Productivity improvement with Iterable's Smart Ingest
Hipcamp
Hipcamp’s mission is simple: “Get more people outside.” The adventure-camping company is a comprehensive resource for discovering and booking unique outdoor stays.
Hipcamp’s marketplace model matches landowning hosts with “Hipcampers” seeking unique campsites and nontraditional lodgings, such as glamping tents, yurts, treehouses and RVs.
Thus, Hipcamp has two missions: encouraging hosts to complete the listing process so they can receive bookings faster, and encouraging campers to post reviews, which give hosts valuable feedback for improving their listings and services and helps other campers run more successful searches.
Testing and experimentation in Iterable have been a key part of the marketing team’s operations, to learn quickly, optimize, and move on to the next project.
Challenges
The team used to rely on manual testing management and record keeping, an inefficient process that limited its ability to experiment and optimize messaging and to serve its host and camper audiences.
“With such a small team handling a bunch of different focus areas like marketing, supply acquisition, business analytics, and process improvement, we needed to invest in tools to reduce the manual journeys. Fast experimentation allows us to break down large goals into smaller bits of progress.”
Solutions
Hipcamp’s operations team had two primary goals:
- To engage with and support landowners (hosts) as they begin their hosting journey and to increase the number of completed listings
- To increase camper engagement through the review journey to increase the number of most reviews
The team replaced its manual testing process with Iterable’s A/B testing and user filtering and Amplitude’s funnel conversion and performance evaluation.
Host Audience journey
The Hipcamp team built an automated Iterable journey that uses a series of emails, texts, and other communication to supplement live support in the quest to help more hosts create and post listings.
“It was super easy to export user lists and see what was happening at the granular level,” Tran says. The team could track host behavior in each testing segment, discover which email messages they were receiving and then update message content quickly.
The Iterable events stream automatically to Amplitude for conversion tracking, such as comparing how different host groups move through the reporting funnel.
Camper Review journey
The team created a camper review journey in Iterable that staggers communications and uses personalization to connect with campers.
“We filter campers based on specific fields, such as listing location and date of stay,” says Business Operations Analyst Lukas Ronkin. “Whether a camper is staying at a California campsite or a Massachusetts cabin, they’ll get specialized and personalized language catered for them.”
Camper events also stream from Iterable to Amplitude. The team tracks and evaluates how each message type performs, using metrics such as review completion rate and sentiment score.
Results
The Hipcamp operations team has been able to run 4.5X the number of successful, operations-driven experiments, which produces more insights Hipcamp can use to benefit both hosts and campers.
This created a multiplier effect – more hosts are completing the listing process and receiving bookings faster. As more campers complete the review process, hosts receive more feedback they can improve their listings and their campsites and get more bookings. Campers, in turn, have more host reviews to consult in their searches. This helps them find the right sites.
Hipcamp has achieved more experimentation and greater efficiency, Ronkin says. The team can create and run more tests and get results faster. Faster time to insights means the team can put what it learns to work faster and create more successful experiences for hosts and campers alike.
Results
4.5X more operations-driven experiments
Reduced dependence on engineering with Iterable’s flexible data structure.
"Iterable has made it extremely easy for us to execute and optimize sophisticated engagement campaigns with minimal engineering support." Read more