The American-based Best Western® Hotels & Resorts brand has been a leader in the hospitality industry for over 70 years, with a global network of 4,200 hotels in more than 100 countries and territories. With a strong presence in France, the group reported an annual revenue of 2.2 billion dollars in 2017. They have been an AB Tasty client since March, 2017

Challenge

For hotel brands like Best Western® Hotels & Resorts, customer loyalty is paramount; they aim to create a long-lasting relationship with each client. One of the ways to foster this kind of engagement is through an online membership community. For example, as a Best Western Rewards® member, customers can log in and benefit from discounts and other perks, like free stays, complimentary breakfasts, and upgrades.

The digital team at Best Western® France was looking for a way to encourage visitors to become members, use their accounts, and especially to take advantage of one of their discounts applicable to visits of two nights or longer. They decided the best way to do this would be to run a website personalization campaign using AB Tasty.

Personalization Campaign Idea

The team had an elegant idea: an internet user would be more likely to join the Best Western Rewards® program if they were shown offers directly relevant to their search query. For this, the team simply needed to create appropriate audience segments in AB Tasty using data from their data layer. Since their main goal was to encourage visitors to use or create their membership account, they opted for the following scenarios:

— Upsell scenario: Trigger a pop-in to visitors who were logged in to their membership accounts and looking for a one-night stay, with an incentive to prolong their visit
— Encourage Best Western Rewards® account creation: Trigger a pop-in to visitors who were not logged in to a membership account and looking for at least a two-night stay, with a special promotional offer available only with a Rewards Account
— Upsell and account creation: Trigger a pop-in to visitors who were not logged in to a membership account and looking for a one-night stay, with an incentive to create an account and prolong their stay

This way, the digital team could show discounts only to visitors who were eligible for them, making the browsing experience more relevant, and encouraging non-members to sign up. By promoting incentives and reduced rates for longer visits, they also aimed to increase revenue. In other words: they pushed the right message to the right website visitor at the right time.

Results

The results showed that this kind of personalized messaging can have big effects on engagement. The most successful scenario turned out to be the second one, with around 12% more Best Western Rewards® program sign-ups originating from this campaign. Unsurprisingly, it was easier to convince visitors to sign up for a free account to receive an incentive than to add an extra night’s stay! In addition, the team was able to say that they created a smoother, more relevant customer experience, by only showing promotional messages relevant to each visitor.

Takeaway Tip

Take advantage of your visitor data to create relevant, personalized messages. Not only will you create a more pleasant browsing experience, you’ll increase the number of ways you can increase engagement, transactions, and revenue, all the while optimizing an existing client scenario.