The tour operator Bales Worldwide reports that it has recently doubled its direct marketing campaign response rates and increased resultant sales using personalised and integrated communications by e-mail, direct mail and SMS, thanks to software from Neolane.
According to a case study published by Neolane, Bales increased its sales by an average of 5% per annum since May 2007 when it implemented the Neolane Cross-Channel Marketing Optimisation suite.
Raymond Howe, marketing communications manager for Bales Worldwide, explained that the company offers a wide range of options to a very diverse customer base, and the cross-channel marketing solution played a key role in bringing together a single view of each individual customer.
This allowed the company to automatically create timely and personalised marketing messages that matched individual customers' holiday preferences, thereby stimulating interest, interactions, and additional sales. According to Howe, "We run our campaigns with the support of only two non-dedicated marketing staff, and we can now launch new marketing initiatives at two hours notice."
Customer interactions such as purchases and preference data collection are all recorded within a single customer database regardless of the channel used. Neolane's system combines multiple channels and allows the company's marketers to reach customers with personalised, relevant, event-triggered content, as well as to maintain a fully consistent message across all the channels.
Bales has analysed the success metrics of standard content compared with personalised content and preference-based content. Using test groups, the company found that e-mail open rates rose on average from 20% for standard e-mails to 46% for personalised content, and to over 56% when customer preferences were used to determine content. At the same time, click-throughs rose from 8% to 29% and 41% respectively, while customer reactivity rose from 24% to 38% and 49% respectively.
For additional information:
· Visit Bales at http://www.balesworldwide.com
· Visit Neolane at http://www.neolane.com
