Choice Hotels Email Campaign
Project Overview
Choice Hotels was a longtime client within T. Rowe Price Retirement Plan Services (RPS) and they wanted to develop a new, highly-digital campaign that would be appeal to Choice employees between the ages of 20-30. This age group tends to have low numbers of plan participation, with younger employees missing out on the great benefits found within the Choice Hotel 401(k) plan. RPS creative and editorial teams developed three email campaigns, all different in tone and messaging. Once the layouts and designs were in place our team developed A/B comparison tests for usertesting.com.
Through usertesting.com the RPS UX team tested a total of 24 users, in 3 A/B comparison tests, that returned a variety of mixed results. Heading into the tests our team felt that there would be clear-cut favorites, with similar arguments and trends taking shape through the recorded sessions, but that was not the case. There were numerous accounts for why some preferred one over the other which made it difficult for our team to find trends. Fortunately, users were to ultimately decide which version appealed to them more so that tended to be the deciding factor in this case, along with a handful of accounts for why they chose this direction.
Our UX team was working directly with the T. Rowe Price Relationship Manager who works directly with the Human Resources team at Choice Hotel. Before our tests our internal partner developed a handful of questions that testers would answer in usertesting.com. After reviewing the online sessions, our team was surprised that one of the questions, “Which one of these emails would your peers prefer and why?” tended to be answered based on the preferences of the tester. Overall, we felt that this question didn’t pull responses worthy of documentation, but a handful of testers left poignant notes that Choice Group would benefit from.
Overall, our team discovered that participants preferred the tone of “The Weekend” and “Our Business is You”, almost 2 to 1 over the “Book It” campaign. Participants noted that “Book It” made it difficult for users to tie similarities behind preparing for a trip and building your retirement portfolio. They also didn’t feel that the message was on par with a younger demographic, where older parties in their 30’s and up may be more inclined to taking trips/getaway vacations. Users also felt that “The Weekend’s” tone and imagery may be more engaging with a younger audience who can easily relate to planning for an upcoming weekend of events. In regards to “Our Business Is You” users felt that the message was direct in inspiring action and easy for participants to understand.
