Corsica Ferries Sees Direct Impact on Turnover Thanks to Email Campaigns with Brevo

Reinforcing their marketing strategy to optimize loyalty

Having operated for more than 50 years in the Mediterranean, maritime transportation company Corsica Ferries has focused on reinforcing its marketing strategy over the past few years. Under the direction of Jean-Christophe Lucchesi, the marketing team is responsible for the online business strategy, the online and offline media plan, as well as social media and CRM activities. 

The company mostly uses paid acquisition channels, such as display ads on partner websites and Adwords campaigns. More recently, social media has come to complete their strategy. 

In addition, Corsica Ferries spends a lot of time on its loyalty strategy, sending frequent digital communications to its base, particularly to its Club members. For this reason, the company requires a reliable and efficient email marketing tool to optimize campaigns to its large customer database. 

A solution offering both responsive support and increased autonomy

Wanting to become more autonomous with their digital media strategy, the marketing team of Corsica Ferries started researching different email marketing platforms, as the channel is one of the most important for the company and its audience.

Jean-Christophe wanted to build on the loyalty strategy mainly with email communications. “Our campaigns are part of a global communication system, especially in the digital aspect, so for us, it is very important to count on a reliable email marketing tool since our promotional campaigns are mainly sent via this channel,” he says. 

For the head of marketing, the platform also represents an opportunity to drive conversions. “Part of these campaigns rely on sending customers emails to offer promotions to all our destinations. These are highly effective since we are talking about clients who come to Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearics, Sicily or the Elbe Island at least once a year.”

Additionally, the company was looking for a provider that would allow the marketing team to build their own campaigns whilst offering responsive support – not the case with their former provider. “Nowadays email campaigns are sent by marketers and no longer by developers or employees with specific technical knowledge. For this reason, we were looking for a very intuitive and user-friendly tool,” explains Jean-Christophe. 

Building loyalty through the power of email marketing

After researching solutions, the team at Corsica Ferries was convinced that Brevo met all the technical requirements for their business, and that it would be the right platform to give them the autonomy they were seeking. 

Jean-Christophe explains how smoothly the process for implementation went. “The setup was extremely simple. In just a few days I started using the features of the platform and I realized that I didn’t need much training. The platform is very intuitive, so I knew I could use the platform very easily.”

Jean-Christophe highlights how with Brevo, the team is able to build loyalty with frequent communications to their regular customers “We send a lot of communications to the Corsica Clubs, for example. These are customers who have a loyalty account with us and it is indeed crucial to have a trusted email marketing tool for building loyalty,” says Jean-Christophe.

Besides email marketing, the company also uses Brevo’s transactional email feature. This enables them to manage different types of passenger information they need to send and receive. “Before each departure, we send an email to the customers asking them to upload their ID, which is mandatory for traveling. We also send them the option of online check-in which is a recent feature from Corsica Ferries. This way, the passenger can choose the cabin location when they have booked an onboard installation,” explains the head of marketing. 

Revenue has increased thanks to more effective email campaigns

Following the initial setup phase, Jean-Christophe immediately saw the benefits of having a more intuitive and user-friendly tool. “Since I started using, Brevo I have saved a lot of time, particularly in the design and implementation of the campaigns. This allows me to spend more time on the strategy part of the business, so it pushes me to improve and try out new things in different campaigns I have to set up,” he tells. 

Besides seeing an improvement on important performance indicators, such as open and click rates, the Corsica Ferries team is able to see a direct impact in turnover, originating directly from email campaigns “We’re observing that our customers are highly receptive to our campaigns. Although they’re a part of a global communication system that includes other channels, they do generate significant revenue on their own and complement the suite of tools we use for online marketing,” explains Jean-Christophe.