Wander Journeys wins the Golden Case Award 🏆
The Christmas campaign, developed in collaboration with De Kennemer Duincampings and Studio Vi, has been awarded the Golden Case Award by Deployteq.
Thanks to smart personalization, Kennemer Duincampings was able to collect valuable insights from their guests and achieved a significantly higher click-through rate (CTR).
The expert jury evaluated the entries based on:
• Results: impact on conversion, CTR, and revenue
• Creativity: how outstanding is the approach?
• Innovation: use of smart integrations or tools
The case scored high in all areas. From the jury report:
“Beautifully executed, strong design, fun to do, and provides a lot of data.”
“The combination of interactive content with automatic data integration is technically strong and very effectively implemented.”
Read the full case study below!
Background
At Kennemer Duincampings, it has become a tradition to surprise guests during the final week of the year with a unique, personalized end-of-year email campaign.
This year, the challenge was not just to be original with the campaign but also to gather usable data from guests. The creative solution: a personalized Christmas card that former guests could design online – based on their stay preferences.
Since Kennemer Duincampings consists of three campgrounds, each guest had to receive an email from the specific campground where they had stayed. And that email needed to be in the correct language (Dutch, German, or English). The email campaign was scheduled for mid-December.
Goals
Surprise guests in an original and festive way to stay top of mind and evoke a “feel-good” feeling.
Gain more insight into guests’ preferences to enable better segmentation in future newsletters.
Achieve the highest possible click-through rate (CTR), so that as many people as possible would create a personalized Christmas card.
The challenge
The aim was to collect as much information as possible from guests without them perceiving it as an annoying survey. In addition, the collected data had to be stored automatically and assigned to the right person. An additional challenge was to design the style of the email to be consistent with the appearance of the landing pages. Finally, the stay data from the reservation system had to be correctly linked to the respective guest – which can be challenging due to missing or incomplete data.
Approach
To make the email visually appealing, an image featuring a Christmas tree bauble was designed as an eye-catcher – with the aim of sparking curiosity and interaction. The emails were personalised by using the recipient’s first name in the subject line and adding an individual URL through which personal information was sent in encrypted form. This allowed responses to be assigned directly to the right person. It also made it possible to display the first name on the landing page to enable a personalised approach.
To ensure the success of the campaign, it was rolled out in stages. First, 30% of the emails were sent to former guests to check whether the servers could handle the data traffic and whether everything was working smoothly. Two hours later, the remaining 70% followed.
Results
The response to the campaign was very positive. The German target audience in particular reacted enthusiastically: they had the highest click-through rate and, proportionally, created the most personalized Christmas cards.
Nearly 50% of those who clicked actually created a personalized Christmas card.
The average click-through rate was 126% higher than that of regular newsletters, demonstrating that the campaign successfully captured recipients’ interest.
Target group
The German target group responded most enthusiastically to the campaign.
CTR
On average, 126% higher than regular newsletters.
Reactions
50% of those who clicked completed the Christmas card.
Conclusion
The personalised Christmas card campaign can definitely be described as a success. The playful approach ensured high participation, while at the same time providing valuable insights into guests’ preferences. Depending on the campsite, participants answered 8 to 9 questions about their holiday preferences.
De Kennemer Duincampings has once again proven that creativity and smart email marketing strategies go hand in hand.
Collaboration
Several parties collaborated on this campaign:
De Kennemer Duincampings is an organization with three beautiful dune campsites, three restaurants, and a high-end hotel room in North Holland:
Camping Bakkum with Bakkum Bites, Camping Geversduin with Knoest eten en drinken, and Camping de Lakens with Restaurant Gestrand and the Duin & Bosch Water Tower.
Studio VI Amsterdam provided an impressive design for the landing pages where guests could create their personalized Christmas card.
Wander Journeys, the email marketing agency for the travel and leisure industry, used the email software tool Deployteq for the technical implementation and data integration.
