Tone of voice is key for a brand like Virgin Holidays, especially when it comes to grabbing the attention of email subscribers.
Previously, the company has relied on copywriters to encapsulate its quirky and adventurous attitude.
However, with email campaigns taking up extensive amounts of time and resources (with little pay-off) – the strategy was failing to work.
I recently heard from Saul Lopez, Customer Lifecycle Lead at Virgin Holidays, about the brand’s decision to bring AI into the mix, specifically to optimise subject lines using AI marketing technology from Phrasee.
Here’s more on the reasons why this approach has turned around the travel brand’s email strategy, plus a few general benefits of using AI.
Challenge no. 1: No testing culture
One of the main challenges previously faced by Virgin Holidays was internal team structures, with marketing required to go through an extensive approval process, particularly for content writing and email creative.
As a result, there was neither the time or opportunity for testing, resulting in a somewhat restricted and uncreative culture.
Upon Saul’s arrival at the company, he met with Phrasee to discuss the benefits of using its artificial intelligence platform to automate and optimise subject lines. The technology looks at emotions, sentiments, and phrases in order to predict what kind of copy the audience will best respond to.
So, was it easy to convince leaders to invest? Despite his own clear intent, Saul explains that he was met with some resistance from above:
“There was absolutely scepticism towards going down the AI route. There were a lot of talks internally, as well as back and forth between me and my marketing manager. After all, this is something completely new, right? AI that can write marketing language is something that three years ago we had no idea about – AI wasn’t even a buzzword yet.”
However, with the reassurance that the technology would streamline creation, with no extra training or skill-sets required, the company decided to take the risk.
“The set-up didn’t actually involve any kind of team or structural changes or ways of working – it was very straightforward,” says Saul. “What we did was give Phrasee our tone of voice, which then allowed the AI to create a language that was specifically for us and our campaigns.”
