Personalized, Itinerary Recommender Direct Mailer – 300,000 recipients

Result: Generated 30:1 ROI during Covid Lockdown for the Itinerary Recommender Direct Mail program and won a Travel Weekly Magellan Gold Award

Partners: Designed and coordinated process with Epsilon, RR Donnelley and Verb Interactive

Process:

• Author designed process with the team and managed the initiative
• Epsilon built curated itinerary recommendation based on past cruising behavior and inferred preferences
• RR Donnelley generated variable-format and variable-data 12-page brochures based on Top 10 itineraries
• Verb Interactive built personalized URLs & live-pricing feeds accessible via email links and QR codes

Narrative: We had seen many false dawns with recommender models masquerading as AI processes, sold to Execs behind the backs of experienced analytical leaders. They all fell short due to lack of true creative variability, and limited imagination around how data could be truly leveraged. The BI and 1:1 team partnered with experts in data, print and interactive web-page development and generated fully personalized direct marketing, with astonishing results (bearing in mind we dropped mid-pandemic, around July 2020).

We first catalogued the “vacation experience” at each port of call around the world. We then assigned primary and secondary “vacation intentions” for every past cruise customer based on the ports of call they had visited and enjoyed. Next, we scored each future itinerary in the portfolio for its vacation experience and matched the “Intention” to the “Experience”, curating a list for every consumer. The data piece was done. The biggest challenge was then cataloging all content relating to a port and creating a variable template that “flexed” according to the length of the itinerary (for example a 4 Night cruise had 3 destination images, while a longer cruise might have 10). We then worked to generate a personalized URL that captured more destination imagery and injected live-pricing and links to the booking engine. We then tested, deployed, and measured the impact, using the classic “design of experiment” test versus control lift analysis. Y Voila, success and awards, and a healthy return on investment.