Back on track: EMR in times of travel disruption

Key takeaways

• Working with a marketing automation provider who can act and respond quickly
• Using the Single Customer View to identify and select affected customers who need to be contacted
• Ensuring customers receive the most up-to-date information, giving them time to plan their journeys

No delays on the line with a clear and defined action plan

In the past couple of years East Midlands Railway (EMR) had to overcome journey disruption and more recently industrial action and keep their customers updated on the latest situation, often at very short notice.

To do this they needed our help to produce a plan of action for urgent service messaging. EMR utilised their dedicated customer success team at Spotler to assist.

With their in-depth knowledge of EMR’s customer data held within the platform’s single customer view the ability to contact affected bookers at late notice was achievable.

Full steam ahead with urgent service messaging crafted from customer data selections

Each time disruption or industrial strike action would affect customers, EMR would send over a list of RSIDs (Unique Identifiers for Specific Rail Journeys).

Always on standby, EMR’s team at Spotler would then spring into action and search through EMR’s customer records to identify the affected bookers.

From these matches, selections would be gathered to include customer contact details and the individual legs of the journey’s affected.

These selections were generated into advanced segments in to use for customer communications. Additionally, quick reference and timely data exports were provided for the EMR team to check and approve.

At short notice, service message email creatives were created by the Spotler team from the assets provided by EMR and then deployed to all affected customers to give them the most up-to-date information on their journeys ensuring the high level of customer service EMR delivers.

“EMR have been a client of Spotler for over 6 years and our relationship has always been so much more than a software provider. Their campaign management and workflow journey builders are great, but they really excel when it comes to responding in times of urgency.”

“They understands that offering the best customer experience is everything to us, so in turn they pull out all the stops when we urgently need to contact our customers.  

Spotler’s knowledge of our customer data is unmatched, and I implicitly trust them to deliver every time we need customer selections creating for travel disruption email communications.”
Kate Smith, Lead Marketing Manager, EMR