How email personalisation played a part in a 21% increase in traveller numbers

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Just some examples of the recent email personalisation techniques I’ve seen – all of which have made me wonder exactly how marketers are using personalisation to gain cut through with recipients, and if in fact, they are seeing positive results from this?

Should I be targeted for laser eye surgery because I wear glasses? Would I buy an additional product because it’s been personally recommended to me? Will I enter a competition to win free flights as I’ve bought them previously? It’s fair to say that none of us as consumers are immune to the power of the personal touch.

The more astute email marketers amongst you are without doubt using personalisation features of your email marketing solution to raise open rates, click through rates and improve the relevancy of your message to your recipient. But can we get smarter?

It’s often a ‘nice to have’ aspect of an email to ensure it strikes a cord with a customer or even that we feel part of the elite, as we’re seemingly personally invited to an upcoming event, or enticed with an ‘exclusive’ promotional offer as you’ve just purchased a related product. But is this enough to get the results we’re continually striving for, especially in these tough economic times?

As consumers slowly become more discerning with their email inbox behaviour, do personalised messages wash over them? Can email personalisation be constructive to a customer as well as a supplier?

Eurostar last year used a multi-channel approach when their UK operations moved from Waterloo to St Pancras – email marketing was key in their communication for a successful launch campaign. With such a large and diverse customer base, Eurostar needed to steer clear of the one-size-fits-all approach they’d used in the past, and instead employ relevant, targeted techniques to their segmented customer base.

The constructive and customer-centric approach to their email marketing within this launch campaign meant they used complex segmentation of their customer base, utilising both behavioural, travel frequency and postcode information to provide every customer with a new personalised journey time from their nearest station. The dynamic content was tailored to each individual based on the profile record held by Eurostar.

Eurostar were taking full advantage of the full suite of personalisation tools at their disposal to provide their customers with indispensable information, that they would have needed to research themselves anyway – putting Eurostar in a positive light both from a proactively point of view and an ‘invaluable to have’ email campaign.

And were the results worth the effort? The nitty gritty of the email campaign showed above average returns with a 40% open rate and 35% click through rates. In comparison to the generic bulk messaging they’d used previously, the higher rates reflect the relevant and engaging content for customers. Eurostar traveller numbers also rose by over 21% to record 2.17 million in first quarter of 2008.

With 1 million frequent travellers, getting personal with each and every one was no mean feat, but it is however reflective of what consumers can now expect more and more, with the technologies available and the messages we need them to read –  as far as positive results are concerned from email personalisation, there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel

Chris Combemale
Emailvision