For-Sight helps Crieff Hydro bounce back with huge results
The eight hotels in the Crieff Hydro family are some of Scotland’s most iconic hotels, run by people passionate about providing great guest experiences. Located in Perthshire, the Bonnie Borders and along the west coast of Scotland, guests can benefit from a distillery, a gin school and breath-taking views over Loch Leven.
For over five years Crieff Hydro has integrated with For-Sight for their email campaigns and data segmentation, however they’ve been using the technology in a very manual way.
Pre and post-stay emails had previously been sent via their PMS, but these were impossible to update and had no ability to see any key statistics such as open rate or uptake. They decided they needed a new approach for their marketing strategy, one which would mean moving away from their current manual processes and towards automated triggers. Enter For-Sight.
The onset of the pandemic and closure of the properties as part of public health measures, gave them the time to evaluate the For-Sight platform and really begin to expand its capabilities.
With the latest Covid19 measures in place and new flexible T&Cs on all bookings, it was key for Crieff Hydro to develop an email programme that regularly kept in touch with guests with reassuring messages and upselling opportunities, e.g., spa bookings.
So far they’ve built 73 email triggers with different timed deployment rules to various audience segments, depending upon how the booking was made and where the guest is staying, even down to the rate code that the guest has booked.
The beauty of their set-up is the ease at which they can now tweak and update content. With the pandemic measures changing all the time, they are regularly updating messaging and links across all the emails.
“Having For-Sight as a CRM system is more than worth the investment. It enhances your operation and adds real value and revenue to your business.”
Debbie Neate, Head of Customer and Commercial
Plan of action
• Assess the data feed from their PMS to For-Sight, ensuring that the data was being captured correctly,
• Move their email processes from manual to automatic by setting up a series of powerful email triggers,
• Utilise For-Sight to deploy successful email campaigns to increase reach and reward loyal guests,
What were their results?
The results have been phenomenal for many different reasons:
At the end of the first UK lockdown, Crieff Hydro saw a fantastic open rate of 31.5% (average benchmark for the industry is 17.7%*) for their re-opening email campaign
The best click through rate for emails were those that had been personalised, e.g., with a section dedicated to pushing the last hotel the guest had stayed in.
The automated post-stay emails alone, which included a rebooking offer to encourage guests to return, has driven over £320k during July – December 2020 with an ROI of over 1,288%
When factoring in both automated emails as well as targeted email campaigns deployed using For-Sight, the ROI for February 2021 was 3,492.87%, so for every £1 Crieff Hydro spent on utilising For-Sight, they gained £35 in return.
In March 2021 the ROI grew even more with a huge £50 return for every £1 spent on For-Sight.
*According to Campaign Monitor’s Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2021: https:/www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-benchmarks/
“The For-Sight team’s understanding of PMS processes and data structures is unrivalled. For the hospitality sector, no one can unravel PMS data like For-Sight can.”
Loyalty and valuing our guests
These emails have helped keep their guests informed of how they need to prepare themselves in terms of operational changes, and what they need to book in advance, e.g., dinner reservations.
They’ve also helped maintain the loyal relationships they had with their existing guests and created new ones with guests from the newly boosted staycation market.
Crieff Hydro’s next focus will be to identify guest trends and use For-Sight’s RFM rating to drive loyalty and better understand the lifetime value of their guests.
This will also include looking at how they can better personalise the guest journey, especially for their platinum and gold guests.
“The team are just an amazing bunch to work with. Quick, agile, nothing is too much trouble.”
