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Career Highlights & Achievements
Continuous improvement of email design
When I joined Center Parcs back in 2022, I was surprised to see how dated an inconsistent the emails were with all other digital channels. Since working my way up to exec level, I have taken on more work to slowly improve the look and feel of Center Parcs email, whilst aligning it to the website to achieve consistency.
Scroll to see the development of Center Parcs emails over the last 2 years
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Removal of header navigation bar
Old (2022)
New (2024)
The removal of the navigation bar has allowed me to drive more traffic to the relevant links featured in at the top of the email. This has not increased engagement but instead has increased the concentration of clicks on the hero image and hero CTA. This encourages recipients to focus more on the main narrative of the email, rather than being led away to pages that aren't overly relevant for existing customers, such as locations, accommodation and things to do, which were all features in the navigation bar of the older email template style.
Statistically speaking, there has been a 3% rise in clicks on the hero image and hero CTAs as a result of this change.
Achieving consistency across the customer journey
Old (2022)
New (2023)
Improving my HTML skills and completing HTML and CSS courses allowed me to add external fonts and brand colours into marketing emails. This has helped achieve consistency across all email marketing channels and align with the website to improve the customer journey. As a result of this change, people have found it easier to recognise Center Parcs emails and not report as span or/and unsubscribe.
Since this change, we have seen unsubscribe rate halved, from 0.2% to 0.1%.
Increasing average transaction value
Old (2022)
New (2024)
There are many added extras that recipients are not aware of and that are not strong enough to push in a single email. A lot of competitors feature added extras at the bottom of emails to increase spend. Since there are some great added extras that Center Parcs offer, we decided to make these clearer to help increase conversion as well as increase average spend per booking.
I worked closely with the design studio to create on brand icons. These are interchangeable and can be swapped out for other added extra icons, depending on what needs more of a push at the time of send.
The are very new additions to the emails and are being analysed. The decision to implements them came from deep analysis of our competitor's emails.
Continuous improvement of email targeting
Being an email specialist at Center Parcs I have a lot of control over targeting ideas. Many email experts suggest tailored content resonates much more than generic content which in turn improves engagement and therefore increases revenue and orders. All the time I am looking at ways to split and segment our database to send more personalised content.
I am aware there are external companies that offer systems to make these processes easier but they are currently not available to use in email marketing at Center Parcs.
Targeting people based on past spend
During my time at Ralph Lauren, I would use price elasticity models to target those with discount codes based on how likely or how unlikely they would be to spend money at an outlet store. I thought this concept would be great to test at Center Parcs.
Using data fields in Adobe Campaign I was able to pull through recipients into groups based on their spend on a lodge for their latest break at Center Parcs. This allowed me to target higher spenders with more expensive breaks such as executive and exclusive lodges, but equally lower spenders with some of best deals. You can see targeting, splits and volumes below:
Targeting was very specific and was also split on whether they come during peak or off peak seasons. Despite the complex targeting, there was an increase in orders for higher spenders, with one booking coming in at over £2,500 which was the highest single booking from email in 2023.
The in depth insights show that just because you lead with low prices all the time, doesn't mean everyone will perceive the message in the same way.
Targeting based on distance from nearest Center Parcs location
There are a lot of prospects in the Center Parcs database. We see an uplift in engagement when we lead with more informational emails but information is very limited on this group of people. One thing we do have access to is the distance people are from their nearest 'village' (Center Parcs location). Splitting the database out based on this information (postcode and preferred village location) not only allowed us to improve targeting, but I also created personalisation fields to include in the email, which allowed me to inform every recipient how close they are which helped a lot realise they weren't far away.
Although the workflow does not look segmented and split, as the distance from village has been identified in the workflow, personalisation fields allowed us to bring in this information based on the individuals information and hide information that wasn't relevant to them. This saved time, meaning I could focus on targeting a lot more for this email campaign.
Summary
I believe I am a creative and out of the box thinker, always trying to do more and improve my work, for the benefit of the company as well as my experience. The work I have highlighted through out my time at Center Parcs shows many skills and a drive to succeed, to create longer-term conversations over email but overall to drive higher engagement. Please feel free to reach out via email or on LinkedIn. If you are contacting my by mobile, please call or text on WhatsApp only!
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