Camping World builds deeper RV customer relationships, increasing sales by 35%

Challenge

When it came to communicating with their customers, Camping World found it challenging to have an understanding of who their customers are and where they're at in the buying cycle so they could provide messaging or promotional marketing that would be relevant to them.

Solution

Camping World turned to Twilio Segment so they could better understand their customers and to be able to communicate with them personally about where they're at and what they're interested in. Within Camping World, they also use Twilio Voice to power all of their phone systems and communications within their dealerships.

“We want to make Camping World the one-stop-shop for everything RV,” said Brad Greene, senior marketing director at Camping World. With this mission in mind, Greene and his team are responsible for driving new leads and retaining existing high-value customers. But it’s not always easy. Their team feels the constant threat of losing customers interest, attention, and wallet-share.

The main culprit triggering this anxiety?  E-commerce giants. 

To provide an online experience on par with the likes of Amazon, Greene’s team needed to ensure that Camping World, best known for selling high ticket RVs, delivered outdoor enthusiasts an easy shopping experience. To win in this competitive market, Greene and the greater marketing team had to ensure Camping World stayed top of mind between customers' purchases. And, provide an ideal customer journey across the vast range of products and services that Camping World has to offer. 

“Camping World has been making RV camping fun and easy for millions of customers since 1966,” said Greene, highlighting the outdoor experience leader’s wide selection of new and used RVs, premier maintenance hubs, quality accessories and full-service contact-centers. This made Camping World unique among outdoors e-commerce brands, and Greene decided to seize on that opportunity. 

So what was the secret to providing a customer experience on par with industry titans? Customer data. 

Greene identified data as the key to help them finally  take ownership of customer relationships; by gaining a better understanding of Camping World’s customer base across its many online and offline products and services. He and his team could enhance the Camping World customer shopping experience with precise personalization across paid and owned channels, with the help of Twilio Segment.

Solving for data inconsistencies across multiple business lines and web properties

Many Camping World customers are full-time RVers or extended travelers, committed to the outdoor lifestyle. And, to enjoyably live the RV life, consumers need specific RV gear, supplies, insurance, service centers, upgrades, and more. As a business selling these products and services, Camping World needs to provide timely touchpoints to ensure audiences receive precise information and offers, relative to their purchasing needs. This inevitably would give Camping World an advantage over traditional e-commerce competitors.  

With multiple product and service lines including Good Sam, the nation's largest RV community providing insurance, roadside assistance, and more, Camping World provides value to their customers across their lifecycle. Especially in difficult economic times, brands need to have a deep understanding of their customers, become agile with their data, and provide consistent touch points to stay top of mind, increase revenue, and retain customers. 

However, Camping World struggled to provide these timely, consistent touchpoints because their customer data was siloed across many website properties, representing various business products and services. Prior to Segment, teams across Camping World inconsistently collected data from each web property, struggled to identify customers engaging with various products and services and lacked a complete view of each individual customer for marketing activation. 

“The way we were tracking data was inconsistent,” said Greene. “Even down to the same website, the data we collected and sent was slightly different between various tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. No one really trusted the data they were looking at.”   

Furthermore, Camping World struggled to understand customer engagement and specific user journeys across their various web properties, which made it difficult to understand conversions, target customers, and effectively budget marketing spend.

With Twilio Segment Connections, Camping World collects data from multiple website properties and offline channels to build a unified picture of each customer. Identity Resolution, which sits at the core of Twilio Segment Unify, allows Camping World to merge customer data into individual profiles, using interactions across channels to better understand customer insights and engage customers in real time. Having access to this real-time data and individual profiles allows Camping World to engage with specific customers at critical points in their RV purchase process, stay relevant, and increase conversions. 

Differentiating in a competitive ‘outdoors lifestyle’ e-commerce landscape by building convenient and memorable experiences  

Prior to Segment, Camping World lacked a complete view of their customer journey, previously only getting a glimpse of the user journey from lead submission and the following touchpoints. Without historical customer website interaction data available, Camping World understood just a small part of the larger customer experience. They were making various assumptions about the journey, leading to missed opportunities to personalize and sell the most relevant products. 

Now, using Segment, Camping World can understand customer behavior prior to a form submission. “With Twilio Segment, we have a full view of the customer, from the first time they hit our site to post-purchase and on,” explained Greene. For example, Camping World can understand which RV model a customer views on their e-commerce site, specific services from the Good Sam business line, and interactions within a physical brick and mortar location to get a complete view of the individual customer journey. 

With this information, Camping World can use Twilio Engage to execute cart-abandonment sequences or paid media campaigns, making the customer experience more memorable. They are not just guessing content that would be most relevant, they actually know what is most relevant based on real-time data collected with Segment. 

Attract, convert and retain customers with “still interested” campaigns and more

Increasing the ability to understand each individual customer is only just the beginning. Now that Camping World is consistently collecting, tracking, and combining data into profiles, they are activating this data in various personalized marketing campaigns. 

Twilio Engage allows Camping World to track events like "RV model viewed" and "RV added to favorites list" to create profiles, then utilize this information to craft specific omni-channel messages—mainly via email, SMS, and paid media—and build custom customer journeys. Here’s an example of personalized SMS campaign Camping World built with Twilio Engage. 

Using the data from specific customer behavior and interactions, Camping World built a  personalized ‘cart abandonment’ sequence to re-engage users. First, they send a highly relevant ‘Still interested?’ message to the user, reminding the consumer of RV products they had previously viewed. Camping world marketing asset. You can see an example below.

From there, the customer is offered a discount code specific to the product they had viewed, making the communication touchpoint that much more meaningful. Last, a ‘recommendation’ email is sent showcasing additional products and services the customer had previously engaged with. As a result of this sequence built in Twilio Engage, Camping World has seen a 12% increase in conversion rates from this campaign. 

In addition, Segment had a big impact on Camping World's paid media campaigns. As their teams collected and tracked data with Segment and sent it downstream, Camping World’s paid media channels saw significant improvements, especially in the used RV market category—laddering backup to Camping World’s north star metric for 2023. Data-driven paid media efforts saw a substantial 35% increase in conversions, defined as a lead submission. Additionally, they saw a 16% decrease in cost-per-lead due to cleaner and properly implemented data collection allowing Camping World’s ad algorithms to perform better. 

Revving up the customer communications engine

According to Greene, Twilio Voice also plays a pivotal role when it comes to communicating with Camping World’s customers. 

“We use Twilio Voice for setting up appointments with customers and it’s also how customers contact us,” said Greene. “Ultimately, it plays a pivotal role in our contact center and call center whenever a customer has an issue.” 

For example, when a customer potentially has their RV break down on the road or they need help with the new RV that they just purchased, Camping World uses Twilio Voice to route all of that into their call centers to the appropriate agent.

“We also use Twilio Voice to power all of our phone systems and communications within our dealerships,” said Greene.

Launching digital RV products to improve customer value and optimize new user acquisition

As Camping World continues to further serve their customer base in the used RV market, they launched a tool through the Good Sam service line to stay top of mind and provide even more value to prospects. With this tool, consumers can receive a personalized quote based on the make and model of their RV to understand what price their used RV could be sold and purchased for. With Segment, Camping World collects numerous data points from this tool and utilizes the information to follow up with customers in downstream channels, both paid and owned. 

With used RV buyers in mind, Camping World can recycle traffic using data from this tool to target similar users and positively impact user acquisition for this target market. 

Taking the customer experience one step further, Camping World has discussed arming its contact center team with Segment data to ensure that any call center representative has a complete view of the customer calling in for help and can proactively provide helpful information.  

With Twilio, Camping World can now: 

• Collect data from 15 multiple business lines, like GoodSam and RVs.com, to form one single, 360-degree view of each customer by using Twilio Segment Unify
• Communicate with customers, based on online behavioral data, through precisely personalized "cart-abandonment," "still interested" and "promo offer" marketing campaigns by using Twilio Engage
• Optimize and maximize conversion rate on digital properties, including paid media and direct RV sales on the Camping World website 
• Retain their highest value customers by keeping users engaged between purchases with personalized experiences like "appointment scheduler" discount offers and the RV Valuator tool 
• Unlock additional revenue streams between RV purchase cycles by selling RV specific accessories and professional services from various Camping World product and service lines