For almost 70 years, Trafalgar has been creating exceptional guided holiday tours over 200 destinations worldwide. Trafalgar provides local experts and guides offering a variety of travel options for individuals, groups, families and couples to offer them everything they would expect and more. Digital Fire executed an interactive viral email marketing campaign for Trafalgar and achieved a 34.99% Open Rate and a 3.73% Interactive Response Rate.

Objective

Trafalgar offered 2017 travel deals at 2016 prices and wanted to reach a specific target audience for the promotion on offer while growing and profiling their existing CRM database. Digital Fire was approached by Trafalgar to assist with the following:

• Promote Trafalgar’s top 3 travel deals for 2017
• Increase website traffic to all their 2017 travel packages
• Grow & profile Trafalgar’s existing CRM database
• Increase bookings and drive sales

Solution

Digital Fire proposed an interactive viral promotional email campaign and broadcast the campaign to a custom built database according to Trafalgar’s brief and target audience. The campaign promoted the 2017 travel deals at 2016 prices while incentivising consumers to enter a competition in standing a chance to win one of three sets of luxury travel bags worth R3 000 each. Digital Fire captured the unique entries during the campaign. All entries captured belonged to Trafalgar and they can use this for future direct marketing.

Design

Trafalgar designed the three parts of the mailer.

1. Promo mailer:

The promotional mailer had the competition element above the fold of the mailer with a strong call-to-action to encourage the audience to enter the competition, followed by the top three deals and travel packages’ information.

2. Microsite (questionnaire page):

Individuals entered their details and profiled themselves on this page. After submitting their information, they were directed to the Thank You page.

3. Thank You page

The viral element was hosted on this page. The viral element encouraged the audience to recommend the campaign to friends, meaning that more individuals will receive and see the campaign than the original amount of data broadcasted to.

Target audience

Digital Fire built a customised database and implemented Trafalgar’s brief and Digital Fire’s insights.  The target audience included the following:

• An audience aged 45 years old and older
• LSM 8 to 10 consumers
• Male and female consumers (predominantly female)
• Consumers interested in travelling, luxury goods, leisure, sports etc.
• An audience based in South Africa

Broadcast

The mailer was uploaded and tested to ensure that it displayed and functioned correctly. Trafalgar wanted to do A/B testing on a sample of the data before the larger campaign went live. Two subject lines were tested to see which one performed the best.

Subject line A – “John, European Holidays at 2016 prices…” – generated a 27.73% Open Rate and a 4.87% Click-through Rate compared to subject line B – “John, a set of luxury bags could be yours…” – delivered a 31.07% Open Rate and a 9.27% Click-through rate. Therefore, the main campaign was broadcasted using subject line B as it performed the best having the highest Open and Click-through Rate.

The following results were generated from the main campaign on the 8^th of September 2016:

• 34.99% Open Rate
• 5.69% Click-through Rate
• 3.73% Interactive Response Rate
• 4.67% Viral Response Rate

Through the targeted opt-in email campaign, Trafalgar reached 34.99% of their specific target audience and grew their existing database with 3.73%.  The effectiveness of permission based email marketing is shown in this campaign. It is targeted and measurable to provide one with its consumers’ insights to further build future marketing communication strategies on and drive maximum business value.

Artwork

1. Promotional mailer

2. Microsite

3. Viral