2023 Silver B2C

Agency: Armadillo

Client: P&O Cruises

Entry Name: The Welcome Journey That Listens

Executive Summary

P&O Cruises’ mission is to widen the appeal of cruising and get more of Britain on board. But new audiences are used to booking holidays direct, and cruising has a unique and complex booking process. P&O needed to maximise conversions, minimise drop-off, and help turn enquiries into cruises.

Strategy

By replicating the way a great travel agent gets to know you, remembers what you've said, and guides you to your perfect holiday, now and in future, an interactive email journey designed to dynamically learn about each guest—responding with relevant content at every stage.

The experience was designed to dynamically learn about each guest by collecting zero-party data via bespoke tracking pixels and a custom API. Each data point informed the next communication they received, creating a sophisticated level of personalisation in every touchpoint.

The data from tracked pixels drove a hugely-personalised journey, and also updated the ESP’s customer records to intelligently inform all future conversations.

Creativity

The creative platform was designed to make a virtue of the many choices that can often act as a booking barrier.

‘Holidays As Varied As You’ put the guest at the heart of the decision-making process, reinforcing that each choice they make takes them closer to a wonderful and individual adventure.

The programme was built from this, around core principles including ‘Let the guest lead’. This programme was designed to ask guests what’s important to them, without making assumptions, so they were always served content they wanted to see.

Replicating a conversation, each email contains cutting-edge opportunities for guests to tell us “this is me”, helping us to get to know them as they get to know P&O Cruises. Each communication actively ‘listens’ to the guest and responds relevantly with highly salient content in a dynamically evolving dialogue. 2. Accessible exploration. With so much we could show guests, we wanted to find innovative ways to allow them to easily skim bite-sized snippets of information, and be able to dive deeper when something really excites them. Our personalised word clouds with interactive pop-ups are a perfect example of this, replicating how an agent turns to the perfect page of the brochure for you. 3. Build real anticipation. The more guests can imagine themselves on that adventure, the closer booking becomes a reality. Our build your own adventure email allows guests to build out actual days they might enjoy in a playful and personal way.

Results

The overall open rate for the journey reached 63%, with a 20% click-through rate - almost 2.5x the rate of the previous programme.

Deeper engagement translated into strong commercial results in the first three months of the programme:

• Average Net Revenue increased by 4%.
• Average lead time increased by 10%: P&O Cruises is filling ships quicker, which expands the window to further upsell guests to additional on- and off-shore experiences.
• The journeys delivered a 66% increase in total net revenue, equating to an ROI of 16:1.
• Conversion to booking doubled compared to the previous journey.

The Team

Armadillo - Becky Howell, Senior Account Director - Hannah Waters, Executive Creative Director - Rob Pellow, Executive Technical Director - Catrina Law, Associate Planning Director - Will Barnes, Lead Digital Art Director - Charlie Bulmer, Senior Conceptual Copywriter - Steve Brailey, Lead Developer - Paul Airs, Campaign Manager - Nicholas Blake Steele, Technology Director - Jon Ramsbottom, Senior Solutions Engineer