Proving that customers are motived by low fares, Scoot, Singapore’s new low cost airline, sold 30,000 seats in less than a week after it announced S$88 fares for its launch flights to Sydney.

“We are an online retailer that just happens to sell flights,” said Scoot’s head of commercial, Steven Greenway (left), who spoke at the Google Thinktravel event in Singapore. “We want to sell a range of ancillaries on the most cost-effective channels.”

This thinking explains why the website will be the cornerstone of Scoot’s commercial strategy and why digital will be the cornerstone of its marketing. “We want to own the customer experience,” said Greenway, who described himself as “chief cash cow” at the Singapore Airlines-owned subsidiary.

He said digital has clear ROI (return on investment). It supports trial and price lead advertising, it uses the same platform cross-markets and “Google dominates so it’s reasonably simple”.

The question is, “will guest research through us or simply book through? Do I have to be everything to everyone or do I just have to have a super good booking engine?”

The booking engine which he described as “simple and fast” was built in four months. A good 90% of visitations go straight to the booking engine. “Do we need more? Do we need reviews? TripAdvisor already does that. We will become more functionally rich and possibly add maps and guides.”

Although it is a crowded bidders’ market in search, Greenway says search still delivered clear ROI. On meta-search flight sites such as Kayak, he said, “I think they’re only scratching the surface. They are interesting but expensive, more expensive than OTAs.

“Meta-search cannot survive without air content so there has to be a middle ground.”

Scoot has taken the leap into social media and is putting considerable resources into this channel. “We use it to drive sign-ups for our EDMs,” said Greenway. “I am not sure about it being a revenue platform.”

It will be used for notification to customers such as IT issues or flight delays, and for engaging the community through competitions.

The thing with social media is, you have to be prepared to show everything and you cannot delete negative comments. Scoot’sFacebook page currently has about 53,000 members. It’s also found videos as an effective way of communicating and has its ownYouTube channel.

The most effective medium though remains EDMs, he said. “All our emails will be dynamic based on profile and offer rich content delivery opportunity. It sounds very basic but no one does it really well.”

Scoot gets 30-40% click-through straight to its booking engine.

Greenway also shared these tips with digital marketers in the audience:
• Measure the effectiveness of your media from multiple sources
• Be tailored and as interactive as possible
• What works for one industry might not for another
• Get a grip on what is going on yourself – don’t outsource content
• Don’t dump people on your front doorstep
• Use niche specialists who know what is going on

“It is easy to be distracted these days. The key is to get the basics right, executive well and continue to experiment.”