HolidayPirates engages travelers with branded marketing messages powered by Vonage
HolidayPirates is one of the fastest-growing, free-to-use, travel search platforms and apps, providing users with the best value for money travel deals. The multi-award-winning platform’s editorial team manually searches third party websites, aided by advanced algorithm systems, to find the best, and often completely unique, travel deals. From flights and hotels, through to car hire, holiday homes, luxury stays and weekend breaks.
Vonage Solutions and Features
Challenge
Leverage the WhatsApp channel to deliver time-sensitive travel offers to subscribers, engage active users and drive traffic to vendor partners
Solution
RCS and WhatsApp via Vonage Messages, API, Vonage Conversational Connect, Vonage Cloud Runtime
Results
Up to 20% click-through rates in RCS channel; Up to 40% click-through rates in WhatsApp channelHolidayPirates wanted to engage travel hunters looking for deals with the most relevant offers from its travel platform partners. To ensure that readers didn’t miss out on travel packages and deals that could close within hours, the company needed a faster, more scalable communications channel to give readers access to offers in real time. By implementing Rich Communication Services (RCS) and WhatsApp via a single Messages API, HolidayPirates is able to elevate customer experiences , meeting customers where they are.
Owning the brand for better customer engagement
Every day, editorial teams at international travel company HolidayPirates search the internet for the latest travel offers, curating everything from flight packages to resort stays for budget-conscious travelers. Using the HolidayPirates website and app allows readers to view packages from leading online travel platforms, saving them the time of comparison-shopping on their own.
With the travel deals coming and going quickly, the company sent daily email updates to its nearly one million subscribers about new travel opportunities. Readers who were away from their emails or couldn’t access the app during the day risked missing exciting offers. Equally challenging was that the company couldn’t measure the attractiveness of a travel deal and what motivated a customer to take action, making it difficult to target subscribers with relevant offers.
HolidayPirates needed a faster, more scalable way of reaching subscribers. After determining that WhatsApp was widely popular among its customers, they partnered with Vonage to also leverage RCS via the Messages API to build two powerful marketing and communications channels.
This allowed HolidayPirates to broadcast branded messages about new travel packages in real-time to subscribers. Links from RCS take subscribers straight to the offer on the HolidayPirates website, where they can review it before visiting a travel partner directly. This direct line of branded communications gives HolidayPirates full ownership of the user experience with verified, trusted, and engaging messages.
To grow the channel with people looking for their next great holiday the company created a contest giving new subscribers a chance to win trips and other prizes. Subscribers were encouraged to share their HolidayPirates offer with friends and family, which increased their odds of winning.
Turning brand-owned conversations and engagement into sales
As more subscribers act on deals that might close within hours, they drive higher engagement than any other channel.
“With Vonage, our subscribers are faster to act on deals than people using other channels, generating more traffic to our partners with click-through-rates that are 10% higher, and 3 times higher than email, and some messages receiving a 97 percent open rate.”
Learn more about how Vonage can help you build better connections, communications and engagements with employees and customers around the world.
