Solaseed Air Inc.

Based in Miyazaki City, Miyazaki Prefecture, Solaseed Air is an airline with deep roots in the regional community, serving as the wings of the Kyushu and Okinawa region. Under their concept of “sowing the seeds of happiness from above”, Solaseed Air is enhancing service quality, expanding their network, promoting regional activities, and developing staff in a future oriented manner, prioritizing safety above all else.

To fulfill a longstanding ambition, Solaseed Air begin service on the Tokyo (Haneda) - Okinawa (Naha) route in March 2021. Solaseed Air operated 78 flights a day on 14 routes, including 12 flights a day between Tokyo (Haneda) - Miyazaki, in addition to servicing the Tokyo (Haneda) - Kumamoto, Tokyo (Haneda) - Nagasaki, Tokyo (Haneda) - Kagoshima, and Tokyo (Haneda) - Oita routes. As internet and smartphone usage become ever more critical to society, the online sales channel saw increasingly accelerated adoption among generations. As a result, ferociously competitive low-cost carriers (LCCs) and online travel agencies (OTAs) that sell primarily on this channel have emerged. Solaseed Air recognized that digital sales and marketing channels are now the primary battlefield, as the majority of airline tickets for the individual consumer market are sold online. To achieve their ambitious sales targets, Solaseed Air had decided to focus efforts on strengthening their ill-equipped digital marketing capabilities to enhance their competitiveness.

“We built separate systems for frequent flyer membership, booking, and boarding, with data managed in each as silos. We recognized the need for a digital marketing platform to unify data and allow us to utilize it for marketing purposes,” explains Koji Ono, a Manager in the Solaseed Air Sales & Marketing Department.

Solaseed Air requested ABeam Consulting to conduct an evaluation of their sales and marketing activities before deciding to construct a digital platform. Among many candidate consulting firms, ABeam was selected for their understanding of the airline industry and experience with other airlines. The evaluation of Solaseed Air’s sales and marketing activities identified numerous deficiencies, among them the need to establish a digital marketing platform.

As ABeam had gained a deeper understanding of Solaseed Air during the evaluation, they were selected as the partner for the digital marketing project. “We felt that ABeam had the capability to craft a grand design that extended from collection and accumulation of customer data, to targeting, communication execution and analysis accounting for Solaseed Air’s scale, employee mindset, and target audience.” (Ono)

Solaseed Air sells tickets via its own website, call centers, and travel agencies. The priority of the Sales & Marketing Department was focused on strengthening direct online sales. The project’s intention was to establish the ability to track customers, regardless of frequent flyer membership status, from booking to boarding. This would be accomplished by unifying data on each database for the management of frequent flyer membership, booking, and boarding results. Further, the project included the analysis of Solaseed Air’s website to better understand how customers used it.

The aim was to cater to individual customers, regardless of their presence in the database, and give them what they want when they want it. Additionally, the plan established that the separate functions that individually managed the frequent flyer membership, website analysis, and booking management needed to be reorganized. “We had been creating sales strategies based on boarding results. Our personnel in charge of strategic planning were unable to even follow individual customers’ behavior down to the booking phase. That had been problematic when determining the sales strategy. If we could see the big picture, we would be able to create the best sales strategy,” describes Rumiko Hara, a Manager in the Solaseed Air Sales & Marketing Department.

The possibility of measuring the benefits of the relevant marketing activities is the single greatest advantage of digital marketing. Previously, Solaseed Air had marketed in the digital space and utilized access logs to measure customer acquisition and conversion, however they had been unable to execute on any specific measures. The primary objective of the project was to enable real-time tuning of marketing activities by measuring the customer responses. By capturing the big picture, the digital marketing platform made it possible to confirm if the optimum value was being delivered to the customer at the appropriate time.

Identifying the value customers demanded by imagining the target customer and their experience presented the greatest challenge. “I used to be one of the ground staff, so I had a rough idea of Solaseed Air customers. In this project, we had to imagine individual customers and draw up the customer journey based on an understanding of the diversity of our customers. Project members thoroughly discussed customers’ backgrounds and defined the customer journey with ABeam’s support,” explains Rina Sakurai, of the Solaseed Air Sales & Marketing Department.

While Solaseed Air lacked experience in project leadership and would focus on what could be accomplished with the tools available, ABeam advised Solaseed Air to focus on what they wanted to do and what they must do, while providing support to keep the project aligned in the right direction. Consequently, the project team members developed the mentality of always thinking about the value that should be delivered to customers, which formed the foundation of their digital marketing activities.