How Gamified Email Campaigns + Real-Time Content Drove Engagement and Record Revenue

Challenge

Discovering New Paths to Customer Engagement

Every trip and traveler is unique. Best Western® Hotels and Resorts sought an innovative way to engage consumers and drive revenue through their Points Promotion Campaign, a quarterly initiative allowing customers to earn additional points for their Best Western® Rewards (BWR) accounts.

The challenge was to break from the norm with an engaging approach that helps travelers to feel inspired and take action in their travel planning journey.

Approach

Engaging Travelers within a Dynamic Campaign Journey

To achieve this, Ideas Collide, Best Western’s long-time agency partner, worked with Movable Ink to further integrate dynamic content into the email campaign, ensuring that promotions reflected real-time availability and adjusted once the offer expired. The ultimate goal was to drive revenue and engagement with an intuitive, engaging content strategy.

Key elements of our approach included:

Data-Driven Content Strategy: The new creative approach leveraged insights from previous A/B testing to craft a content strategy focusing on family-centric imagery set in summer destinations and using streamlined messaging.

Clear Instructions: Even as new interactive creative is introduced, the campaign prioritized user experience. All new creative benefited from clear and precise instructions within the emails to guide recipients effectively.

Mobile Optimization: Content met on-the-go travelers where they find inspiration. The campaign ensured email responsiveness across mobile devices to enhance accessibility and engagement.

Audience Segmentation: The campaign spoke to travelers personally with strategically segmented audiences that tailored the email content to specific consumer groups.

Audience Research: The gamification element was inspired by research conducted to better understand the BWR consumer. The research drew a very strong correlation between the BWR audience and online games. The data indicated an increased likelihood to engage with, solve and complete activities and games 2-3 times per month.

The campaign spanned one week and included two emails:

1. 1.Announcement Email: Introduced the Points Promotion Campaign to consumers.
2. 2.Reminder Email: Prompted recipients to take advantage of the offer before it expired

Solution

Engaging Members with a Digital Scratch-Off Experience

The innovative use of Movable Ink’s technology played a pivotal role in this campaign. Ideas Collide dynamically updated email content based on real-time data and introduced a gamification element to engage BWR members on a deeper level.

Movable Ink’s digital scratch-off technology was integrated within the emails, creating a fun and interactive experience for recipients. This fun and familiar feature allowed Rewards members to digitally “scratch” the message to reveal the number of bonus points they had earned. The gamification approach added an element of surprise and excitement, making the email experience more engaging and memorable.

This interactive feature allowed Best Western to inspire travel through unique + authentic experiences by transforming a standard email into an engaging activity that resonated with the recipients' desire for discovery and reward.

By refining the content strategy, focusing on compelling visuals and concise messaging, and optimizing the emails for mobile devices, Ideas Collide created a seamless and engaging consumer experience. The segmented audience approach ensured the right message reached the right recipients, enhancing the campaign’s overall effectiveness.

Results

Unlocking Record-Breaking Revenue

The campaign delivered outstanding results:

Increased Revenue: Monthly revenue per 1,000 emails sent increased by 60% year-over-year, marking the first time such a significant increase was achieved.

Record-Breaking Campaign: This email campaign generated the highest revenue ever for a single campaign for Best Western.

Top-Performing Emails: The announcement and reminder emails rank among Best Western’s top three revenue-generating emails.

Unprecedented Engagement: The reminder email achieved the highest engagement rate ever, with a 4.4% click-to-deployed ratio, 3% higher than the monthly average click rate.