Southern Railways: driving channel shift

 

The challenge 

 

Southern Railways partnered with Web Liquid in early 2009 to accelerate the pace and contribution of their online marketing activities. In a competitive market dominated by the TheTrainline, Southern required a robust and flexible plan to increase direct online revenue and preference for its key routes including London:Gatwick and London:Brighton.

 

The tailored solution 

 

Following an initial strategic assessment leveraging our BICS Planning Model, we defined a four month road-map aimed at establishing a long-term foundation for the use of digital marketing. The road-map aimed to achieve two goals:  

 

1. Implement a process and infrastructure for the exploitation of display advertising, email marketing and search marketing

 

2. Generate £1M in revenue from digital marketing activities

 

The four month project, managed by a team of three specialists focused on the following key deliverables:

 

- Set-up a measurement approach that tied third party ad-serving and site analytics

- Evaluation of SIBEL database structure, data management and integration with campaign data

- Evaluation and rollout of eMail deployment platform

- Development of contact strategy for eMail marketing

- Design and production of eMail marketing templates and assets

- Review, appointment and management of search agency

- Management of overall digital marketing budget

- Deployment of integrated paid search, email marketing and display campaigns

 

The results

 

In four months our display advertising, search marketing and email marketing activities delivered:

 

- £1,010,673 in online revenue

- 60,118 tickets sold online

- 30,775 newsletter registrations

- Average cost of sale was 45% lower than targeted  

 

 

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Southern Railways: Driving channel shift