Best Western Increases App Downloads 143% With Deep Linking and Device Targeting

Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Best Western International Inc. was founded in 1946 by California-based hotelier M.K. Guertin as an informal referral system among its member hotels. Since then, Best Western has become the world's largest hotel chain and a familiar presence in more than 100 countries. Each of its 4,000+ hotels is independently owned and operated, further engraining the spirit of good service throughout the company. Cassie Spillner, Kelly Saffo, and Ryun Lambson of the Best Western Marketing team shared with us how they are using Movable Ink to achieve their goals and deliver highly relevant and engaging campaigns at scale.

Movable Ink: Why did you decide to partner with Movable Ink?

Best Western: Every month we send over 20 million emails to our opt-in list and that's a mix of newsletters, promotions, and lifecycle emails. We want to make our emails as relevant and interesting as possible, but our systems have technological limitations. The partnership with Movable Ink has helped us overcome them and now we can send dynamic real-time content in email.

For example, before agileEMAIL, we couldn't do a real A/B test without conducting a full 50/50 split. Now we can figure out which creative performs best in real time, ultimately increase engagement and revenue. Knowing we don't have to send a 'loser' message to half the database ever again is awesome."

MI: How has it been working with Movable Ink so far?

BW: The Client Experience team is on top of everything and they are quick to respond. We had one campaign where we needed some help writing HTML. We sent a note over to CX and they responded quickly, helping us properly write the HTML. They even included notes so we can do it right the next time. Franki Silverman and Elizabeth Ray have been great to work with!

MI: We've been partnered for a few months now-what has been your favorite use of agileEMAIL so far?

BW: There are two that stand out for us. First, we wanted to increase downloads of our mobile app and had identified an opportunity to promote it to subscribers in our welcome emails and reservation confirmation messages. We tested agileEMAIL's deep linking and device targeting capabilities on a list of over 1 million Rewards Members and found that they drove a 100% increase in downloads. It worked even better for non-Rewards Members, increasing downloads by 143%. Because of the success, we decided to permanently add app download promotions to our welcome and reservation emails.

MI: That's a great idea. What was the other you had mentioned?

BW: The other feature came into use when we wanted to test which offer would drive greater engagement-an offer for rewards points or a discount code to buy flowers from one of our partners for Mother's Day. Movable Ink's creative optimization feature let us do this in real time, allowing us to show the majority of recipients the discount code that was driving higher engagement. Then we paired creative optimization with geo-targeting to show recipients localized offers in our destination-specific campaigns. There were 21-targeted regions in the campaign, and it led to a 12% click-through rate improvement from our rewards members and a 10% improvement from our non-rewards members.

MI: What are your future plans for agileEMAIL?

BW: So far, Movable Ink has helped us increase our revenue per message by 20%. The solution works so we want to incorporate agileEMAIL's features and functionality into more campaigns across the customer lifecycle to further increase the performance of our email programs. Data from agileEMAIL's Insight module has helped us understand who is using bestwestern.com, the devices they are using to interact with us, and how to target them for better results. Next on our list is integrating real-time content from our site and social media channels into our email programs.

MI: Thank you Cassie, Kelly, and Ryun for your time!

About the Author

Lalit Chopra, Director, Strategic Partnerships. Lalit works with leading digital marketing companies, agencies, and service providers to build engaging email marketing campaigns with their clients. Movable Ink is a Salesforce Marketing Cloud HubExchange partner. Their agileEMAIL HubExchange app seamlessly integrates with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, enabling you to sense and respond in real-time to each recipient's time, location, device, and even the weather at the moment of open. Check out their HubExchange app today!