Content in Airlines

Website

The website is the very first thing the customer, or potential passenger sees. In addition, it is a gateway to other subsystems, such as e-commerce, reservation system, etc. These are the reasons why it has to be done in a way that will attract clients.

Introduction of a Content Management System will allow the marketing team to have control over the content displayed on the website in almost all digital experiences (incl. eCommerce, mobile app and other channels). Having a single place where one can control all content, for all markets, in all languages, is crucial for retaining brand consistency.

After introducing Adobe Experience Manager, Juri Gabbe, Director of eCommerce at Germanwings, said:

We needed an automated efficient web content management system to speed creating and delivering personalised content to customers

In-flight magazines

Apart from addressing the look & feel, the authoring of the website, e-commerce and a potential mobile app (this topic will be covered in the next section), additional elements can also be digitalised. Let’s consider an example with in-flight magazines that are currently printed out and available for each passenger. What if those were digitised and available as a website or a mobile app? Lufthansa had a similar problem. In 2016, in order to cut costs, and meet Germany’s environmental policies, whilst still maintaining a level of standard for economy passengers, the airline implemented an eJournal platform within their website and mobile application. The publications are available to download 3 days prior to departure, and are available in multiple languages, as well as having personalised suggested reading lists for the passenger.

The number of publications available to download depends on status and class of service the passenger is part of:

Whilst the in-flight magazine is still available, the number of copies printed, and the regularity of printing has been reduced dramatically, thus saving the airline a lot of money. The online magazine is regularly updated, however, the print copy is restricted to limited and general information.
Such elements provide possibilities that are impossible in the classical model (e.g., personalisation, more content, up-to-date content, multiple language content, sophisticated advertising mechanisms – to name a few).

Introduction of Adobe Experience Cloud

Content Management System simplifies the process of content management and optimises the effort needed to work on the site. What is even more important, it allows a Marketing Team to focus on the way how the content is presented by letting them stepping away from technical aspects.

Easy authoring process

The simplified process of content authoring is one of the biggest advantages of Adobe Experience Manager. Drag & drop based mechanisms allow content creation without the need for specific technical knowledge. What is more, due to the componentisation (a component is an element that introduces given business capability; it can be dragged & dropped to the page) approach the flexibility of building new pages (and sites) is very high. That, in fact, means, that a new page can be constructed from the building blocks in a way that addresses the current need of Marketing Team in a way that it is still consistent with the brand. Naturally, the high level of flexibility requires also more responsibility from the authoring team. Content Approval Workflow helps with mitigating this risk by introducing automated mechanisms of content approval (e.g., before the page gets published it has to be reviewed by another Author).

Multi-market, Multi-language sites and Rollout Mechanisms

Thanks to AEM architecture, it is possible to host multiple sites on a single AEM instance, each site may be available under a different domain, and may be very different from the others. That business capability opens many doors for the Marketing Team – launching a completely new site that is consistent with the brand design may take days rather than weeks or even months. AEM’s Live Copy mechanism helps to control multi-sites content, where there is one “master” blueprint on which authors may implement changes, which are then rolled out to the underlying markets. Each market may still contain differences in content and in the styling.

Assets

Assets are one of the parts of the Adobe Experience Manager platform; the business capability that these bring to the customer’s table is a digital assets management. All site- or even brand-related assets can be organised in the structure that matches all the standards and what is the most important aspect of using Assets, these can be placed and reused across websites, eliminating redundancies and reducing time to create the content.

eCommerce integrations

As we wrote in our previous article eCommerce in the airlines plays an important role. Going forward, having a single platform that enables the client to manage all types of content (including eCommerce related) sounds natural. AEM introduces the ease of authoring not only for static pages but also for sites that are integrated with some 3rd party systems (such as eCommerce) – authors can drag and drop components, to change the look and feel of the page instantly, without having specific technical knowledge.

Personalisation

Adobe Experience Platform provides also the content personalisation features. Depending on the user’s or analytics data, content can be personalised to match user preferences (e.g., European travel destinations may be promoted for a user that has already travelled to Europe, thus has an interest in such promotions).

Geolocation

By utilising the geolocation features the user experience may be leveraged to another level – it can be used to personalise content, for example, providing flight deals, suggested destinations, or add ons, such as local car hire or hotel services based on the current location of the visitor.

Summary

There are many aspects of the airlines’ digital life needs that must be addressed well to let the organisation work optimally. That is not an easy task, but it is considered as one of the must-haves when it comes to digital evolution. Adobe Experience Platform is a comprehensive set of tools that if used properly may be a game-changer in the organisation’s digital existence.