NEED
Hit hard by the economic downturn of 2008, Exclusive Resorts, a luxury travel club, wanted to refresh its brand, content, and communications. In 2013, the marketing team was seeing some bounceback but still needed to:
- Infuse the brand and voice with enthusiasm, positivity, and forward momentum
- Expand its content strategy to be more digital and less paper-based
- Explore channels beyond direct mail and email and better leverage social media
- Create renewed excitement around old travel offerings and infuse the portfolio with new offerings
- Increase member retention
- Streamline cumbersome content creation processes, as well as sales- and member-related processes.
SOLUTION
- Transitioned content from print to digital format
- Established a tone in member communications that conveyed confidence, transparency, humor, camaraderie, and passion for travel
- Ramped up social media strategy to better reach members and promote offerings
- Streamlined email communications from an average of 2.5 emails per week to one Weekly Alert
- Used member travel stories to create advocates and strong connections within the club
- Increased the amount of video content promoting luxury travel and providing insider tips on our destinations
- Simplified the new member onboarding process for the Member Services team, automating mundane tasks and promoting immediate engagement
- Identified prospect segments with highest potential for conversion and targeted content accordingly
- Instituted standard processes for content strategy, creation, and management
- Tied content creation more closely to a solid member strategy and to retention goals.
RESULTS
- Increased member retention from to 99% in 2014
- Reduced email communication volume by 30%
- Increased member email engagement by 30%
- Increased member social media engagement by more than 20%
- Created significant efficiencies in the content creation process for all-company initiatives such as the annual Year in Review
- Created digital content offerings and campaigns that could be tracked, compared, and easily optimized
