Taking passenger experience higher with data-driven airport marketing

Airports live or die on experience and capacity: keeping passengers moving, growing non-aero revenue, and giving airlines confidence that the operation can scale. But behind the scenes at this airport group, customer data was scattered across systems and teams.

Marketing, sales and service all held pieces of the passenger story—parking, retail, loyalty, airline relationships—but no one could see the whole picture. Campaigns relied on broad, one-size-fits-all messages, and measuring marketing ROI meant wrestling with exports from multiple tools.

Brought in as senior project manager within the consulting partner, I led a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement, Personalisation and Data Cloud MVP to change that. Our goal was simple: create a unified customer view across two airports and use it to power smarter, more targeted digital journeys.

Working with stakeholders across marketing, digital, sales and service, we designed a centralised customer data model in Data Cloud. That model became the single source of truth, feeding Marketing Cloud with clean segments and attributes so teams could move from generic newsletters to journeys built around who passengers are, how they travel, and what they value.

We integrated three key source systems into Salesforce and Data Cloud, establishing ten priority customer segments and four core newsletter subscriptions. That gave the team the foundations for always-on engagement—rather than a series of disconnected campaigns.

Once the data foundations were in place, we shifted focus to human-centred journeys. I worked closely with the airport's marketing and digital teams to map real passenger scenarios—from holidaymakers booking parking to frequent flyers using lounge access—and translate them into Marketing Cloud journeys.

We ran collaborative workshops to define triggers, content, and decision points for each journey (for example, how to nudge parking upgrades, promote retail offers, or surface relevant services based on flight time and travel pattern). Data Cloud handled the heavy lifting on segmentation; Marketing Cloud handled the orchestration.

Service teams were brought into the design early so that campaigns didn't create operational surprises. By integrating Sales and Service Clouds with the same customer view, we ensured that when a passenger responded to a campaign, agents could see the full context rather than treating it as a one-off interaction.

Throughout the MVP, I kept governance tight but lightweight—using a clear backlog, short feedback loops, and regular show-and-tell sessions so stakeholders could see journeys taking shape and adjust quickly. That balance of structure and agility meant the airport could move fast without losing control of brand, compliance or operational impact.