Travel eCRM programme
Our client, a leading travel operator, needed a more personalised approach to its direct marketing. We developed a truly customer-centric contact programme to deliver dynamic, hand-picked deals to customers, resulting in higher open/click rates and a dramatic increase in cross-sales.
Background
Our client was despatching millions of broadcast emails per month, across several business streams. These were single variant emails with minimal personalisation and no targeting. There was no customer segmentation in place and their email capability was operating at full capacity. They needed better performance from their email campaigns, but had nowhere to go.
Requirements
During the consultancy phase, we identified five areas that would transform what was achieved by their email marketing:
1. Insight – not just providing it but applying it
2. Targeting – to tackle low open rates
3. Triggers – daily event-triggered emails to drive 2-3 times higher open and click rates
4. Enhanced Content – personalised to the customer
5. Measurement – to monitor customer-level success, justify investment and continually improve
Read more about our five secrets of brilliant eCRM
System demands
- Models needed to be applied flexibly, using individual attributes to target, not just an overall score
- Increased level of detail in emails required complex data processes and email rules, so a powerful data solution was required
- We designed a process to read in large amounts of data flexibly and quickly
- Daily sends meant a huge increase in the number of campaigns despatched, demanding robust processes and bespoke automation to run efficiently and keep costs down
Highlights
- Hand-picked deals selected at an individual customer level, and from the relevant departure airport
- Destination specific information and dynamic copy
- Triggers mean more specific copy to the customer
- Integrated surveys, with customer and travel details transferred to avoid re-keying
Outcomes
- Currently running over 20 campaigns per day
- A typical email has over 2000 different variants
- Use of models to target according to holidays, destinations, products and past habits
- Frequency of contact dependent on open history
- Targeting hierarchy to resolve communication conflicts
- Visibility of results and success rates
Success
- 2-3 times improvement in opens and clicks on triggered vs. broadcast campaigns
- Targeted campaigns perform 50% - 100% better than untargeted campaigns
- Dramatic increase in cross-sales of ancillary products driven by a new countdown process
- Cost reductions from lower volumes of emails sent to inactive customers
- Some reactivation success using different email mask