My Method... How Getaway used email marketing to boost metrics across the board

As travel and hospitality brands continue operating in recovery mode, with overall performance below 2019 levels and the industry hit by the pandemic, we have seen glimmers of hope and potential as innovative leaders have found creative ways to keep customers engaged—and increase growth.

Hospitality brand Getaway saw an opportunity to drive gains in bookings, customer retention and revenue during the pandemic as others saw engagement, earnings and other key metrics fall.

This was done in part by rolling out more effective email marketing strategies.

By leveraging our customer engagement platform to create tailored emails and deliver them when customers are most likely to engage, the company successfully introduced pandemic-safe travel options to potential guests in target markets.

The challenge

Getaway offers remote cabins, allowing guests to recharge in nature with well-appointed kitchens, comfortable sleeping arrangements, and lockboxes designed to keep distracting devices out of reach.

The accommodation brand grew to 12 locations, known as outposts, all within a few hours drive of U.S. cities, by the end of 2020.

Seeing an opportunity to position its cabins as ideal locations for enjoying a vacation while continuing to practice social distancing guidelines – which would appeal to travelers looking for safer options during the pandemic – the company set a goal of expanding its outposts to a total of 17 destinations by the end of 2021.

At the same time, the brand wanted to boost bookings, raise its Net Promoter Score (NPS) and attract repeat customers.

To fuel these growth ambitions, Getaway not only wanted to create more effective personalized email campaigns to support the launch of promotional emails, but also develop an impactful transactional nurture program to seamlessly guide travelers through what to expect during the booking and arrival process.

To bring the vision to life, it realized it needed to overcome the limitations of its email platform, which didn't support best-in-class personalized messaging.

Driving campaign engagement

Getaway took advantage of the Braze segmentation capabilities to pinpoint the right audiences for each campaign and our Intelligent Timing feature to deploy emails at the optimal time based on individual customers' past interactions and preferences, along with our other solutions, to improve the company's email marketing performance.

“With Braze, our messages are always targeted to travelers based on where they are and how they like to communicate with us, increasing engagement and conversions," says Jordan Strickland, growth email manager at Getaway.

Targeted messaging to streamline the journey and optimize the experience

By using our customer journey builder, Getaway was able to develop a flow of transactional emails to guide all customers who booked an outpost stay.

These emails provided helpful information about how to check in and check out, recommendations about what to do in the area, and other relevant details about the upcoming stay.

And, by using our dynamic content capabilities, the team was able to easily automate these 1:1 personalized emails for maximum relevance and appeal.

Delivering results

In the first week of the launch of Getaway's Chicago outpost, it saw a 30% increase in repeat customers and more than $300,000 in revenue from the transactions email campaigns.

Getaway's marketing team can now ensure every campaign reaches the right audience at the right time, enabling the brand to make more meaningful connections with travelers—all in support of the company's long-term growth and customer engagement goals.