Email Marketing: Email takes off for easyJet

passengers a year.

The cost benefits of automated online sales for easyJet are obvious and
the carrier sold its first seat on the internet in 1998. Online sales
have grown rapidly ever since, with approximately 95 per cent of all
seats now being sold online, creating revenues of more than £1.5
billion per year and making easyJet one of Europe's biggest online
retailers.

Clearly, its web strategy plays a critical role in the easyJet set-up.
And while there may have been some easy wins for the airline when the
budget flight sector first came to market in the 1990s, competition has
become increasingly fierce. With the company going toe to toe with flag
carriers such as BA, getting its online marketing right is crucial.

With this in mind, easyJet brought in email service provider Epsilon 18
months ago. "We have been covering all of easyJet's email marketing
campaigns since 2005 and our goal is simple: to provide extremely quick
and effective email programmes for the airline," explains Ted Wham,
Epsilon senior VP and general manager, Europe.

"We have to be able to segment and target consumers based on the
language and the airports used by individual travellers. Using this
information, easyJet can promote flights to its different destinations,
and also drive hotel and car-rental partnerships," Wham explains.

When the airline got Epsilon on board in 2005, its objectives were
fairly straightforward: to generate incremental revenue over a short
period of time while maintaining brand awareness among customers. To
achieve this, Epsilon used its Dream Mail system to manage easyJet's
outbound email campaigns.

Prior to this, the airline had used an internal system, but this had
only provided the company with basic delivery and tracking information,
which limited easyJet's ability to track the success of individual
emails and the number of seats that were sold as a result of particular
campaigns.

Drive sales

Also, price is famously central to easyJet's modus operandum, and Wham
cites this as another reason why his client chose Epsilon's Dream Mail
package. "Being cost-effective is key and once our system is set up, it
pretty much runs itself," he explains. "After a promotion has initially
launched, easyJet uses the system for follow-up emails seven days later
and also for other things such as sending email weather updates to those
who have booked."

A number of campaigns for easyJet have been successfully managed by
Epsilon since the two companies started working together, but one of the
most high-profile examples was 'Summer Sizzler', a five-day push
launched in April 2006, which offered cut-price flights.

"EasyJet wanted to drive sales by creating a promotion offering
discounts to its customers that could handle a very quick turn-over of
flights in 19 different countries," explains Archna Trivedi, Epsilon's
account director for easyJet. "As well as increasing sales overall, it
wanted to tackle seasonal lows in some destinations and so the data was
segmented to put a greater focus on those places."

Dream Mail was used to send out targeted, personalised emails to
easyJet's opted-in subscriber base on the first and last days of the
promotion. This offered discount flights on all routes until the end of
November 2006, as well as thousands of hotel rooms at reduced rates. The
emails were sent in 15 languages across 19 European countries, reaching
about five million subscribers. The promotion was also supported by
traditional offline marketing, which included print and radio
advertising, and online banner ads.

Measuring the campaign's results was key and easyJet uses Epsilon's
'full-service' package, which sees a dedicated representative assigned
to them to project manage promotions. When Summer Sizzler was in full
flow, that group grew to six, with technical support staff on call
too.

Epsilon provided easyJet with a full reporting set-up that enabled it to
fully track each email, quantifying the revenue generated from the
campaign and breaking down the results by country, language, airport and
any third-party services. "Dream Mail has given us a complete management
view of our email marketing communication," explains easyJet head of
brand marketing Paul Simmons. "Quite simply, this allows us to make
smarter and more profitable business decisions."

"There is, of course, a lot of work involved in getting all the
information from the client, getting that on to the system and inputting
all the correct language codes to create the database," admits Trivedi.
"The really big challenge was to create one template that would work
across all the different language and airport platforms. After that it's
a case of concentrating on segmentation and then proofing everything.
Once that is done, the turnaround time is very quick."

A good thing too as, despite the relationship it enjoys with its client,
lead times remain very short. Trivedi explains: "Often we get less than
24 hours' notice due to the effect of seasonality and the general nature
of the easyJet business. In this instance we had nine days, which was
fine as all the creative had been provided by the client."

The Summer Sizzler promotion was delivered to a total of 5.65 million
subscribers, had an HTML open rate of 34.71 per cent and a click-through
rate of 11.57 per cent.

"Epsilon carried out a benchmarking survey last autumn and these figures
are 18 per cent and 13 per cent higher than the EMEA industry benchmarks
respectively," says Trivedi. "As a direct result of the campaign easyJet
sold 275,270 seats, generating revenue of £12 million."

Based on these results, easyJet's Simmons says that the airline saw a
remarkable 200,000 per cent return on investment from the Summer Sizzler
campaign. "Signing up with Epsilon has made an incredible difference to
our email marketing business. The use of email delivery and tracking
technology has been seamless," he adds.

Elsewhere, Epsilon claims that the response rate for the recipients of
the Summer Sizzler email communications promotion was 1.5 times more
than those who were not contacted online, and that 66 per cent of those
who did buy in to the overall campaign initially heard of it via
email.

"In total, enough seats were sold as a result of Summer Sizzler to fill
1,000 aeroplanes, which is remarkable," says Wham. He concludes by
saying that a close working relationship with the airline was central to
the success of the promotion. "EasyJet's web site is very much the face
of its business and we have direct access to it," he says. "This means
that we can go in and report, and feed back to the client on who is
doing what, and alter things as necessary in real time."

The Revolution Email Marketing Report, sponsored by Communigator

CAMPAIGN SUMMARY

Client: easyJet

ESP: Epsilon International

Agency: in-house creative

Campaign: Summer Sizzler

When: 21-25 April 2006

Established in March 1995, easyJet was one of the pioneers of low-cost
air travel. Web sales began in 1998 and now some 95 per cent of bookings
are online. Today, the airline operates about 285 routes between 72
airports in 19 countries, and carries some 33 million passengers a year,
creating annual revenues of more than £1.5 billion.

November 2005: easyJet hired Epsilon International to run all its email
marketing using its Dream Mail platform, with a brief to generate
incremental revenue in a short period of time while raising brand
awareness. Earlier, easyJet had used an internal system for basic email
delivery and tracking.

April 2006: Epsilon given creative for Summer Sizzler promo, offering
discount flights on all routes until the end of November 2006 and
reductions on hotels. Nine-day lead time to drill down into easyJet's
opted-in database in 19 countries. Some five million people were
segmented by language and airport of choice, ahead of the two-week push.
Emails were sent in 15 languages, backed by print, radio and banner
ads.

December 2006: Summer Sizzler achieved an HTML open rate of 34.71 per
cent and click-through of 11.57 per cent. Email recipients were 1.5
times more likely to respond to the push than those not contacted
online. About 66 per cent of those who took up the offer were made aware
via email.

Some 275,270 seats sold, worth £12 million. EasyJet claims an ROI
of 200,000 per cent from the campaign.

EPSILON BUYS DOUBLECLICK'S EMAIL BUSINESS TO GAIN REACH

Founded in 1969, Epsilon International is head-quartered in Dallas, and
comprises five business services groups, including: strategic database
services; interactive; agency and direct services; data; and retail.

Owned by Alliance Data, Epsilon claims a client base of more than 2,200
blue-chip brands. It has offices in the US, UK, France, Germany, Hong
Kong, China, Singapore and Australia.

The UK and EMEA HQ was set up in April 2006 (after acquiring DARTmail,
which was founded by DoubleClick in 1999) and it has 25 staff at its
London base.

As well as easyJet, Epsilon has worked with Procter & Gamble, Asda,
Ogilvy, Amazon Services and Hilton Hotels.

Epsilon describes itself as "a leading provider of multi-channel,
data-driven marketing technologies", and its offer includes strategic
consulting, creative, data, database and loyalty technology, analytics,
email and direct marketing distribution services.

"Our USP is our global reach. We are the only company doing what we do
that has offices in 14 countries," says Ted Wham, Epsilon senior VP and
general manager (European operations). "In terms of messages sent, we
are the largest email service provider in the world."