How Airship helps Loungers keep millions of customers feeling like regulars

Hospitality is personal. For Loungers, that means making millions of customers feel understood across three distinct brands and more than 300 sites.

Loungers is the all-day group behind Lounge, Cosy Club and Brightside. Each brand has its own identity, audience and reasons for people to return, from a quick coffee to a big night out. Their customer communications need to reflect those differences while still feeling relevant to the individual receiving them.

As Digital and CRM Lead at Loungers, Kyran Wood uses Airship to bring those brand identities and customer insights together.

"I've been using Airship as a platform for about 18 months now across 3 separate brands, and love how easy it is to customise emails to make them unique and very aesthetically pleasing, whilst still championing the data behind the emails through intelligent layouts and ways to achieve high opens and click-through rates."

Within Airship, the Loungers team can create communications with a distinct look and feel for each brand, then use what they know about their guests to shape who receives them. Airship is powered by more than 80 integrations across 17 hospitality data touchpoints, bringing together information from systems including bookings, WiFi, order and pay and post-visit feedback. Proof of Presence connects that data with real-world visits, creating a clearer picture of who is visiting, where they go and how often they return.

Together, those touchpoints create a richer view of how people interact with each brand, both online and inside its venues. Kyran and the team can use that understanding to make each campaign more considered, from its design and content to its timing and audience.

"Since I started using it, I'm very impressed with the way the platform has evolved, including introducing features like Ask Airship, segments and journeys. This has allowed me to dive even deeper into how our customers interact with our brands and to send more bespoke, segmented emails relevant to them."

Ask Airship gives Kyran a simple, conversational way to explore that information. He can ask a question in plain English (which customers are beginning to lapse, who ordered a particular product last week or which campaign led to visits and spend) and receive a clear answer without having to build and work through multiple reports.

Those answers can then become Segments the team can use. A prompt can create an audience based on a combination of visits, purchases, frequency, value or engagement. Once saved, the Segment continues to update as new information comes in, giving Kyran an up-to-date view of that group and how it changes over time.

Segments can be used to target a campaign or begin an automated Journey shaped around a particular moment in someone's relationship with the brand. That could be a welcome after their first visit, recognition of a milestone or a timely message when they have not been in for a while. It gives the Loungers team a straightforward route from finding an insight to creating a useful communication around it.

"We have customer bases of 7 million, 2 million and 50,000 across 3 brands and 300+ sites, and Airship allows us to still feel like we're interacting on a personal level with each customer, whether they just pop in for a cup of coffee once a month or spend thousands with us as our top fans."

Someone calling in for a monthly coffee has a different relationship with the business from one of its most frequent guests. Understanding those differences helps Loungers communicate with both more thoughtfully, while ensuring every message still feels unmistakably Lounge, Cosy Club or Brightside.

Across three brands, more than 300 sites and customer bases running into the millions, Loungers is using Airship to make its marketing more informed, relevant and personal, helping each brand build stronger relationships and give people more reasons to return.

Want to see what Airship could do for your brands? Speak to our team.

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