trivago is one of the world’s largest search and price comparison sites for accommodation. From lavish five-star hotels to intimate vacation rentals, the options they provide are endless.
trivago works with many booking sites worldwide, including online travel agencies, as well as hotel chains and independent hotels.
Supporting local search engines simply wasn’t cost effective
For a global company like trivago, the digital marketing space can be extremely diverse. Choosing the best performing advertising platforms can be troublesome, but it’s also the key to success.
Advertising on Google, Bing and other large platforms was a great starting point, but the team quickly realised that they could expand their reach by utilizing smaller local search engines in addition to their global channels.
At first glance these platforms seemed out of reach, since the time and cost of implementation outweighed the potential performance. These channels would also count for a relatively small portion of their advertising efforts, so they needed to find a scalable solution in order to support them.
Finding a scalable process for data collection
When evaluating new advertising platforms, the first question for any data-driven business is: How will the data be collected, transformed and analyzed? This was no exception for trivago.
For the local search engines, they decided to import invoices and reports manually on a daily basis. This process was time consuming and prone to human errors. In addition, the marketing team was dependent on individual specialists for each country, which meant that if someone was absent, the data for that market wouldn't be collected and the reports would be delayed.
This was concerning for trivago and they quickly realised that they needed to find an automated solution, which also provided the depth and granularity they required. That’s when they found Funnel.
Automating marketing data collection
Moments after getting started, trivago’s marketing team was able to connect their local search engine accounts to Funnel without internal developer assistance.
“The setup was really smooth and the support was extremely responsive.”
Since the majority platforms were already supported, they simply needed the login credentials in order to start the data flowing. For the channels that weren’t supported, trivago utilized Funnel’s development team to build custom integrations.
They also created simple rules to automatically normalize cost over their array of marketing platforms, using Funnel’s data transformation tools.
Streamlining the reporting process
Funnel has helped trivago streamline their reporting process significantly. With direct integrations to their platforms now in place, the data flows to their backend system and is synced with their business intelligence solution automatically.
This has saved the marketing team time, provided more granularity and they no longer need to wait for manual imports. This has in turn produced timely cost reports and most importantly for trivago, boosted team morale.
“I can trust the data without logging into the local platforms.”
