Virgin Holidays Tailors Travel Communications

Vir­gin Hol­i­days is one of the top hol­i­day com­pa­nies in the Unit­ed King­dom, known for the “mag­ic touch­es” that it brings to its cus­tomers. But in recent years, the trav­el indus­try has seen sig­nif­i­cant changes. With so much more infor­ma­tion avail­able online, cus­tomers are actu­al­ly get­ting excit­ed about research­ing hol­i­days. Even when work­ing with an agency such as Vir­gin Hol­i­days, cus­tomers still want the free­dom to get involved in plan­ning at every stage of the sales cycle.

For Vir­gin Hol­i­days, this means that the com­pa­ny needs to be on top of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pro­vide cus­tomers with the right mes­sages at the right time. But for many years, Vir­gin Hol­i­days took a frag­ment­ed approach to com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Each team reached out to cus­tomers as need­ed with­out any cen­tral oversight.

Vir­gin Hol­i­days deployed Adobe Cam­paign, part of Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud with­in Adobe Expe­ri­ence Cloud, to cen­tral­ize and coor­di­nate com­mu­ni­ca­tions across teams and across chan­nels. Work­ing with imple­men­ta­tion part­ner Merkle, Vir­gin Hol­i­days con­sol­i­dat­ed all cam­paign tools and cus­tomer data onto Adobe Cam­paign. Hav­ing data in one loca­tion improves effi­cien­cy and allows mar­keters and ana­lysts to cre­ate effec­tive cam­paigns that reach cus­tomers across direct mail, email, SMS, or even out­bound calls.

Mar­keters are now cre­at­ing cam­paigns in less time and with­out need­ing to rely on tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ists. This gives mar­keters more time to cre­ate per­son­al­ized cam­paigns that con­nect with audi­ences. In a win­ter email cam­paign, mar­keters sent emails that com­pared the cus­tomers’ rainy, cold, and gloomy local weath­er fore­casts to sun­ny vaca­tion spots such as Can­cun or Bar­ba­dos. The cam­paign achieved a 67% increase in peo­ple click­ing for more infor­ma­tion, 50% increase in retail store appoint­ments, 22% increase in mar­gins, as well as pop­u­lar shares on social media.

“With a sin­gle tool to man­age uni­fied data, we can help depart­ments find ways to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” says Saul Lopes, Cus­tomer Life­cy­cle Lead at Vir­gin Hol­i­days. “We’re becom­ing the cen­tral hub for cus­tomer experience.”

http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/customer-success/pdfs/virgin-holidays-case-study.pdf