2013 Bronze Best Customer Journey

Client LateRooms.com

How did the campaign make a difference? A 'Get, Grow, Keep' strategy has improved channel performance, providing recipients with evolving relevant content to create loyalty and trust. Richly tailored content drives open rates of 32.5% and action rates of 51%, generating 1.4 million hotel reviews. The revenue from personalised recommendations is 66.2% higher than previous communications, with a click conversion of 46.3%.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? Many programmes in this sector feature one-time-offer fixed-HTML emails. Audience engagement soon diminishes through lack of relevance. This totally automated eCRM customer journey is based on a 'Get-Grow-Keep' ethos. The 'Get' phase welcomes customers and builds excitement with dynamic booking reminders providing weather forecasts and local information. A hotel review programme collects feedback and facilitates 1-2-1 dialogue. New contacts receive three personalised emails, which nudge recent enquirers to first booking, and single-bookers onto second booking. The core 'Grow' phase drives bookings and brand affinity. A weekly engagement generator provides personalised live hotel availability and offers. Non-converting web visitors are followed up with precision tailored emails, containing late availability prices for recently browsed hotels, and other relevant recommendations to drive sales while supporting decision making. The 'Keep' programme seeks to re-ignite interest from customers who haven't engaged for six months.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? The creative strategy is driven by an engagement warehouse, driving 1-2-1 relevancy based on habitual bookings, star ratings, price, location, email and web engagement. The 'Get' phase features 'top recommended' and 'most booked cities,' dynamically populated from customers with similar profiles. Booking reminders' rich content include '5 day forecasts' and links to social media travel guides. Grow comms provide a unique engagement header with recipients' most visited hotels and star ratings. Remarketing follow-ups tap into lost click and online search behaviour. Recognition is reinforced by digitally stamping search criteria onto the header images. This nudges customers through to conversion, and attains brand affinity through personalised reminder services.

Results The open rate for welcome emails is 32.9%; action rate 12.6%. Booking reminders have a 54% open rate and 46.8% action rate. Review emails attain a 32.5% open rate and 51% action rate, driving 1.4 million hotel reviews online. Revenue from the engagement generator is 66.2% higher than previous communications, with a sustained 17.6% increase in action rate. Click follow-up emails see open rates of 47%, achieving 36.1% conversion. Keep emails have a 20.2% open rate. Click conversion reaches 15.4% and has prompted over 3,000 bookings in the last 3 months from lapsed customers.