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Travelbag: Testing 'test and learn'
Since 1979 Travelbag have been specialising in creating tailor-made package holidays to a range of worldwide destinations. From round the world trips to city breaks, beach holidays to adventure tours. The evolution of the digital world has made the travel industry more competitive than ever. Consumers are no longer compelled to pop into their local travel agents to book a holiday. Many now use the internet as a hub of information to compare prices before booking their dream holiday – this means marketers need to try even harder to stand out in a congested marketplace.
Brief
Travelbag have seen success in building their brand and driving bookings through traditional channels such as direct mail, advertising in national newspapers and in-branch. However the recent appointment of Paul Hopkinson, Head of Marketing, has seen a new, fresh vision. Since his arrival Paul has been keen to test combinations of channels with a move towards more integrated campaigns and he is also eager to adopt a strategy that embraces the use of customer data to drive more relevant marketing communications.
Travelbag wanted to increase both customer engagement and booking enquiries through their marketing communications. The newsletter was performing at a reasonable level and provided customers with the latest holiday offers. However the e-newsletter was the only email communication being sent each week and was not making use of the data available to ensure the messages were more targeted and relevant. Travelbag also wanted to develop new ways to combine their online and offline marketing communications.
Strategy
The initial test was to see the impact of channel combination and reinforced messaging and from there, develop a more complex test and learn program which could be used to inform future marketing activity.
With a thorough understanding of Travelbag’s aim and objectives for new test and learn programs, we were able to schedule a set of communications to meet these. The focus was on intelligent marketing opposed to doing more. Although a well known brand, Travelbag’s actual marketing team is relatively small so they rely on strategic partners such as dbg to provide support.
The first step was to look at the newsletter and identify how these could be used to drive uplift in campaign responsiveness. The newsletter had previously been used to communicate the latest offers and also an exclusive ‘Deal of the week’. After discussion it was decided Travelbag should use their data more intelligently to increase relevance and see how this would impact on the results of the newsletter.
The ‘Deal of the week’ was promoting Dubai so Travelbag split their customer data into 2 segments for the broadcast. Extracts were taken for a control segment and another for a more targeted segment consisting of individuals that had previously enquired about holidays to Dubai. In addition Travelbag decided to test the impact of reinforced messaging through different channels by broadcasting a follow-up email containing just the Dubai offer to half of the Dubai interest group, and sending an SMS to the other half.
The second part of Travelbag’s test and learn program was to look at how combining online and offline channels in a joined up fashion impacted on email marketing metrics and ultimately booking enquiries. The focus of this was Travelbag’s latest DM pack which promoted deals to Hong Kong in conjunction with their airline partner Cathay Pacific. The key messaging and content from the DM pack was taken and used to formulate the design and content of an email. The strategy then involved splitting the target audience into three segments:
1. Would receive the email only.
2. Would receive the DM pack only.
3. Would initially receive the DM pack and then the email as a follow up.
Measurement of the test and learn program focused on email open rates, click through rates and telephone enquiries.
Execution
We designed an email to follow up the e-newsletter using a simple subject line: “Don’t miss out on luxury Dubai from £739”.
We extracted two data files from Travelbag’s Knowledge Studio (marketing database) of customer names and email addresses with one extract containing those that previously enquired about holidays to Dubai. Once extracted the data was cleansed using our verify data hygiene tool to ensure invalid email addresses and names were removed prior to loading into dbg ecos.
The two newsletter broadcasts were sent on a Friday as per Travelbag’s normal schedule. One broadcast was sent to the previous Dubai enquirers and one to the control segment. After five days a follow up email or SMS was sent to the Dubai enquirers.
The channel combination test was again carried out by cleansing and validating the email and postal address data to remove any gone-aways, deceased individuals and anomalies before the campaign was sent. By ensuring the data used was accurate Travelbag benefited from increased email deliverability and they avoided any unnecessary costs through wasted DM. The data was then formatted for direct mail purpose and sent to Travelbag’s print partner for fulfillment. The DM pack was posted on the same day as the email was broadcast to ensure all three segments received the communication within a similar time period. Five days after the DM landed the follow up email was sent to the relevant test segment.
The test and learn cases were aiming to test the benefit of previous recognition on the behaviour of the recipients of Travelbag’s communications.
Results
The strategy implemented was extremely successful and provided conclusive evidence that an integrated marketing approach with channels working together can make a far greater impact than channels working in silos. The results also demonstrated the power of using data to drive relevant communications.
For the newsletter data segment test Travelbag saw open rates double and click throughs improve three fold compared to the control segment. This was a clear example of the better targeted the message, the greater the results generated. The follow up email also produced an increase in open rate of 59% compared to the newsletter control segment. However, it was interesting to find that SMS did not perform as well when compared to email as a follow up.
The channel combination also produced impressive results. When the DM was followed up by an email communication there was an increase in click throughs of over 110% versus email alone. Most importantly telephone enquiries for the campaign increased by over 100%.
As part of the test, additional tracking functionality was embedded in the emails so that additional engagement metrics could be measured, as follows:
- Recipients who actually read the emails versus those who glanced at / deleted them.
- Variations in this behavior depending on whether the emails were read using a desktop, web browser, or handheld email client.
The results from this additional tracking were extremely interesting:
- For the test of single channel (email only) versus combined channel (DM + email):
- Single channel generated 59% “reads” and 41% “glanced/deleted”
- Combined channel generated 75% “reads” and 25% “glanced/deleted”
- The additional levels of engagement that were generated by the increased awareness that the combined DM/email approach created meant that this approach generated an uplift of over 25% in terms of reader attentiveness.
- For the data segmentation tests, a follow-up element was also employed, where for some recipients, the initial email communication was followed up by either a second email, or by an SMS :
Across the board, the mobile follow up did not generate significantly greater “read” activity (there was only 2% uplift). However, the email follow up delivered an uplift in “read” activity of 15%, again demonstrating the increased engagement that this form of message reinforcement is capable of delivering.
There were also some interesting variations by type of email client:
For handheld devices, neither approach drove a significant uplift in engagement. It would seem that handheld users get the message first time, and require no further reinforcement.
For web browser users, the read percentage generated by the follow up email increased from 40% to 51% - an uplift of over 20%. Reinforcement would seem to reduce the risk of the message not being seen as a result of the initial communication “dropping off the bottom of the page”.
For desktop users, both forms of follow-up had a positive effect. The mobile follow-up increased “read” engagement from 54% to 60% (up 10%), while the email follow-up drove engagement up to a phenomenal 79% - an improvement of nearly 50%.
Follow up activity should clearly form an integral part of any email campaign, although results will be most effective when combined with knowledge of how recipients are interacting with other communications.
“The results from carrying out a relatively simple test and learn program have been fantastic. Not only have our email metrics improved considerably but enquiries and bookings generated have increased too – which is ultimately the key objective of our marketing campaigns. We’ll definitely be working with dbg in the coming months to develop more sophisticated test and learn programs, which will help us refine our marketing strategy”.
Paul Hopkinson, Marketing Director, Travelbag
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