Georgia Aquarium

Delivering an email strategy for relationships & revenue

We're taking guests on a journey before their Georgia Aquarium visit even starts

NON-PROFIT
ARTS & CULTURE
EMAIL
MARKETING
UX/UI DESIGN
DEVELOPMENT
Commerce
Digital STrategy
Content
Custom Platform
With more than 2.2 million visitors each year, Georgia Aquarium is the most visited aquarium in North America. Every guest experience—from the website to the exhilarating on-site exhibits—is meant to captivate, educate, and inspire a sense of wonder. We saw an opportunity to provide brand experience continuity from ticket purchase to the guests' visit while exploring an under-tested channel for revenue.
How We Helped

Guest experience enhancements

Traditionally, back-office ticketing platforms experience slow and inconsistent ticket delivery, so we built a bespoke solution for Georgia Aquarium. We designed and implemented a digital ecosystem that ensures fast and accurate ticket delivery—making visiting the Aquarium fun and easy.

Revenue growth

We identified a way to leverage the Aquarium’s ticketing and inventory system to drive new revenue. By using our purchase history knowledge, we made our existing and new communications work harder for our client and their guests through personalized product recommendations.

User experience strategy

Guests expect a best-in-class experience from big brands, both on- and offline. With the goal of meeting and exceeding these expectations for Georgia Aquarium, we created an end-to-end experience that builds excitement and anticipation, provides clear calls to action, delivers relevant content, and expresses gratitude.

Channel growth and scalability

We committed to increasing conversions, enabling dynamic promotions, personalized messaging, and ensuring timely, reliable ticket delivery for a more robust guest experience. We achieved this with an improved digital ecosystem designed to connect Georgia Aquarium’s core backend ticketing system, the CMS website, and Iterable’s marketing automation platform.

Customer journey strategy

As a non-profit organization, the ideal customer journey converts Georgia Aquarium guests into fans, supporters, and advocates. We designed each email in this journey to nurture the guest relationship every step of the way through personalization, innovation, inspiration, and a commitment to the guest experience.

On-brand marketing & design

One goal was to develop communications that would represent the visual identity and brand voice of Georgia Aquarium. The narrative, design, and messaging in all communications were crafted to evoke a sense of wonder and excitement that matches the feeling of visiting the Aquarium. Every communication was executed to be consistent, engaging, and meticulously on-brand.

How We Evolved the Experience

Innovations & Optimizations

  • Redesigned all email templates to support dynamic, personalized content and illustrate an elevated, on-brand experience
  • Provided a variety of ticket delivery options for guest convenience—web, mobile app, email, SMS, and mobile wallet
  • Leveraged purchase and guest data to inform personalized upsell and cross sell opportunities
  • Applied journey-based logic to the Iterable workflows to drive conversions
  • Implemented a CMS integration to make customizing order-specific email content quick and easy
  • Tracked user engagement to inform and optimize the guest experience

995%

increase in total transactions

10%

reduction in overall bounce rate

238%

increase in revenue

162%

increase in overall page views

We understand that the guest experience begins before they walk through the doors and that guest relationships are more than transactions.

Don't Just Take Our Word for It

As our ticketing and guest experience evolve online and off, Narwhal is constantly optimizing and innovating, setting us up well for long-term digital channel growth.

BRIAN DAVIS, PRESIDENT, Georgia Aquarium

How It's Built

Integrating and customizing the right platforms to deliver experience, commerce, and conversion

To give Georgia Aquarium guests custom-tailored emails before, during and after their visits, Narwhal integrated WordPress CMS, Tessitura, and Iterable to create a dynamic martech and e-commerce ecosystem. This integration allowed us to customize the Aquarium’s email communications so we could provide guests with specific information based on purchased items, targeted promotions, and personalized customer journeys. By leveraging order data, time and day of visit, membership or donor status, and historical purchases, we drove upsell opportunities and defined nurture paths. 

Our technology solution allows guests to get the most out of their visit with a customized experience that excites, guides, informs, and converts.

  • Tailored Ticketing Platform

    Tessitura

  • Marketing Integration

    Iterable

  • Content Management

    Wordpress

  • Reporting

    Google Analytics