Trends The Stash: Finding a sweet spot for the powerful, post-departure campaign.

The post-departure message has become a staple. A simple, automated way to efficiently engage with recently departed guests and capture feedback. But every time such a message is created, the same question quickly arises: How many days after they leave should this be sent? Well, that’s what we tried to find out.

The Goods
To find an answer to this common question we looked at 18 post-departure campaigns that ran for the last six months, sending messages to 60,000 guests. We grouped them by the number of days after a guest’s departure that each was sent (x-axis) and plotted the resulting open rates below.

After starting low for emails in our sample that were sent the day after departure (37.7%), open rates jumped quickly at 2 days (50.8%) before slowly dropping all the way to 5 days (44.1%).

What This Means
Despite a surprisingly clear trend, we’re not overly confident in these results. It’s a small sample and there’s much more to post-departure messages than simply getting a higher open rate.

But what we hope this illustrates is that the timing of these messages could play a big role in their effectiveness. So why not test a new day or time? Try it for a month and see how the numbers compare.

Next Week’s Stash
We’ve got another resort-specific insight coming up next week. Don’t want to miss a beat? Stick your email below to get an alert when it drops.