Do you often find yourself spending hours each week looking for client emails, making sure people have paid their invoices, and struggling to craft marketing content? We know we did. This post is a designated space to show you why we believe Keap is the best travel and tourism CRM software.

We have been working in the travel and tourism industry for over 15 years. From raft guiding to guiding hikes through Western Newfoundland and to Katie acting as Program Manager at Wild Women Expeditions. (She helped them build out the early systems and processes for the business they have today). There is one thing that we learned from all of these experiences it’s – whether you are an inbound tour operator, outbound tour operator, domestic, or ground-tour operator having the right customer relationship management system (CRM) makes all the difference.

Why Keap is so Valuable for the Travel Industry

The travel industry is an extremely high-touch sales experience and without proper travel CRM software, you may find yourself constantly scrolling through email threads to find clients’ details. 

From the time a customer begins thinking about a trip to when they actually leave, there are countless opportunities for travel companies to provide value, deliver exceptional customer service and separate themselves from their competition. Unfortunately, this means there are equally as many opportunities for your team to lose the customer and turn them off of your services. 

With such high customer contact rates comes the need for efficient CRM tools. In essence, the more times a consumer has to follow up with you in order to have their queries or concerns addressed, the less satisfied they will be and the more likely they are to turn away from your company.

Common questions and mistakes to avoid

Do your clients ask you the same questions before all your trips? 

• Do I need a Visa?
• What types of clothing should I pack?
• How much money should I bring?
• What will the weather be like?

You are likely to become frustrated having to re-write the same emails over and over. Your traveller may also become flustered as they have to contact you for every little thing. This takes away from the customer’s travel experience and creates an additional burden on them to not forget anything before they go.

If you fail to ask crucial questions that fundamentally determine if a person is mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared to go on the trip you will not only have an unsatisfied customer but you may have a person who actively deters people from acquiring your services. Preemptively answering these questions will instill confidence in your ability to make your customer’s travel experience as relaxing as possible.

Why Keap?

Keap’s CRM software provides features that are perfect for streamlining all aspects of a traveller’s lifecycle with your business. We use automation to provide trip details automatically, collect traveller information via hosted forms, follow up on overdue payments, create tasks at critical times, and much more. This data is then compiled into a customer profile so that you don’t have to scroll through multiple email threads to find the details.

Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) has been around since 2001, is used by many others in the travel space, and provides excellent customer service (a.k.a. you can talk to a real person and get answers usually within 30 mins).

How can Keap Benefit you?

Keap solves FIVE large pain points all travel businesses face when dealing with customer workflows and marketing;

1. Tracking client information for the long term allows you to send birthday wishes and passport expiry reminders or pre-populate forms with existing client data, so they simply have to update their details.
2. Managing tags and segments of contacts for targeted email marketing or trip specific campaigns for those who have booked.
3. Team collaboration to ensure top-notch customer service with notes, email and text history and email integrations.
4. Payment tools like quotes, invoicing, recurring payments and automated payment reminders.
5. Modern online tools like appointment scheduling, text message marketing, Keap business line, and a sales pipeline.

Client Information Management Over the Long Term

One of the main benefits of Keap is that it can store all customer information in ONE place. This includes contact details, trip or purchase history, interactions such as calls and emails as well as the marketing emails they receive. You may be thinking this sounds like most CRM software, but with Keap you can also create custom fields to capture whatever information you want.

Why are custom fields so important?

From the outset, custom fields sound like more functional google forms but they are far more powerful than that. Custom fields can be used to;

Trigger a variety of different reminders and automation such as the last date travelled automation. This automated notification is a fantastic way to get your customers excited about another trip. You can tell the Keap automation to start this for all customers for which it’s been a year since they last travelled. In this automation, you can ask them questions like. Have they travelled since their previous trip with you? Asking questions to previous travellers sparks the desire to travel again and let them know you are there to assist them along the way.

Create forms that can collect a plethora of information from your traveller. Information from fitness level, trip goals, gear sizing requirements, flight arrival times, insurance details, medical information and much more. You can flag information if certain answers require extra attention. This is what allows you to thoroughly vet your potential clients before sending them on a trip they are not yet prepared for. 

This is why Keap is a game-changer for the travel industry. How many times have you gone back to check if someone has completed their trip information or signed their paperwork only to find out you have had no response? Keap cuts through all of these tedious chores through the use of automation.

Keap Payments System

Another pain point for tour operators is tracking and processing payments. Keap makes this process much easier by automating the invoicing process and providing tools to help you collect payments. You can set up automatic payment reminders to help customers pay on time. This helps reduce the amount of time you spend chasing payments and allows you to focus on your business.

This is particularly powerful if you are an outbound tour operator. Keap strips away the need for manual follow-ups unless absolutely necessary. If they haven’t replied or made a payment 3 days after the 2nd payment reminder was sent out keap will flag this person and bring it to the attention of one of the employees responsible for that client.

Another advantage of Keap’s Payment Processing is its ability to integrate with a variety of payment processing services. This means that you can use the software to accept payments from customers online or over the phone. Overall, Keap is a great solution for tracking and processing payments. It’s easy to use and has a wide range of features that can help make your business more efficient.

Team Collaboration to Ensure Top-notch Customer Service

Keap is a team-based system that can help your team in many different areas. One of its best features is Keap’s ability to 2-way sync with Gmail or Outlook. With this integration, emails sent from Keap OR Gmail show up on the contact’s profile. It offers centralized data, which makes it easier for team members to see what has been sent or received when they view the contact’s profile. This helps team communication and collaboration, as team members can easily see who is working on what.

Keap Integrations

This allows you to better track and process all sorts of data within your business. It integrates with Zapier, a web application that allows Keap to integrate with over 4000 different apps. This means its functionality is endless! You can use Zapier to connect with your various different software such as YouLi, Google Sheets, Click Funnel, DocuSign and much more. This allows you to better track and process all sorts of data within your business.

Useful Resources

This is a pretty in-depth discussion on why we think Keap is so valuable for the travel and tourism industry. If you want a visual look into the back-end we definitely recommend checking out the live session Katie did over on the Business of Adventure page below. She goes into great detail about lead capture forms and how to optimize and utilize them. We have put together a list of useful links that we recommend you make use of.

To Conclude

Keap is a great option for tourism CRM software. Whether you are a small business just starting out or a larger 7 figure business looking to streamline your client care processes, Keap’s got you covered. It will ensure you don’t ask the same question twice, give you an organized and secure database of all client information, and you never miss a payment reminder again. Make your customers’ service exceptional and their trip preparations painless.

Join the Conversation

We would love for you to join our Business of Adventure Facebook group. This is a collaborative space for business owners or freelancers in the adventure travel and tourism space. The focus here is to share best practices and tips about online presence and digital marketing (front end) and online systems (back end) so you can establish a rock-solid foundation for your adventure business. If this is something you could benefit from, please join!