Searadar: How to Get 17.5% Bookings from Email and WhatsApp

Searadar is an online marketplace for charter yachts and catamarans, founded in 2017. It offers personalized yacht selection along with booking management, insurance assistance, and crew arrangements.

Implementation Modules: Email, WhatsApp
Platform: Maestra

Goals:

Migrate existing communications to the new Maestra platform (including transferring fields from AmoCRM, enriching the YML feed, setting up recommendations and ensuring customer activity tracking)
Configure trigger-based communications using the new tool

The primary CRM marketing metric was converting leads – customers, who submitted a booking request, into actual purchases. Most communications directed customers to a quiz page, a short survey about their plan for trip that generates a personalized yacht selection. Such quizzes help qualify leads faster and enhance sales team efficiency.

What Was Done

The CRM marketing on the project delivers an average of 26.5% of leads resulting in boat booking requests and 17.5% final sales.

We actively worked with both mass and trigger campaigns across email and WhatsApp channels.

During the collaboration, we:

Set up key trigger mechanics (including abandoned session reminders, multiple reactivation variants, and communication chains for repeat customers)
Conducted A/B tests and applied their findings to optimize ongoing campaigns
Developed a strategy for managing mass campaigns across email and WhatsApp
Synchronized data collection from different channels, enabling successful results from one channel to boost performance in others

Email Campaigns

The email channel has shown strong performance in attracting quality leads – clients who submitted booking requests – accounting for an average of 40% of all leads generated through CRM marketing. Of these, 18% convert into valid booking requests, and 8% result in sales.

Together with the Searadar team, we developed and implemented a master email template that streamlined the email creation process.

OR: 24%, CTOR: 5,02%

Mass Email Campaigns

Most quality leads come from mass email campaigns. We sent two mass emails per week (on Tuesdays and Thursdays). The choice of days depends on how many managers are available because follow-up communication with clients happens personally.

We tested resending emails to clients who didn’t open the previous one and closely monitored unsubscribe rates, fearing that repeat sends might drive people away.

Based on tests, we settled on resending important mass emails after 24 hours, but only to actively engaged recipients (those who opened an email within the last 90 days).

Unsubscribe rates remained stable, but these follow-up emails generated additional leads. Sometimes up to a third of its total amount.

Workflow highlights:

Collaborated with the Searadar sales team to prepare concepts and emails, since expertise was needed to shape the offers. For complex topics (e.g., routes or detailed articles), we created landing pages to explore the content in depth and enable future reuse.
Designed and coded emails using a template builder, enabling quick edits and fast mailing releases.
Tested emails across different mail clients, checked links, UTMs, and mobile responsiveness (both emails and landing pages).
Segmented recipients and set up A/B tests for campaigns.
Collected and summarized campaign metrics, partially manually.

A/B Test Examples:

1. Using an image under the CTA banner increased click-through rates on key email elements. For example, the click-to-open rate (CTOR) for the email with the image was 5.28%, versus 4.23% for the version with a colored block.

Results: OR (common for both letters): 39.5%, CTOR (email with color block): 4.23%, CTOR (email with picture): 5,28%

2. Tested different landing page types: quizzes (short customer preference surveys) and yacht selections by route. Quizzes had higher conversions, showing promise for further development.

3. For repeat customers, links to yacht collections by country performed better than by specific regions (CTOR was 4.3 percentage points higher).

4. Including contact information (email and WhatsApp) in the email body boosted CTOR by 1.5 percentage points.

5. There’s a trend toward higher lead conversion when emails specify location and season details for routes.

Unsubscribe Page

We set up a dedicated unsubscribe page where customers landed from the email, offering them the option to select which email topics they wanted to stay subscribed to. This helped us to reduce the unsubscription level.

For mass email campaigns, we created several categories:

Travel inspiration (featured destinations and ready-made routes)
Hot offers (curated yacht deals)
Service updates (new services, general reminders, and articles about yachts and catamarans)

Trigger Email Campaigns

Trigger-based email campaigns included:

Abandoned session (viewed items, categories, filter usage, and abandoned quizzes)
Price drop alerts on viewed yachts
Early reactivation (sent 35 days after custom yacht collections were created)
Engagement with repeat customers

The highest lead generation came from the repeat customer email communication chain, described below. The trigger sequence combining “abandoned view” and “abandoned quiz” emails ranked second in conversion rates.

Abandoned View

OR: 50,34%, CTOR: 34,37%

We are proud of the CRM metrics on trigger emails: average open rates (OR) of 44-46% and click-to-open rates (CTOR) of 10-13%. Emails about abandoned categories that included the customer’s region in the subject line achieved record open rates of 74.6% and click rates of 53%. However, the amount of these sends was limited, so trigger emails accounted for only 10% of all leads from this channel. We expect to see growth as we extend the email sequences.

Abandoned Category

A record open rate (OR) of 74.6% and a click-to-open rate (CTOR) of 33% for emails about abandoned categories.

Trigger emails heavily relied on recommendation technologies. Searadar is a unique case due to it acts as an intermediary between charter companies and customers rather than selling its own services, which complicated recommendation setup.

Each yacht is listed as multiple units with different booking availability dates. Recommendations had to account for availability on the customer’s desired dates. Yacht data is collected from charter companies and requires additional standardization. There were challenges especially for yachts in less popular marinas, where it’s sometimes hard to determine the yacht’s country.

We managed to set up:

Recommendations for popular yachts and specific regions
Similar products related to items in the list
Recommendations based on recently viewed products
Recommendations similar to a specific product

These recommendation types were extensively used in trigger emails.

WhatsApp Campaigns

Searadar actively uses WhatsApp campaigns, which generate about 60% of leads, with roughly 25% coming from trigger-based communications. Lead qualification conversion is around 17%, and sales conversion is 3%.

Project restrictions for WhatsApp sends include:

Mass campaigns sent no more than once every 60 days
Trigger campaigns sent no more than once every 21 days
Sends occur only on weekdays during business hours to ensure clients can immediately engage with their personal manager
Mass sends target lists of 300-400 clients from Tuesday to Thursday, based on available managers for client responses; this list size was optimized through experience

To reduce sales team workload, auto-reply buttons were implemented, alongside an easy-to-use Unsubscribe button within the chat. This convenient opt-out method lowers complaint risks and protects against account blocks.

Performance metrics: Open Rate (OR): 49.64%, Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): 14.49%

The Maestra platform now includes a comprehensive WhatsApp module, reducing campaign setup time by 2-3 times and enabling faster, more effective A/B testing.

Mass WhatsApp Campaigns

These are sent only to clients without prior purchases. We segmented audiences narrowly and personalized messages, focusing mainly on the client’s last order-extracting boat type (yacht or catamaran), charter country/region, and dates.

Metrics: OR: 66.5%, CTOR: 26.36%, Lead Conversion: 8.02%

Client Interest Segmentation

We sent messages tailored by interested countries or travel ideas for the current season, mentioning the boat type of interest. We also tested campaigns segmented by countries of interest using calculated fields in Maestra, such as where clients searched most often. These campaigns outperformed those based solely on the last request by about 1 percentage point.

Price Segmentation

For promoting premium offers, we targeted clients based on estimated request value: price range considered, boat size, and preference for new vessels.

Personalization of the Sender in WhatsApp Campaigns

In WhatsApp campaigns, we actively used personalized messages from a specific manager. Testing showed that messages sent on behalf of a manager generated 5 percentage points more booking requests.

Example message 1:
Hi! This is Anastasia from SEARADAR.
A skipper can’t stay away from the sea for too long – have you planned your 2025 sea voyage yet? Let us remind you that we’ll help you find the perfect yacht, pick the best route and take care of all the details.

Conversion to booking (from opens): 7.06%

Example message 2:
Hello! This is SEARADAR, your yacht booking platform.
A skipper can’t stay away from the sea for too long – have you planned your 2025 sea voyage yet? Let us remind you that we’ll help you find the perfect yacht, pick the best route and take care of all the details.

Conversion to booking (from opens): 2.05%

Promotions and Discounts in WhatsApp Campaigns

The most effective block of discount campaigns mentioned sales on the platform and invited customers to explore ready-made sailing routes on the website for inspiration. Another effective example included a detailed description of price and offer benefits:

Hi! This is Anastasia from SEARADAR.
We’ve got some great catamaran deals right now! For example, in Greece this August, a 40-foot catamaran is available for just 4880 EUR – that’s about 610 EUR per person. Would you like to check out more options like this?

Geolocation-Based Segmentation

We experimented with sending messages in the recipients’ native languages, using the country code in their phone number. These campaigns were time-consuming but showed high effectiveness (40% conversion to qualified leads vs. the average 17%). The highest effectiveness was seen for clients in Italy and Romania.

By actively working with micro-segmentation and A/B testing, we increased lead conversion by nearly 2 percentage points over four months.

WhatsApp Trigger Campaigns

We use WhatsApp trigger campaigns for:

Abandoned sessions (views, categories, search filter use)
Late reactivation (1-2 years after initial inquiry)
Reactivation based on reasons for closing previous requests
Vacation date reminders
Customer follow-up

Reactivation Communication Scheme

The most successful conversions came from reactivating old orders (2023, one year ago, 2022 ranked by effectiveness). The lowest conversion rates were for clients who switched to competitors.

Repeat Client Engagement

These clients are sensitive for the business, so we closely coordinated with the sales team specializing in repeat orders. Clients were segmented by feedback (positive, negative, or no feedback) and each segment received a tailored communication sequence including emails and WhatsApp messages (two sends per segment, with additional WhatsApp nudges for clients with email who didn’t open messages).

OR: 40,82%, CTOR: 8,33%

OR: 71,35%, CTOR: 20,44%

Analytics

A custom client-to-campaign attribution system was used, requiring manual data integration from multiple sources despite partial automation. Key focus areas were:

Overall CRM marketing metrics
Number of leads generated from campaigns
Percentage of qualified leads (genuinely interested clients)
Final sales linked to campaigns

Results

During our collaboration with Searadar:

Lead conversion increased by 2 percentage points over 4 months from mass WhatsApp campaigns thanks to micro-segmentation and continuous A/B testing
Built a dynamic micro-segmentation system for WhatsApp mass campaigns accounting for order history, preferred boat type and travel region, skipper license possession, price range, and language – raising conversion to 40% in certain segments
Took back up to 30% of lost leads with follow-up emails
Improved email open rates to 74.6% in abandoned session campaigns

Future Steps

We see sustainable growth potential in Searadar’s CRM marketing by:

Expanding real-time segmentation and behavioral triggers
Deepening integration of email and WhatsApp with sales and CRM data for refined client journey segmentation and overcoming objections
Scaling multilingual campaigns which already boost conversion significantly
Using AI tools for narrow segments, currently applied only to “cold”l audiences
Completing automation of analytics and lead tracking to speed decision-making and scale successful tactics

«Working with DataGrow agency has highlighted two main points worth noting. First is the collaborative approach. Only a deep engagement from the agency side, given the complexity of our topic, can deliver meaningful business results. Second is their attention to details – especially regarding even the smallest data changes and micro-segmentation work, which we found extremely valuable».