Case History: Costa Crociere
Creating loyalty before setting off: The Costa Crociere customer journey
A personalised digital communication project to enhance customer experience and strengthen relationships with the brand.
Context
Costa Crociere S.p.A. is the leading cruise operator in Europe with over 67 years of history. The company wanted to build demand in the rapidly growing sector by updating the digital experience at all stages of the customer life cycle.
Goals
- Increase demand with early booking rather than last-minute bookings
- Communicate with cruise passengers in a personalised way in order to improve the journey experience and the relationship with the brand
- Increase passengers’ average spend by selling services beforehand to be used on-board
- Increase the frequency of repeat purchases by previous customers
Project
At the heart of this project is a CRM strategy which integrates all the information on passengers, from purchases to behavioural data, in a unique system, enabling personalised communications to be created using integrated and up-to-date data.
The available information set helped to establish a personalised contact plan during the 3 key stages of the customer journey and improved the operational process through the automation of over 500 active streams in 8 languages.
As a result, during the various stages of the “cruise cycle”, every passenger received, and continues to receive, a series of personalised communications based on their personal details, preferences and purchases, in their chosen language and via the most appropriate channel.
The introduction of a reward programme, the Costa Club, enhanced the digital experience with exclusive benefits for members delivered via the digital direct marketing strategy.
The performance of the project is being constantly monitored by dashboards which track the KPIs in real time and are optimised by A/B testing to identify the most effective solutions.
Results
+42%
Revenues generated from users targeted by the personalised communication program
+130%
Revenues generated from Costa Club members on extra on-board services
+34%
Visits to company website by customers
Industry
Travel & Transportation
Starting date
2015
What they say about us
“With Contactlab’s help we’ve personalised our relationship with our customers, which has brought us significant results in terms of revenue. I’d like to thank Contactlab for the care and passion they put into our campaigns. Every day our relationship with customers from over 20 countries is at stake, and we need to make them feel as indulged as they do aboard our cruises. We’re already at work with Contactlab on a project that will let us personalise our communication even further, so we can be certain that we’re offering even more valuable content to each of our current and future guests.”
Mirko Vassallo
Head of Direct Marketing & CRM, Costa Crociere
Awards
- Interactive Key Awards 2016 - Gold in Direct Email & Mobile Marketing
- DMA Echo Awards Italy 2016 - Gold in Travel&Hospitality/Transportation- Special prize for Email Marketing - Special prize for Data Driven Marketing
- Mediastars XXI Gold in ADV Online - Dem&Email
