Butlins has reached the milestone of 100,000 ‘likes’ on its Facebook fan page, making it the first domestic holiday company to do so.
The holiday company, founded by Sir Billy Butlin in 1936, will celebrate the achievement with a series of competitions on its Facebook page.
The accomplishment underpins Butlins’ wider marketing strategy to become a web and social-based business, bringing social media into the heart of everything it does which was strengthened by the appointment of social media agency, BLOOM Worldwide in December 2013.
Central to Butlins’ approach is how it uses social media as a marketing and customer service channel to engage with families before, during and after their short breaks at their three seaside resorts.
Combined with its Twitter followers and ‘sister brand’ Butlins Live Music Weekends Butlins’ total social following amounts to nearly 185,000 people, giving its social media and customer care teams a powerful platform to gather customer feedback and improve and enhance the Butlins guest experience.
The customer care offered by Butlins on its social media channels (and on resort, online and on the phone) has been recognised by the customer care industry, with Butlins moving up more than 150 places in the 2013 ‘Nunwood Customer Experience Excellence Survey’ ranking at number 14 in the UK. It has also been recognised by the social media industry coming in at number 82 in the 2013 ‘Headstream Social Brands 100’ survey, which ranks the top UK brands on their social media engagement.
Butlins MD Dermot King comments; “The whole business is delighted to have reached this milestone. We’ve seen a massive change in the way our guests are engaging with us on Social Media in the last 6 months which is all down to the content that we have been sharing with them. In the last few months we’ve grown our social audience by a greater amount than we did in the whole of 2013! We have lots more brilliant ideas up our sleeves to continue growing our audience and increasingly the magic of our resorts will come to life on our social channels.”
Butlins plan to continue to grow its social presence with projects underway like employing team members on the resorts to be on the ground reporters, developing more rich content and working closely with the Customer Care teams to enhance the level of service offered on Social Media and the Web Chat function.
Butlins also continues to work closely with their third party partners such as Annabel Karmel, Warner Bros, and the HIT Entertainment characters like Angelina Ballerina, Mike The Knight and Thomas The Tank Engine.
www.facebook.com/butlins