The challenge Ever since Germanwings was founded in 2002, Germany’s leading budget airline and optivo have worked together in the area of email marketing. From the very beginning, Germanwings was faced with the challenge of marketing its flights primarily online and running extremely cost-effective operations. By making use of email marketing, they should be able to quickly attract new customers, as well as keep existing clients and business partners constantly up-to-date. Bearing in mind the volume of emails expected to be broadcast, the chosen email solution should be powerful but also simple for staff to use. It was therefore essential that the emails were sent via a specialist email service provider with a sound technological basis as well as total workflow management.
Email marketing in the ASP model
Germanwings chose optivo's professional email marketing solution optivo® broadmail based on its proven technology. optivo took care of the entire implementation process of the ASP (Application Service Provider) model. This allows round-the-clock, browser-based access to the email marketing system - with always the latest version and newest features. Germanwings has incurred no additional costs for hardware, software or maintenance.
Constant broadcasting of large email volumes
The budget airline currently sends several million emails every month in five different languages; these are aimed at potential customers and existing clients as well as target groups in the B2B market. This means that within a few hours, individual mailings are sent to almost 2 million newsletter subscribers. Each year, Germanwings sends more than 600 different mailings in total using optivo® broadmail.
Mark Philipp, Team Leader Direct Marketing at Germanwings, says: "For us, emails are a great opportunity to remain in regular contact with our clients and potential new customers. The costs are much lower than with other forms of advertising. The money saved by using email marketing is passed on to our customers in the form of cheaper tickets."
The most important Germanwings newsletter is a biweekly promotion mailing with attractive special offers. Registration is quick and easy and can be completed either when booking a flight or simply by visiting
www.germanwings.com. Frequent flyers also have the option to receive a regular newsletter with information about the customer loyalty programme "Boomerang Club". In the B2B sector, travel partners and advertising agencies are supplied with news, advertising space information and special offers by email.
Dynamic content for more response A highlight is the dynamic content of the newsletter, displaying all information according to the target group data. Because of extensive segmentation options, a subscriber in London e.g. will receive completely different offers than a recipient living in Berlin. Possible criteria for selecting target groups include postcode, departure airport of last bookings or most frequently used departure and arrival airports. This strategy has enabled Germanwings to increase its click rate by up to 60% in comparison to non-dynamic mailings.
Simple and effective workflow When creating the newsletter, Germanwings benefits from predefined templates in its own corporate design. Using these templates, staff can quickly and easily enter their text as well as upload required images. No previous knowledge of HTML is required. Using this data, optivo® broadmail then generates the newsletter in line with the design.
An integrated graphics generator allows quick and easy creation of graphics and buttons in the Germanwings style ("book flight" etc.). Another important benefit is the automatic matching of recipient lists. optivo® broadmail and the Germanwings system regularly exchange address details of all recipients in order to check for duplicates and against blacklists.
Target group specific email campaigns thanks to web analytics Recently, Germanwings linked its web analytic software Omniture SiteCatalyst™ to optivo® broadmail. This innovative approach enables the budget airline to aim its newsletter at even more specific target groups. The bidirectional integration allows website visitors to be divided into very precise segments in optivo® broadmail. They can then be targeted with specially tailored information and offers in future mailings. Overall, Germanwings can significantly increase its turnover through email campaigns.
Customer feedback "optivo is an extremely flexible partner for our email marketing. Since 2002 we work together successfully. We particularly rate optivo® broadmail's user-friendly workflow, the quick response of the optivo support and
their checks for content security. With optivo our email communication is in safe hands."
Mark Philipp, Team Leader Direct Marketing at Germanwings
Reference customer Germanwings GmbH
www.germanwings.com Industry Travel
optivo solution optivo® broadmail for professional email marketing
Facts - Market-leading technology using the ASP model
- Five different language versions (German, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian)
- High-end system for broadcasting large email volumes
- Target group-specific mailings and high click rates thanks to dynamic content
- Effective workflow, user-friendly content templates and easy generation of graphics
- Regular and automatic matching of recipient lists
- Integration with web analytics for tailor-made information and offers
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