The brand

The Stafford Collection is an independently owned portfolio of beautiful properties in distinct locations in the UK. The elegant hotels and award-winning restaurants offer a high level of luxury and personalized service. But today’s great hospitality experiences require guest data to anticipate needs and make guests feel special. That’s why, in 2020, Cassie Delaney-Brown switched to Revinate Marketing.

The challenge

The Stafford Collection has been a Revinate Guest Feedback customer for years and the marketing team, led by Cassie Delaney-Brown had been hearing about the power of Revinate Marketing since its inception. They had been using MailChimp for newsletters and emails but struggled to make the channel perform as they hoped it would. Because MailChimp isn’t built specifically for the hospitality industry, it doesn’t integrate with hotels’ PMSs to allow for data-driven segmentation or easy personalization.

In addition to MailChimp, The Stafford Collection did try a marketing solution built for hoteliers but found that the marketing hype didn’t match the reality of the product. Cassie explains, “We were promised a lot of functionality that didn’t materialize once we had access to the solution, including seamless PMS integration and drag-and-drop publishing. The truth is we should’ve gone with Revinate Marketing much earlier.”

The solution

Once Cassie was able to get out of her contract with the email vendor, she made the switch. She was excited that Revinate was truly built for groups and allowed her ‘mission-control access’ to email on behalf of the portfolio or any of the properties while keeping all guest data centralized in one place. She was also excited about Revinate’s new campaign builder, which made it easy to design and send emails. Mostly, Cassie was pleased to see how Revinate operates as a partner, not just a vendor.

Revinate does the heavy lifting around integrations and stays involved beyond the rollout. Cassie says, “Revinate delivers. Unlike our previous vendor, Revinate is there for us every step of the way. I have someone to call any time I need help or support. When I compare the level of support I receive to our other vendors, it’s night and day.”

The results

Right after The Stafford Collection signed up for Revinate Marketing, Covid-19 hit. Thankfully, Cassie was able to use Revinate Marketing during the pandemic to keep past guests apprised of the hotel’s status and drive new bookings during a slow travel period. Cassie says, “Prior to Covid-19, 60% of our guests came from the United States. With borders closed, we needed to quickly pivot to our local guests. Revinate made it really easy to segment our database and find those local travelers so we could target them with personalized communications and encourage their business.”

With more than 60% of her staff on furlough, Cassie was also thrilled at how easy Revinate’s campaign builder was to use. She is able to build a campaign in less than 30 minutes. Her old solution took more than two hours and never looked as professional or personalized.

Prior to Revinate Marketing, Cassie lacked the reporting tools to validate that the channel was ROI positive. But with Revinate Marketing, she can easily see how much revenue is being driven by email marketing. When travel resumes following the pandemic, she is excited about using out-of-the-box campaigns, like Upsells, to drive even more revenue.

Because of the group’s focus on creating personalized on-property experiences, Cassie is also excited about how Revinate Guest Feedback data is collected and made available within Revinate Marketing. She says, “I love that all our post-stay feedback is accessible within Revinate Marketing. It means we can not only use the data to personalize emails, but we can also use it to personalize the stay when guests visit. Pre-arrival reports and access to the database allow the staff to access and use guest data to provide the personalized experiences that they are known for.

As The Stafford Collection looks towards recovery, the marketing team is excited about going deeper with Revinate to help them recover lost revenue from their most profitable segment – – past guests – – and continue to ensure that the guest experience is the best it can be.