The Company
bmibaby is a British low-cost airline and part of the bmi group. Launched in 2002, bmibaby flies from four U.K. bases to 34 European destinations.
The Challenge
Several years ago, bmibaby was using an in-house email solution to send blanket messages to its subscriber base. Its system required significant IT involvement, which made it an onerous process to send emails. Meanwhile, there were unexplained deliverability issues that needed to be addressed, prompting bmibaby to begin a search for a commercial email solution to help it with these challenges.
“Ultimately, bmibaby was looking for a more advanced email solution that would make our marketing team increasingly self-reliant and provide us with features to send out more targeted, relevant emails,” said Helen Yarnall, head of marketing, bmibaby. “bmibaby is in a very competitive space. We realized that we would need to become more sophisticated with our email marketing to remain at the forefront in successfully delivering from this media channel.”
The Solution
After a competitive selection process, bmibaby chose Silverpop Engage due to the strength of its features and Silverpop’s credibility in the email service provider space. Implementation was seamless, and today bmibaby uses Silverpop Engage for promotional emails and Silverpop’s Transact offering for confirmation emails and travel reminders.
bmibaby’s promotional emails include messages offering specific packages and distressed inventory offers. They also promote specific routes that need more exposure and include engaging articles enticing subscribers to take advantage of current offers. All of bmibaby’s email communications have a playful tone with subject lines such as, “It’s good to have you on board, baby!” and “The offer has landed, baby!”
To help optimize its email program, bmibaby works with Silverpop’s Strategy and Account Management teams on an ongoing basis to better understand email best practices. Some of the tactics bmibaby has adopted because of Silverpop’s recommendations include:
• Data cleansing of inactive subscribers—ensures that bmibaby is communicating with its most engaged customers and improves deliverability
• Building a preference center—enables bmibaby to send targeted emails based on subscribers’ preferred departure airports and destinations
• Social sharing—allows bmibaby to extend its reach via multiple social networks through Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature
“The flexibility and usability of Silverpop Engage has enabled us to switch from our dependence on IT to a complete reliance on our marketing team to build and send emails,” Yarnall said. “This allows us to focus more on our email tactics and planning and take on larger, more strategic endeavors.”
Building on the success of its promotional emails, bmibaby’s eMarketing team launched a Customer Contact Centre project. Using Silverpop Engage, it sent automated, service-focused messages that included cross-sell offers for ancillary items, such as hotel or car options, to travelers for their upcoming trips. bmibaby worked closely with Silverpop’s Strategy and Account Management teams to determine the right balance between service-led content and cross-selling call-outs within its email creative, as well as how to take advantage of Silverpop Engage’s functionality to create a highly customised drip campaign for clients regarding their upcoming trips.
The Customer Contact Centre program consists of four standard templates sent to travelers within a few months of the purchase date, with the first sent shortly after the initial transaction. To make these emails highly personalized for each traveler, bmibaby uses Silverpop’s Dynamic Content functionality to include relevant information for each traveler, such as passport flight information and lounge access. In all, bmibaby uses 15 dynamic rule sets to provide customized content to each of its travelers within each of the four email templates.
Bmibaby also uses Silverpop’s Relational Tables functionality to communicate with lead passengers about other people in their parties. Data provided through relational tables includes useful information such as whether others in the party have provided passport information and how many bags have been booked.
The Results
One of the top benefits for bmibaby has been its ability to analyze the results of its email campaigns and make decisions based upon this information. “With our previous solution, we didn’t have the ability to analyze the impact of our emails through detailed reporting and analytics,” Yarnall said. “With Silverpop Engage, we’re able to be more strategic and understand how to optimize our email program.”
In addition, bmibaby has had great success in broadening the reach of its messages by using Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature in all its promotional emails. “We’ve seen a 50 percent increase in social sharing over last year,” Yarnall said. “We’re pleased with the results.”
Today, bmibaby is able to better deliver relevant content to its subscribers. The result is a strong connection with customers, as evidenced by an above-average 35 percent open rate on its newsletters. And bmibaby continues to optimize its email program as it looks for new opportunities to engage with customers in a personal manner. On deck is a nurture email campaign that will guide subscribers through the lifecycle of their journey, from sign-up to booking to travel to rebooking, all the while providing relevant content.
Through its Customer Contact Centre project, which delivers up to four personalised emails to travelers post-purchase, bmibaby has seen above-average open rates of 70 percent and click-through rates of 57 percent.
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