Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / How Marketing Automation Misses Customer Summer Travel Plans
Transcript
- Lucas: So it's late July 2026, which means roughly half your customer base — if you're in the US or Europe — is either on vacation, just got back, or counting the days until they leave. And yet, if you look at how most marketing automation platforms handle this, the answer is essentially: they don't. Luna: Right — I mean, I can count on one hand the number of brands that actually paused their emails while I was away this summer. Most just kept sending, and I came back to a full inbox of offers I couldn't use. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the weird thing — we have the data. Booking confirmations land in your inbox, Google Calendar knows your flights, your credit card charges the hotel. But marketing automation platforms almost never ingest that signal. Luna: Is it a data-access problem, or a product-design problem? Lucas: I think it's both, but let me give you a concrete example. There's a DTC luggage brand — I'll call them CarryOn — that tested something simple last summer. They took their standard weekly email campaign and split it: half got the usual send, half got a 'pre-trip trigger' if the customer's email metadata showed an out-of-office autoreply in the last 48 hours. Luna: Wait — they used the OOO autoreply as a trigger? That's clever. But also kind of creepy? Lucas: That's the tension, yeah. CarryOn's team said open rates on that triggered segment hit 58 percent versus 24 percent on the control. People were actually clicking because the email said 'Hey, packing for your trip? Here's a lightweight carry-on.' Luna: And the control group just got the same product but without the timing context — probably felt like noise. Lucas: Exactly. But here's the catch — CarryOn had to build that trigger themselves. HubSpot and Marketo don't have a 'customer is traveling' property out of the box. You'd have to connect to an external calendar API, or scrape autoreply headers, which is fragile and probably violates terms of service. Luna: So the platforms are leaving money on the table. Why haven't they built this? Lucas: I think part of it is that travel is seasonal and irregular — it's not like a birthday or a subscription renewal. But also, the data isn't centralized. Airlines, hotels, and booking sites don't share purchase data with a central clearinghouse that a marketing platform could plug into. Luna: Though some travel brands do have their own data. If you book with Delta or Marriott directly, they know when you're traveling. They could trigger an email pause or a travel-specific offer, but most don't. Lucas: That's the irony. The companies that have the data aren't using it for marketing automation, and the companies that use automation don't have the data. There's a gap. Luna: What about the privacy angle? If a brand sent me an email saying 'I see you're traveling next week,' I might feel a little watched. Lucas: It's a fine line. But you can frame it as helpful — 'We'll hold your emails until you're back' — and let the customer opt in. Some brands do that manually, like a preference center checkbox: 'I'm traveling, pause my emails.' But that relies on the customer remembering. Luna: Which almost no one does. So the automation has to be smart enough to infer intent without being creepy. Lucas: Right. And there's a middle ground. Some email clients like Superhuman and even Gmail have 'vacation responder' detection. A few startups are building APIs that surface that signal with user consent. I think within two or three years, the major marketing platforms will have a 'travel mode' toggle. Luna: I hope so. Because right now, it's weird that we have automation for cart abandonment — which is a relatively rare event — but not for something half the population does every summer. Lucas: And the impact goes beyond email. If you're using automated SMS or push notifications, sending a 'flash sale' alert to someone who's in a different time zone or on a plane is just bad UX. Luna: Or an ad retargeting them for a product they can't buy because shipping won't arrive before they leave. Lucas: Exactly. So there's a real business case here. And it's not just travel — think about any life event that changes your availability or intent. Moving, starting a new job, having a baby. Marketing automation is still very bad at detecting context shifts. Luna: We've talked about a lot of those in past episodes. But travel feels like the most universal one — almost everyone can relate. Lucas: Yeah. And there's one more reason platforms haven't prioritized it: travel is seasonal. A feature that's useful for three months a year is harder to justify building than something that drives revenue year-round. Luna: But if you're a travel-adjacent brand — luggage, sunscreen, books, apparel — that three months might be your peak season. Lucas: And that's exactly where the opportunity is. The brands that figure out how to respectfully, helpfully show up in that window will win disproportionate attention. Luna: Speaking of showing up — these conversations we have every week, they take a lot of research and prep. And if you've gotten something useful out of them, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Yeah, it makes a real difference. And it helps us keep the show ad-free and focused on the specific angles that matter to marketers. Luna: Okay, back to travel. So what's the first step for a marketer who wants to address this blind spot in their own automation? Lucas: I'd start simple. Add a 'travel dates' field to your customer profile — even if it's just a manual input during checkout or in a preference center. Then build a simple trigger: if travel start date is within 7 days, switch to a 'travel-friendly' email series with lower frequency and different content. Luna: And if you don't have that data yet, can you infer it from engagement? Like if someone hasn't opened emails in a week, maybe they're away? Lucas: That's a proxy, but it's noisy — they might just be disengaged. A better signal is a sudden drop in open rates combined with a change in IP geolocation. But that's getting into advanced data science territory. Luna: For most teams, the manual field is probably the easiest win. Even if only 5 percent of customers fill it in, that's 5 percent who get a better experience. Lucas: Exactly. And you can incentivize it — 'Tell us when you're traveling and we'll hold your emails — plus get 10 percent off your next trip.' Luna: That's a good trade. The customer gets less clutter, the brand gets better engagement and a purchase. Lucas: Right. And the data you collect starts to build a picture of seasonal intent that you can use for segmenting later. Luna: So the gap isn't really about technology — it's about design and willingness to ask. Lucas: I think that's the takeaway. The platforms will catch up eventually, but right now, the brands that treat travel as a first-class signal will have a real edge. Luna: Alright, next time we'll look at another blind spot — maybe one that's even more hidden.