Making Waves: How World Travel Holdings Cruises Ahead with ZAP~POST X dotdigital

When you're running three cruise brands, from mainstream cruises to ultra-luxury and river voyages, every customer touchpoint matters.

As CRM Manager, Leanne Allen helms the CRM strategy across this sea of specialist travel brands. But the challenge wasn’t whether to DO direct mail. They already were. The challenge was how to do it better. More timely and personalised. More cost-effective and automated.

"We’ve done print marketing for years,” she says, “but it can be quite costly - and we’ve wanted to automate it for over two years…!"

Especially during peak periods, the World Travel Holdings sales concierge team couldn’t always keep up with their nurture calls like "Welcome Home" or "Book On Board" - valuable moments that help retain customers and spark rebookings. So, the opportunity was there. The timing was right. The solution? A clever combo of dotdigital segmentation + ZAP~POST automation.

At first, the plan was simple: trigger automated postcards after travel. But once they got started, a bigger opportunity opened up.

“We didn’t anticipate being able to use it for both automated triggers and batch-and-blast sends.”

And the difference from their previous workflow? Night and day.

“The design workflow, data transfer, and speed were miles better than what we’d been doing previously.”

"We hit our commercial target directly from the ZAP~POST postcard bookings,” Leanne recalls.

That campaign also saved around £2,000 compared to their old method of sending larger, less targeted mailings. And the best bit? It didn’t just generate revenue - it generated real excitement from their recipients.

“Customers literally call in saying, ‘I got your Seabourn postcard - I want to go!’” One customer booked three trips off the back of it.

For Leanne, a big part of their Direct Mail success came down to our onboarding experience.

“I learn best by doing,” she says. “So having the ZAP~POST team be so hands-on made a big difference.”

With such a collaborative effort across ZAP~POST & dotdigital, World Travel Holdings see their campaigns go live and land on doormats within just a few days.

With the success of their first campaigns under their belt, Leanne’s now expanding the role of direct mail across the entire customer journey.

Next up? Birthday cards. Lapsed traveller. Browse abandon. All the usual email flows… But now, sent physically, through the post, with tailored content and dynamic data.

And as dotdigital’s new Signals release makes measurement even more seamless, ZAP~POST’s impact only gets easier to track.

“We can now do more with smaller sends, tailored content, and logic-based templates. We’re aiming for concierge-level personalisation.”

It’s the kind of print that doesn’t wait to be opened or clicked. It arrives, connects, and converts - without missing the boat.