HouseTrip used a smart email camapign to to drive incremental bookings by engaging with potential holidaymakers through tailored emails. This case study looks at how the holiday rental marketplace boosted open rates by a factor of three.
Case study summary
⦁ Holiday rental site looks to boost traffic from email
⦁ 2m personalised emails sent- getting experiencing an open rate three times higher than traditional travel emails.
⦁ Bookings increased getting ROI within one week of launch.
The challenge
HouseTrip was founded in 2010 by husband and wife team Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen. It has rapidly become one of the largest holiday rental websites in the world, offering holidaymakers and holiday homeowners a safe and easy-to-use platform to find, book and list holiday apartments, houses and villas securely online.
There are currently more than 360,000 properties to choose from in over 20,000 destinations worldwide, with an average of 3,000 new listings added each week. Most of which are available to book with the new flexible options of free cancellation and split payment facilities.
The company wanted to drive up email reach, and worked with Criteo to tailor a smart campaign to acheieve this goal.
The solution
Criteo’s email solution sends targeted and relevant emails to consumers who have visited HouseTrip’s website but not yet purchased. The information in the email is based on the user’s browser history, ensuring that the content is relevant and in a format that is best suited to each individual. The highly-personalised nature of the email increases open rates, improves click-through rates and drive sales.
The results
In 2015, HouseTrip delivered over two million personalised emails with Criteo’s email solution, experiencing an open rate three times higher than that of traditional travel emails.
As result, click-through rates are higher than average, bookings have increased and the cost of sale targets were achieved within one week of launch.
“Keeping in contact with consumers who have visited our site but have not converted has always been a challenge for us. By implementing Criteo’s email solution we are now able to trigger real-time emails that are more individualised and contextual which has proven to be extremely successful in bringing users back to our website. Working with Criteo is effortless because it does all the heavy lifting; all we had to provide for the email campaigns was our content and Criteo took care of the rest. The results have been impressive, cost of sale targets were achieved within one week of launch with improved open and click-through rates,” said Rumyana Miteva, Head of Performance Marketing, HouseTrip.
“Email is still the preferred tool for the majority of marketers. It can now be highly personalised and deliver relevant and timely content that consumers can easily open on any device, at any time. Organisations, like HouseTrip, are using email to create engaging and personalised campaigns which improve user experience and increase sales” said Jon Buss, Managing Director, Northern Europe, Criteo.
