By leveraging WebEngage’s full-stacked solution, travel brand Wego has achieved 20X email open rates and 27,000 unique conversions every day, setting a new benchmark in the industry
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Customer engagement and retention specialist WebEngage has released a case study, shedding light on strategies and technologies that enabled the global travel marketplace Wego to achieve an outstanding conversion rate. Wego has registered a 20X increase in email open rates and 27,000 unique conversions every day. These figures have significant implications for the travel industry, where the average conversion rate for email is around a measly 4.7%.(1) In the case study, WebEngage illustrated, in detail, how data, push notifications, and personalization strategies led to Wego’s remarkable feat.
One look at the travel and tourism landscape, and you will notice fierce competition among aggregators. Competition begets dynamic price points, leading to a lack of loyalty among customers. Less conversion naturally impacts sales, undermining the brand’s ability to offer the best possible prices in subsequent campaigns. Thus begins a vicious cycle. Conversely, a virtuous cycle would involve optimizing operations, engaging customers effectively, earning loyalty, enhancing sales, and offering industry-best prices. Wego’s association with WebEngage was rooted in this objective.
How Wego achieved conversion
Wego has a strong focus on users in MENA and the Asia-Pacific and holds the number 1 rank in travel bookings in the KSA. Following the pandemic-induced decline in international travel – about 61% drop worldwide(2) – the brand redefined its objectives, which included giving users a seamless experience, engaging them effectively on the app and the website, and offering the best possible prices. Wego’s objectives found an enabler in WebEngage’s easy-to-use full-stacked tool for data analysis, insights, and communications. The platform proved to be a bedrock for effective journey designing, notification optimization, and hyper-personalized communication.
“WebEngage’s marketing automation platform has enabled us to deliver personalized experiences to each traveller around the globe. We are now able to engage with our customers and maximize conversions. With the help of automated user engagement journeys, we’ve been able to plan, execute and amplify campaigns at scale, which brings us more revenue, thereby enabling us to give the best possible pricing to our end-users,” explained Sourav Dey, VP – Growth, Wego. As Sourav noted, Wego went on to register nearly 27,000 daily unique conversions through push notifications as email open rates increased 20 times(3).
Optimization of notifications
Creating an effective sales funnel is a complex process with multiple considerations. If a user initiates a search and abandons midway, then the re-engagement process begins through push notifications on mobile and the web. However, this process also runs the risk of disengagement if hurried or pursued haphazardly. Wego leveraged insights on WebEngage’s dashboard to optimize email send time as per events and triggers. Communications were further refined through drag-and-drop builders and A/B Testing. For instance, customers interested in hotel bookings received alerts a day after abandoning the search. The corresponding waiting time for flight searches was two days.
Designing journeys based on insights
Analytical tools that help understand customers’ preferred routes, touch-point tendencies, and behaviours are instrumental in designing a journey. The objective is to meaningfully communicate with users at every point in their journey. Wego, powered by WebEngage’s analytical tool Paths and an insight-led notification strategy, was able to not only reduce drop-offs but also open up cross-selling opportunities. In the tourism industry, with verticals such as hospitality, transportation, and services, unlocking cross-selling opportunities has great implications for business outcomes.
By Wego’s admission, the conversions during JFM increased by 28%. And the conversions from flight and hotel searches increased by 26.5%, on average. “The onboarding and customer success team at WebEngage made the integration process for us hassle-free and convenient. Within a few weeks, we were ready to go live with our primary use cases, and the speed at which queries and concerns were handled was brilliant,” said Amanjeet Singh Malhotra, CRM Manager – Global, Wego.
By and large, user-level data is proving to be of great consequence to travel aggregators hoping to personalize their customer engagement across channels. Taking into account that the travel industry is increasingly coming under the digital purview, the possibility of harnessing data and analytics is only set to grow. While it is true that the pandemic was a “black swan” event for the industry, it has paved the way for a renewed growth phase by supercharging digitalization. As far as the Middle East is concerned, such developments couldn’t come any sooner as the region gears up for its maiden FIFA World Cup, among other tourism-oriented events.
About WebEngage
Ranked #1 consistently across all review platforms on ease of use and comprehensiveness of the platform, WebEngage is used by 600+ brands across India, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe and South East Asia markets. WebEngage is on a unique mission to ensure that no business should ever have to work hard to retain its customers. WebEngage helps them scale through a robust customer data and analytics platform – unifying data across silos, the best-in-class journey builder enabling automated triggers and campaign orchestration across channels.
The third piece of the stack is the personalization engine that includes all the data in the system and AI/ML-driven product recommendations that boost the conversion for all channels including the web and mobile apps. This puts immense power in the hands of marketers as they try to live up to the consumer expectation of a personalized user experience, a habit formed by the Amazon and Netflix of the world. The company is working across several industries like E-Commerce, Edtech, Fintech, Foodtech, Media & Publications, Gaming, BFSI, Healthcare, Online Retail. The key clientele includes marquee brands like IKEA, eXtra Stores, HNAK, Vezeeta, Tabiyat, Unilever, L’Oréal, Bajaj Auto, Unacademy, Myntra, Pluralsight, Pepperfry, Junglee Games, HT Media, FirstCry, GoIbibo and many more.
About Wego
Wego is an award-winning meta-search engine and one of the largest online travel marketplaces that enables travelers to discover new destinations, compare packages, and book flights and hotel deals, and is focused on users living in the Middle East, North Africa & Asia Pacific. It also holds the #1 rank for travel bookings in Saudi Arabia.
On a mission to help people discover the actual value of travel, Wego has imagined and created some of the most well-loved products for travelers worldwide and is dually Headquartered in Singapore and Dubai, with offices in India, Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Malaysia.
Wego harnesses powerful technology that simplifies the process of searching, comparing, and booking flights and hotels across hundreds of airlines, hotels, and online travel agency websites. Wego is backed by top-tier investors, including Tiger Global, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital, MEVP, and the MBC Group.
Ross Veitch co-founded the travel metasearch site in 2005 with Craig Hewett to give Southeast Asia its first real-time, bookable tool. At Yahoo!, he recognized the desire for travelers to research their flight and accommodation options independently and from live inventory. Veitch joined Southeast Asia operations and kick-started various initiatives, including successful search, media, commerce, communications, mobile, and community platforms.
Veitch’s passion for travel and technology were combined as he became Chief Product Officer of Wego and assembled one of the strongest web development teams in APAC today. Consecutively today, Wego is used by millions of people every month, which is why the team works tirelessly to make their end users’ experience of planning their trips as seamless as possible. The ingrained idea of the human need to travel – “why we go?” – is one that the company has woven into the name of its organization – Wego.
