Luxury Cruises Start with CRM.

Reassuringly Cunard, refreshingly restyled from the start of your journey

Cunard is one of the most recognisable luxury brands in the world, with a rich history that reaches way back to 1840. Now, they’re writing their next chapter. Following the launch of the resplendent Queen Anne, our clients embarked on the latest evolution of their brand to ensure Cunard’s unique appeal is as desirable as ever. That meant an opportunity to elevate their CRM, too.

Immersive Interactivity. Drive engagement with interactivity that feels additive to the experience, turning long-scrolls from a potential challenge into a huge strength.

A Visual Language Worth of Luxury. Making email feel as luxurious as the rest of Cunard — breaking away from templated look and feel to deliver a bespoke solution that felt truly immersive.

Resonant Personalisation. Making guests feel seen, heard and valued through moments of relevancy — capturing zero-party data beautifully to inform and personalise every send.

From enquirer to guest, reimagined

When two momentous occasions collided, the spark of opportunity was presented.

First, the arrival of Cunard’s newest ship, Queen Anne, created a huge amount of excitement, with an influx of potential new guests entering their digital landscape, all curious to learn about the ultimate cruise.

Second, Cunard’s brand was evolving to ensure their iconic identity would continue to impress today’s audience. A beautifully immersive above-the-line campaign was launching along with a rich new visual language to infuse their channels with the same elegance as their ships.

Their CRM channels — particularly email — needed a refresh. Our task was to review their enquirer journey, then identify a strategy to make sure it was working as hard as possible to welcome new guests to the brand, convert new enquirers into bookers, and create a journey that felt worthy of Cunard’s long heritage in the world of luxury.

Analysis of Cunard’s previous enquirer journey, in engagement and creative, led us to identify three opportunities:

• There was a disconnect between what a customer saw when they enquired versus what they received in their inbox. Our creative could make CRM feel as luxurious as the rest of the brand
• The emails themselves weren’t connecting with potential guests to drive engagement with the content. We could introduce innovative and immersive interactivity to encourage action
• There was a perceived irrelevancy, turning potential guests off from making what is often a major financial decision. We could provide relevant, resonant personalisation to make guests feel valued

This helped us land our strategic proposition: Reassuringly Cunard, refreshingly restyled from the start of your journey.

Five emails. One unforgettable journey.

Our first task creatively was to translate Cunard’s beautiful new brand into a performance channel. We took the chance to break away from that templated look and feel to deliver a bespoke solution that felt truly immersive.

Cunard is no ordinary brand, and so the regular rules didn’t apply. While we may often strive to be concise and impactful, this is a brand that demanded something different — and so our approach was to embrace big, full-bleed images, and turn long-scrolls from a potential challenge into a huge strength — elevated through seamless interactivity that gave every element of the Cunard brand room to breathe.

We stretched the functionality of established email elements to turn them into something truly engaging, introducing exploratory interactivity within carousels to allow guests to see a breadth of content within a short space, all at their own pace. The five-email journey was built to guide every potential guest from curiosity to commitment:

• Email 1 — Welcoming enquirers into the brand. Setting the tone with rich visual language and immersive storytelling that feels as luxurious as the Cunard experience itself
• Email 2 — Enable potential guests to dive deeper. Exploratory interactivity inviting guests to tap through and discover everything they could experience on board, at their own pace
• Email 3 — Capturing customer data in a beautiful way. Zero-party data capture presented as a personalised experience, learning where, what and when guests wanted to travel to inform later sends — while giving them immediate recommendations personalised to their choices
• Email 4 — Homing in on their perfect holiday. That zero-party data automatically personalises this journey too. The destination selected in email three transforms the content in email four, tailoring the imagery and copy to inspire guests towards their dream voyage
• Email 5 — One final push. A direct, concise send underpinning the above-the-line campaign to drive guests to book, sweetened with an incentive for on-board spend

When luxury meets personalisation, guests take notice

By plugging the gap between brand and direct communications, we delivered a CRM experience that felt genuinely worthy of the Cunard name. The rich new visual language translated seamlessly into the inbox. Immersive interactivity gave guests new ways to explore and engage. And resonant personalisation made every potential guest feel seen, heard, and valued from the very first send.

The five-email enquirer journey set out to welcome new guests to the brand, convert enquirers into bookers, and create an experience that reflected Cunard’s long heritage in the world of luxury. Every image, every interaction, and every personalised moment came together to do exactly that — proving that when CRM is crafted with the same care as the brand it represents, guests don’t just enquire. They book.