Good morning Laurent ALBERT. Why reach out to Apollo Plus?
Hello. Before working with Apollo Plus, we were aware of a few blind spots in our approach to our demand, and the inability to make the most of the wealth of data we generate year after year. When I met Thomas Isnard, founder and CEO of Apollo Plus, the first analogy that came to my mind was that of the US presidential elections and how a win is built on the ability of a campaign to reach even the smallest audiences with specifically targeted messaging at the right time. In other words, enable a match between offer and demand.
What does Apollo Plus offer to the Puy du Fou?
Working with Apollo Plus proves beneficial on different levels: strategic, operational, and financial of course.
Strategic benefits, because their solution manages to make obvious things that were otherwise invisible to us in a familiar context, and provides visibility in these extraordinary and confusing times of the Covid pandemic.
Apollo Plus creates a very precise mapping of our clients based on the structure of a party and its geographical origin. One year in advance and on a weekly scale, we know precisely what types of clients will be buying and when they will be visiting the Puy du Fou. As soon as we detect a deviation, we can target the right audience with the appropriate marketing activation levers.
Operational benefits, because Apollo Plus provides state-of-the-art reportings and a complete predictive dashboard where we can monitor and drive all of our different revenue streams (Ticketing, Accommodation, Food & Beverages, Shops), as well as determine our staffing needs more accurately. The solution is used on a daily basis by numerous roles across our organization, and contributes to a collaborative mindset that we value at the Puy du Fou.
Financial benefits, since Apollo Plus grows our revenue with relevant and reliable recommendations regarding our fares and our pricing classes. In addition, we can now, for instance, determine whether a lowering attendance is normal or not, and decide to invest only when the return will be optimal.
When added and combined, all these benefits yield significant and measurable profits for the Puy du Fou.
How much time was needed before you started to get a return on your investment?
Once we started using the SaaS solution, our payback period amounted to a couple of weeks.
But actually, the first benefits of getting Apollo’s insights were substantial even before the solution was live. Immediately after the analysis of our data, we were able to adapt our strategy to make the most of the observations made by the data-science team.
Any exciting news for the Puy du Fou in 2021?
2020 has been a very trying year for everybody, but we look to the future, and are very proud to open our new theme park Puy du Fou España in Toledo, Spain in the spring of 2021.
Incidentally, we’ve decided to deploy Apollo Plus in Spain...