Business Platform
HolidayPirates
Increasing traffic by engaging subscribers with fast, relevant marketing messages
Brand
WhatsApp Business Solution Provider
HolidayPirates uses WhatsApp Business Platform to deliver time-sensitive travel offers to subscribers to engage active users and drive traffic to vendor partners.
53%
increase in WhatsApp subscribers in three months
97%
message open rates in WhatsApp
40%
up to 40% click-through rates in WhatsApp
10X
subscriber engagement through WhatsApp over email
*Results are unique and are provided by the featured business. Success story results will vary, as they depend on a variety of factors.
Their Story
Affordable dream vacations
HolidayPirates is an international travel company that sources and shares updated deals for flights, hotels, and holiday packages from leading travel platforms. Through the HolidayPirates website, mobile app, and social media, travelers can find everything they need to plan a weekend getaway or a longer vacation.
Their Goal
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Opening the world to budget-savvy travelers
HolidayPirates 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.
Their Solution
HolidayPirates identifies customer preferences by surveying destination preferences
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A real-time marketing channel
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.
As travel resumed after the pandemic, HolidayPirates needed a faster, more scalable way of reaching subscribers. After determining that WhatsApp was widely popular among its customers, HolidayPirates partnered with telecommunications company Vonage to build a powerful marketing and communications channel with WhatsApp Business Platform.
Using WhatsApp, the company broadcasts messages about new travel packages in real-time to subscribers. Links from WhatsApp take subscribers straight to the offer on the HolidayPirates website, where they can review it before visiting a travel partner directly.
HolidayPirates promoted the WhatsApp channel through email, social media, and its website. To grow the channel with people looking for their next big adventure, the company created a contest giving new WhatsApp 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.
In only three months, we’ve grown our WhatsApp subscriber base by 53 percent, now reaching over 220,000 subscribers eager to engage with the offers we share. We’ve seen a tenfold increase in subscriber engagement through WhatsApp compared to email offers and over twofold the engagement over app notifications.
Kamila Skötsch
Global CRM Team Lead, HolidayPirates
“In only three months, we’ve grown our WhatsApp subscriber base by 53 percent, now reaching over 220,000 subscribers eager to engage with the offers we share,” says Kamila Skötsch, Global CRM Team Lead, HolidayPirates. “We’ve seen a tenfold increase in subscriber engagement through WhatsApp compared to email offers and over twofold the engagement over app notifications.”
HolidayPirates started to capture subscriber preferences by sending messages inviting customers to choose between several specific deals, such as beach, city, or hiking trips. They automatically receive a message routing them to their choice – while the company discovers the offers that appeal to different groups of subscribers. Wanting a faster, more customized way of engaging with subscribers, HolidayPirates uses Vonage Conversational Commerce Platform powered by Jumper.ai to develop subscriber segments and deliver relevant travel offers via WhatsApp.
“The immediacy of using WhatsApp allows HolidayPirates to more easily identify its most active users and get the right offers in front of each subscriber,” says Tatiana Xyda, Key Account Manager, Vonage. “Through WhatsApp, HolidayPirates can cost-effectively engage its large, growing subscriber base.”
In addition to a daily message, HolidayPirates will target its most active subscribers with an additional one to three compelling WhatsApp conversations per week. As more subscribers using WhatsApp act on deals that might close within hours, they drive higher engagement than any other channel.
“With WhatsApp, we’ve been able to better identify and market to the top 25 percent of our active subscribers,” says Skötsch. “Our subscribers using WhatsApp are faster to act on deals than people using other channels, generating more traffic to our partners with click-through-rates as high as 40 percent, and some messages receiving a 97 percent open rate.”
HolidayPirates wants to refine segmenting capabilities to send more personalized messages as it creates promotional campaigns that use special occasions, like Black Friday sales, to increase WhatsApp subscribers. There are also plans to add a travel concierge feature to WhatsApp, using automation and live agents to guide users in vacation planning with packages through its partners.
“The versatility of WhatsApp helps us open the world up to our subscribers as we connect more people with exciting travel opportunities they can only find through our partners,” says Skötsch.
WhatsApp subscriber engagement is significantly higher than email and app notifications
Their Success
When HolidayPirates builds a marketing channel through WhatsApp Business Platform, the company more than doubles its subscriber base while increasing engagement, click-through and message open rates, as well as traffic to vendor partners.
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More subscribers and traffic
- 53% increase in WhatsApp subscribers in three months
- 97% message open rates in WhatsApp
- Up to 40% click-through rates in WhatsApp
- 10X subscriber engagement through WhatsApp over email
*Results are unique and are provided by the featured business. Success story results will vary, as they depend on a variety of factors.
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WhatsApp Business Platform partners can help you plan, build and integrate WhatsApp as a channel to connect with your customers.