sales leads names and addresses - and clicks through to their website. CruiseTraka taps into the sphere of friends connected to cruise passenger and engages them day-byday in the journey and experience of their cruising friend. Each day of a cruise CruiseTraka brings these friends back to a GPS tracking map showing the location of their travelling friends and highlighting the fantastic places they are visiting. The GPS tracking map is located on a CruiseTraka hosted landing page heavily branded with the cruise agent s own marketing. A number of mechanisms are built into this page that enable the cruise agent to capture direct sales leads and web-site click- throughs from the stream of visits by connected friends following each cruise. In short, CruiseTraka is a sales lead generation system for cruise agents leveraging the massive marketing reach achievable through the social media and connections of the clients they place on a cruise. Just click the link (right) to see a 2-minute explanatory video for agents. Friends of clients an un-tapped marketing channel Current statistics suggest the average years Facebook user is connected to about 328 friends, the age group has just over 200 connected friends and even the years group average 183 friends on Facebook. So across the main cruising age groups a cruising Facebook user will have about 200 friend connections. In addition, many people also have additional connections on platforms such as Twitter (on average Twitter users have about 200 followers) and LinkedIn (an average LinkedIn user has about 150 connections) and further connections via simple contacts. Using just Facebook for this example, if an agent were to place 50 people on a cruise these people could be connected to around 10,000 friends even more if the other social media platforms and connections are considered. However, using the common marketing communications tactics employed by most agents these 10,000 connections largely remain beyond the reach of their marketing communications. This pool of social media connections is a huge and poorly utilised marketing opportunity. CruiseTraka puts this opportunity to work for agents. How do agents benefit from CruiseTraka? Each day of a cruise CruiseTraka issues social media posts and updates to the friends of an agent s opted-in clients on the cruise. 2 P a g e

3 3 These updates bring the friends back to the near real-time CruiseTraka GPS tracking map where they become engaged with the cruise and start thinking, Hey, I want to do that too. CruiseTraka includes a comprehensive sales lead capture system that encourages friends to provide their name and contact details to the sales agent. As a result CruiseTraka helps agents build their sales prospect database. CruiseTraka also directs friends back to the agent s website and builds brand awareness, visitor traffic and interaction with the agency. CruiseTraka also provides the agent s clients with an extremely informative and engaging on-line record of their journey they can share with friends for years to come. CruiseTraka requires very little time by agency personnel to implement and use on all the cruises they sell. A brief overview of how CruiseTraka works CruiseTraka supports all the major cruise lines and the myriad specific cruise products they offer. As a cruise progresses CruiseTraka automatically issues pre-prepared update s and social media posts to the Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts of opted-in clients an agent places on a cruise. The pre-prepared content is associated with specific geographic locations typically ports on the itinerary. In CruiseTraka these locations and their associated social media content are called a point-of-interest and the CruiseTraka database covers every port utilised by the major cruise lines. The images below illustrate the extensive point-of-interest coverage of CruiseTraka within the Australia-Pacific and Caribbean regions. Other major cruising regions are also covered by the service. In the weeks leading up to the commencement of a cruise each agent enters the clients they have booked on a specific cruise into their confidential CruiseTraka system typically a 60-second process performed weekly via a simple CSV file batch upload process or a fully automated web-service interface. About 10 days prior to a specific cruise commencing the agent s clients are automatically sent an invitation suggesting they opt-in to the social media up-date service and permit periodic posts 3 P a g e

4 4 to be sent to their selected social media accounts. They may also nominate the addresses of friends they would like to have a daily trip update message sent to as their cruise progresses. It takes just one or two clicks for clients to opt-in. Once a cruise commences the CruiseTraka system receives regular GPS location signals from the ship. When the ship reaches a point-of-interest location the pre-prepared social media content is automatically issued to the accounts of opted-in passengers. updates work by sending out an end-of-day summary of the points-of-interested visited during that day. Neither the ship nor the passengers need to have access to the Internet for the system to function. The update system operates automatically no matter how remote the location of the ship. Each post and daily update contains a clickable link to an interactive GPS location map specific to each cruise. Friends back home who see the posts in their Facebook newsfeed, tweet or daily update can click back to the map to see the location of their cruising friend. When a visitor clicks back to the map, usually multiple times over the course of a cruise, they see the branding and sales content of the agent that booked their friend on the cruise. This content may be customised for individual regional agents. Additionally, a mouse click on this content takes the visitor to the agent s own website. The map page also carries a promotional offer created by CruiseTraka (in the image below see the offer below the map) that encourages visitors to provide their name and contact details to this specific agent. This system ensures agents receive only those leads attributable to the clients they placed on the cruise. As a result, if an agent in Memphis places a client on a cruise that agent can have their content displayed beside the map and receive just those sales leads arising from the friends of the client they placed on the cruise. CruiseTraka also has additional mechanisms for building fan numbers for an agent s own Facebook page. As a cruise progresses CruiseTraka provides each agent with greatly expanded brand exposure, visitor traffic to their own website, identified sales leads and new Facebook fans. 4 P a g e

5 5 Tasks to deploy CruiseTraka: CruiseTraka is quick and simple to deploy and use. The main tasks an agency must complete to deploy and use the system are as follows: The agent uploads their branding graphic and agent s content mentioned earlier for display on their dynamically configured GPS map landing page. This marketing content can be maintained by the agent as often as they like. About once per week upload fresh client bookings into their confidential CruiseTraka bookings database via a simple CSV file batch upload or a fully automated web-service interface. 5 P a g e

6 6 CruiseTraka costs: CruiseTraka is designed to deeply penetrate the huge pool of social media users connected to travellers. CruiseTraka provides agents with greatly expanded brand and product awareness within this pool of connections. The system also provides identified sales leads an agent can add to their marketing database and a stream of new visitors to the agent s website. It also delivers new fans to the agent s Facebook page and helps generate engagement with the agency. CruiseTraka charges a fee for delivering these marketing benefits. CruiseTraka charges agents: a small fee when a visitor clicks back to the agent s own web site from the CruiseTraka GPS tracking map page, a small fee when a visitor to the map leaves the agent their name and contact details in the integrated sales-lead capture system. Further information: For additional information please contact either David Clarke or Peter Allison. David Clarke Chief Executive Officer T: M: E: david.clarke@trektraka.com W: S: david.clarke_trektraka Peter Allison Sales Manager T: M: E: peter.allison@trektraka.com W: S: peter.allison_trektraka 6 P a g e