How Mailchimp Helped TravelOnline Improve Open Rates by 66%

Want to surf in Bali? Hit the beach in Fiji? Ski the New Zealand Mountains? For 30 years, TravelOnline has been selling holiday packages to a loyal audience who keeps coming back for the enticing deals.

For most of that time, email marketing was less about data-driven strategy and more built on the offer frequency. But as TravelOnline’s marketing team has scaled, they’ve developed a clearer understanding of each touchpoint while rebuilding the customer journey from first click to wheels up.

Sheri Adamson, Marketing Manager at the Australian-based TravelOnline, has been driving that evolution firsthand. She’s spent more than 14 years with the company and developed the marketing department from a one-person operation to a team focused on refining brand communications. This evolution means needing to understand when and why customers engage and, ideally, reengage well after they book their first trip.

“We’ve been around for more than 30 years, and everything has always been sales-focused and digital media-focused,” Sheri says. “But in terms of our next step, building our brand a bit more is going to be crucial for growth.”

Teaming up with Intuit Mailchimp is helping TravelOnline take those steps, beginning with segmentation and personalization.

The challenge: A big list, too many sends, and a shrinking impact

TravelOnline has a subscriber list of more than 300,000 and sends up to 6 million emails each month. Prior to using segmentation, TravelOnline’s email strategy was to cast the widest net possible. Every deal went to everyone, up to 6 times per week, and that repetition drove bookings—for a while, at least.

As Sheri mapped the customer journey in more detail, the problem with that strategy began to show. Large portions of their contact list weren’t opening emails at all, while engaged subscribers started to tune out due to email overload.

“With such a large list and limited resources, our emails naturally evolved into a one-size-fits-all approach,” Sheri said. “It worked well for a time, but once we had the capacity to dive deeper into segmentation, the impact was immediate. More intentional targeting has really lifted engagement.”

The tools: Customer Success team, segmentation, and comparative reporting

TravelOnline’s first step was to repair email deliverability and rebuild engagement. Working closely with Mailchimp’s Australia Customer Success team, Sheri began segmenting audiences by engagement and focusing on warming up contacts from one domain at a time. They began their domain warm-up strategy with Gmail, which represented more than 40% of their subscribed email contacts but had low open rates.

Using features such as tags, comparative reporting, and domain performance tracking, TravelOnline measured improvements within Mailchimp’s analytics dashboards. Those insights improved deliverability and laid the groundwork for TravelOnline’s broader segmentation strategy and a more intentional cadence.

“The support from Mailchimp in Australia came at the perfect time for us. They’ve given me inspiration on where to start, what to look at.” Sheri says. “Having that support helped us focus our energy and keep the momentum going, and having a monthly check in and goals we’re working toward has helped keep things on track.”

The results: Increased engagement and ROI

TravelOnline’s new strategy began paying off in only 2 months.

After partnering with Mailchimp, the company saw significant growth in key metrics. Open rates rose by 66%, unsubscribes dropped by 38%, and overall email ROI improved by 13%.

“The support and advice made us focus on email marketing more than we were,” Sheri says. “Each of the projects we’ve looked at have been impactful and had great results, but the biggest change has been simply giving email more love.”

Improved engagement gave Sheri’s team clarity with a new foundation in place.

They’ll next focus on more personalization and cleaner design with greater visual impact to make each campaign as inspiring as the destinations TravelOnline sends their customers to.