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Focusing on a warm welcome
CalMac Ferries has for several generations been the lifeline that connectsthe west coast islands of Scotland to the mainland. The people who live and work on islands like Arran, Skye, and TireeOrkney and the Shetlands, and thousands of year-round travellers who holiday on the islands all year long depend on CalMac ferries for transportation to and amongst the islands. CalMac’s years of operation amongst the islands have also given it unique insights into the unique character and qualities of each island it serves.
CalMac has become more than just a means of moving people and goods from one destination to another. CalMac is also a valued partner in helping travellers plan their best holiday experiences on these wild and beautiful destinations.
CalMac officials recently recognised a need to increase the brand’s customer engagement and increase its service value to current and potential travellers. As part of my company’s work with CalMac, we discovered that we could help CalMac achieve its by revitalising its Welcome Programme, which introduces new subscribers to both CalMac’s email marketing programme and its travel services.
What we aimed to achieve
Our primary object was to increase subscriber engagement by providing a more comprehensive and value-driving Welcome Programme. We also developed secondary and long-term goal: to increase holiday bookings with an understanding that the process of planning holidays can be long and involve several levels of decision-making.
How we designed the new Welcome Programme
Programme Design: CalMac’s existing Welcome Programme consisted of two basic emails sent after opt-in. Based on previous testing, we believed a third email would provide more value to help holidaymakers grasp CalMac’s value not just as a travel service but also a resource for visitor information and insights into the islands’ unique culture and geography.
Hence we added a third email to the two-email sequence and developed three new wireframes for message design. Our overhaul of the Welcome Program included creating more content that addresses travellers’ concerns and interest and developing more persuasive copy and calls to action.
Content Strategy: We had previously analysed all of CalMac’s site content to understand what customers viewed when they clicked into and around the website. We categorised our findings and used them to revise and create the messages in the Welcome Programme to ensure relevance and pique subscribers’ interest at every touchpoint.
Segmentation and Personalisation: CalMac deployed the new Welcome Programme to all new subscribers, maintaining the approach of the original programme but with enhanced content and design designed to make a stronger first impression on these new and motivated potential customers.
| Old Welcome Programme 1st Email | New Welcome Programme 1st Email | |
| Tick a west coast destination off your travel bucket list | Tick a Scottish adventure off your travel bucket list |
How the new Welcome Programme went into effect
Execution Details: Our success metric was the click-through rate for the rollout phase of the new Welcome programme. Although many content revisions will use the open rate to track success, we chose not to rely on this common but unreliable metric.
We were not interested simply in learning whether more subscribers opened the new Welcome Programme. Rather, we wanted to know whether the new designs and refined messaging revised sequence drove more subscribers to click on the emails and go to the website for more information. This metric lined up perfectly with our objectives, as outlined in the previous section, “What we hoped to achieve.”
Post-Rollout Adjustments: Based on the popularity and click-through rates the initial emails generated, we went back and further optimised the messages. We fine-tuned the content positioning and tweaked the calls to action were rewritten to make them even more persuasive.
What we learned
The Welcome Programme overhaul generated these results:
- A substantial 156.821% increase in clicks across the Welcome Programme sequence, with specific improvements noted in each email over their predecessors and a significant benchmark for the new third email.
- Email 1: increased total click rate from 45.42% to 54.68%
- Email 2: increased from 8.68% to 53.47%
- Email 3: Total click rate of 33.32%.
These results underscore the effectiveness of the targeted content and optimised communication intervals.
In the future
Technical Adjustments: CalMac is working on a change in its email marketing programme to suppress promotional emails during the Welcome Programme sequence. We believe this will allow for a cleaner engagement experience for new subscribers without overlapping marketing messages.
Testing Plans: As soon as CalMac can implement the promotional email suppression, we will test whether excluding regular promotional emails during the Welcome Programme journey enhances or reduces revenue. Our finding will give us a better understanding about the effects of integrating marketing communications into the introductory period that belongs to the Welcome Programme.
Our takeaways from the findings
The strategic overhaul of the Welcome Programme revitalised subscriber engagement for CalMac Ferries. With continuous optimisations and continued testing, we believe the project will further enhance the effectiveness of CalMac’s email marketing efforts, supporting both immediate engagement and long-term booking objectives.
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