How Squaw Valley Delivers an Olympic Experience w/ Tracy Chang

Josh Wetzel -

“OneSignal’s push notifications have been instrumental in helping us to reach our goals. We use (them) throughout our user’s journey...It is these micro-moments that help us build a deep relationship with our users.”

Welcome to the OneSignal Podcast where we aim to educate ourselves on product, industry and best practices as it relates to building and growing a customer messaging practice, hosted by OneSignal's CRO, Josh Wetzel.

In this episode, we're excited to be joined by Tracy Chang, Squaw Valley Holdings Vice President of Digital Marketing.  Tracy has been working at Squaw Valley Holdings for more than 8 years, and in the winter resort business marketing industry for the past 14 years.   She joins us to discuss how Squaw Alpine has leveraged digital channels like push notifications to iterate and improve the resort experience.  

Show Notes:

(0:20) Intro - Tracy Chang - VP Digital Marketing, Squaw Valley Holdings

(6:30) - Tracy discusses how they are working to improve the customer experience to reach new customers and improve their experiences using new technologies such as the Apple Watch.  

(10:30) Experimenting with New Technology - Tracy discusses how SquawAlpine has jumped on new technology, such as Apple’s ARKit, to build new visitor functionality, however in the case of ARKit, they didn’t release the innovation.  
(12:30) Digital Deals Drive Engagement - Tracy talks about how their digital engagement goal is to be hyper-relevant.

  • “OneSignal’s push notifications have been instrumental in helping us to reach our goals.  They are quick to implement and use. We use push notifications throughout our user’s journey."  Tracy mentions how from signup to village arrival, visitors are provided weather and terrain updates.  They even use it for crowd management.  "On weekends there is a mass exodus at 4, if traffic is backed up, we can send a push about an apres-ski special to wait out the traffic.”
  • “We know each user can easily turn off notifications or even uninstall our app so it’s important to us that we allow our users to signup for what’s relevant to them.”
  • “We will utilize more OneSignal’s In-App messaging to educate users on the importance of providing a location, not to stalk them but to alert them of offers and experience while visiting”
  • “It is these micro-moments that help us build a deep relationship with our users.”

(16:45) App Exceeds Web Traffic - SquawAlpine saw app engagement exceed the web and other channels, it’s becoming the primary channel to interact with its visitors.

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