Monarch achieves over 17000% ROI
The Challenge
Monarch wanted to find a way to produce a timely and relevant email campaign that would generate bookings. The company wanted to avoid bombarding customers/users with random special offers as they knew, if these emails were unwelcome they would damage both email reputation and brand reputation. The challenge was finding a way to extract users Monarch was sure were in the buying window, work out what holiday information would be relevant to this valuable segment and then find a way to incorporate this specific and diverse information into an automated email campaign.
The Solution
Using RedEye’s single customer view database, Monarch was able to capture data on what destinations users searched for on their website. On Monarch’s website users can search via flights, holiday or hotel. This information is stored in RedEye’s database and segmented by the exact destination searched. In total 18 airport destinations were stored (collected from flight searches) and 23 holiday destinations were stored (collected from hotel and holiday searches).
For each of the chosen destinations 3 templates were devised each incorporating dynamic content specifically relevant to the destination the user had searched. All emails were automated.
Template one was sent the morning after a search was made. This email thanked the user for searching for their chosen destination on Monarch and encouraged them to continue to make a booking. Dynamic content used in this email included destination name (e.g. Thank you for searching for fares to Alicante), an image of the searched destination and a clear call to action regarding great deals to the chosen destination.
If the user did not complete a booking after receiving this email a second email was sent 3 days later providing further information on the benefits of booking with Monarch. As before, dynamic content used in the email included destination name in the opening line, an image of the destination, and the latest deals to the chosen destination.
We have done a lot of work with RedEye to understand the online behaviour of our customers. Incorporating online search activity into a behavioural email campaign has provided us with the perfect way to communicate with our customers during a key season. Working with RedEye has allowed us to not only generate a huge amount of sales, but also enables us to provide an excellent service, sending emails containing information relevant to each individual user. Compared to the general abandoned booking campaign we ran last year, we’ve increased ROI by 263%. We are very impressed with the results and look forward to rolling out further behavioural email campaigns in the future.
Monarch
For any user who still did not book a third email was devised (sent 7 days after the search). As well as the dynamic content mentioned in the above emails, this email also incorporated further dynamic content, providing the user with alternative suggestions to other nearby destinations to what they originally searched (an extremely targeted, relevant and effective cross-sell).
In all templates, landing URL’s were also dynamic, ensuring when users clicked through from the email they arrived on a page enabling them to easily make a booking to their chosen destination.
The Results
The campaign proved to be extremely effective. The average open rate for the campaign was 56.53%, reaching over 70% on several occasions. The average CTR was 34.37%, reaching 44.62%. In two months the campaign achieved a click to sale conversion of over 6%, generating over 6000 bookings (nearly 100 bookings a day).
The ROI for the campaign reached a tremendous 17,257%.
