How a personalized welcome email boosted RealNZ’s click-through rate by 8x YoY

RealNZ is a New Zealand-based tourism company offering world-class experiences across the country, from scenic cruises through Milford and Doubtful Sounds to adventure activities in Queenstown. With a legacy dating back to the 1950s, RealNZ is the country’s visitor gateway to both the natural beauty of New Zealand, and the conservation work necessary to help preserve it. Their subsidiary, Cardrona & Treble Cone, is home to the country’s biggest ski resort, catering to both casual visitors and professional athletes.

In 2023, RealNZ partnered with Dotdigital to advance their marketing strategy, aiming to personalize customer engagement and streamline communications through automation and data-driven campaigns.

There was no way to deliver personalized email programs to visitors or provide relevant information to upsell their offerings.

Whether that’s visiting Milford Sound, skiing in Cadrona or exploring the Te Anau Glowworm Caves, every customer who orders from RealNZ picks among a wide range of activities and adventures to create their personal itinerary. With RealNZ’s previous marketing platform, there were limitations around personalisation and features to orchestrate this unique customer journey. Unfortunately, this meant they were not able to tailor their post-purchase marketing campaigns to how customers were interacting with their brand. The most critical period they found for their customers was between the moment the customer made a purchase to their arrival for the activity. Their previous marketing platform was unable to unify the customer experience and provide the marketing team with the tools to create a consistent and engaging customer journey.

Dotdigital offered a way to connect their booking data to the platform and run campaigns based on booking dates and purchases.

Dotdigital powered RealNZ’s digital marketing goals by firstly supporting the integration with their existing Tealium data. This data held purchase details and other booking information needed to create segments that RealNZ could use to tailor messaging towards a meaningful customer journey.

With customer data connected and ready in their marketing platform, RealNZ had a new capability to trigger timely welcome emails, launch post-purchase campaigns and create upsell opportunities. With the intention to increase the loyalty of the customer and improve brand engagement, they leveraged the details of existing purchases to recommend equipment hire and other auxiliaries that would lend to a holistic New Zealand adventure and experience.

Learn how to personalize the customer journey with our guide here

The Impact: Personalization that delivered 13x ROI

By personalizing their emails to the customer’s purchase and creating timely triggers, RealNZ saw great improvements to their marketing efforts. With single-view tracking and transparency across campaigns on Dotdigital, they saw their ROI increase 13x YoY with purchases made from email increasing 614% YoY. On a campaign-level, their post-purchase campaigns received a whopping 53% open rate and a 4% click-through rate, which is an 88% YoY improvement. These results have contributed to a boosted engagement on all the brands across the board.

What RealNZ learned

1. Data-driven segmentation enhances customer engagement. By integrating Tealium to the Dotdigital platform, RealNZ could create more relevant campaigns that were tailored to the customer’s purchases and provide them with useful content.
2. Strong support makes a difference. Having a local customer success team enabled RealNZ to build relevant marketing campaigns for their customer base and they were ready to answer any questions during their New Zealand hours of operation.

Learn more about marketing automation in the travel industry