Learn more about this course.

Case study: Virgin Holidays

In this section learners analyse a case study of how Virgin Holidays reinvented their customer journey.

Let’s look at an example of how Virgin Media reinvented each step of their customer journey to maximise their profits.

To move away from competing just on price, Virgin analysed the booking cycle over 3 years. Analysing thousands of touchpoints, across multiple channels, they discovered three key mood states to target:

1) The dreaming state: Holiday research; seeking that holiday high.
2) The anticipation state: Pre-travel anxiety and excitement; managing the holiday high.
3) The reminiscing state: The returning home holiday blues; keeping the holiday high.

A series of mood focussed communications were created including a set of emails triggered on behaviour.

Changing the mindset to serve customers’ emotional needs not only hugely enhanced the customer experience but impacted on profits, with a 58% increase in email revenue and a 10% jump in loyalty scores.

Let’s now summarise this using the planning framework:

Group / Stage	Research phase	Pre-holiday phase	Post-holiday phase
Descriptive name	The dreaming state	The anticipation state	The reminiscing state
Objective	Make research fun	Create and keep the holiday anticipation	Use the holiday high to generate a 2nd booking
Tactics	Games and activity rewards	Share function, holiday countdown content, personalised itineraries, airport guides	Miss you already postcards, personalised mugs, personalised next, destination ideas
Activity	Campaign emails	Trigger emails	Direct mail
Success measures	Open and click of emails, conversion to booked holiday	Open and click of emails, conversion for up and cross sell of holiday extras	Conversion of next booking

Join the discussion

Is there anything that you would have done differently had you been involved in Virgin’s campaign? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign? What did you find interesting about it? Write your comments below.

Use the discussion section below and let us know your thoughts. Once you’re happy with your contribution, click the “Mark as Complete” button to check the Step off, then you can move to the next step.