LONDON, UK –  High-speed rail service, Eurostar, wanted to take its customer-centric approach to the next level by delivering more relevant experiences to individual website visitors. With support from the Monetate platform, Eurostar had three main objectives:

  • Improve the digital customer experience and boost conversion rates

  • Reduce calls to the customer contact centre

  • Increase the number of registrations on the site

Starting initially with optimisation improvements, Eurostar wanted to address feedback that new visitors are unaware of Eurostar’s USPs. An A/B test that included USPs on the homepage resulted in a 6.2 per cent increase in new visitor conversion rates and a 3.7 per cent increase in overall conversion rates. Following this, Eurostar created targeted messaging for registered users to increase the number of registrations on site to help improve their customer insights. This resulted in a 96 per cent increase in registrations.

Eurostar then identified some further opportunities for personalisation, after recognising usability issues and low engagement with the homepage carousel, Eurostar decided to change the carousel to a grid in order to encourage interaction and showcase more content. This resulted in a 15 per cent increase in interaction and paved the way for personalisation in the future.

As a follow-up, Eurostar personalised destination content to match previous searches – for example visitors who had previously searched for travel to Paris, were automatically shown information about Paris upon their next visit. This resulted in a further 18 per cent increase in engagement, reduced bounce rates and provided a much more personalised experience for customers.

Perrine Allain, General Manager of eCommerce at Eurostar, said: “Our customers are no longer just expecting us to engage and satisfy them, they now want us to inspire them too. One-size-fits-all does not work anymore. Customers are expecting us to use the data we collect to enhance their experience in real time and that’s where personalisation comes into play.”

Moving forward, we’ll use the data insights that Monetate gives us, to find opportunity segments and explore ways of shaping content around our customers. Using these insights, we plan to employ ‘always-on’ personalisation to deliver contextually relevant, personalised experiences to our customers.

Mike Harris, VP EMEA at Monetate, said: “Eurostar is a shining example of how a company can very quickly deploy the Monetate platform and experience instant results. Eurostar’s forward-thinking approach has allowed the brand to stay ahead of the curve, when it comes to customer experience and interaction, and we’re pleased to see that by embracing personalisation it has helped to digitally transform the online experience for its customers.”