Choice Hotels Email Campaign
Choice Hotels Email Options
Background: 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 targeted an age group within their plan that had low participation rates.
Problem Statement: RPS teams needed to develop three email campaigns, all different in tone and messaging, but appealing to a younger group of eligible plan participants. Once the layouts and designs were in place our team developed A/B comparison tests in usertesting.com.
Target Audience: Messaging would need to 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 benefits found within the Choice Hotel 401(k) plan. We were also also trying to engage with current participating associates, to get them more active in their retirement plan.
Strategy: 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. Our UX team worked directly with the T. Rowe Price Relationship Manager who works directly with the Human Resources team at Choice Hotel. Before the tests began our internal partner developed a handful of questions that testers would answer in usertesting.com.
Engagement: FPO
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. Our team was surprised that one of the questions, “Which one of these emails would your peers prefer and why?”. This question 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 Hotel 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 personal 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 and 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.
