Marketing Objectives:
Clearly state your marketing goals.
What did your company strive to achieve using this piece or program?
With our new Members’ Rate campaign, we focused our efforts on three main goals. Firstly, we wanted to attract new members and add value to our loyalty program. Secondly, we wanted to give our sales a boost by marketing an offer that would provide value to our guests. And finally, we wanted to achieve the first two objectives in a way that would provide a good return on investment. With those overarching goals in mind, we set the following measurable objectives:
• 5% increase in New Member Enrollments
• 10% Year-over-Year Increase in Revenue
• $20 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Target Audience:
Who was/is the target audience?
Characterize the composition, size, and location of your target audience.
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts cultivates an affluent audience, attracted to extraordinary travel experiences that go above and beyond the everyday. Our loyalty program, Fairmont President’s Club, represents a contingent of our most devoted guests, fans and followers. With this campaign, we focused our efforts on reaching the following audience:
• Existing Fairmont loyalty members
• Past guests who had yet to become a member of the loyalty program
• Ads were targeting as follows:
o Visitors to Fairmont.com and the loyalty page on the website
o Prospected potential guests searching for travel in our destinations
o Facebook users interested in travel, in addition to guests who follow our social channels
Research, Planning, and Implementation:
What market research was conducted prior to planning the piece/campaign? Describe how you planned and produced the creative asseets with the mobile canvas in mind.
Our new Members’ Rate is a special discount—up to 10% off—that’s combinable with our other offers in market, exclusively available to our loyalty members when they booked with us directly through fairmont.com. This was a strategic decision to increase our market share of bookings and cut-out third party booking sites.
There were two phases in the deployment of our new Members’ Rate campaign. The first phase, beginning in 2017, was primarily focused on awareness and getting the message out about our new rate. To this end, we created a dynamic video introducing the new rate and our breathtaking properties around the world, which was promoted on Facebook. We also designed display ads targeting key audience demographics and feeder markets.
During the second phase, in spring of 2018, we concentrated our efforts on sales, bookings and revenue generation, utilizing display ads and promoted Facebook posts, positioning the new rate as an exclusive add-on for members.
Message:
What is the key message intended for the piece/campaign?
What differentiates your piece/campaign in the marketplace?
The purpose of our Members’ Rate offer was simply to provide added-value for our existing loyalty program members and entice new members to join, while showcasing our iconic hotels, located in some of the world’s most popular destinations.
To make our message resonate with as many people as possible, we designed a simple offer that would be attractive to everyone—regardless of who they were, where they were from or what their interests were. Because who couldn’t use up to 10% off their stay?
We got our message out through a breathtaking video that introduced the new Members’ Rate. The video featured stunning destination and lifestyle imagery, including skiing in the Canadian Rockies, golfing in Scotland, beautiful wedding shots and sun-kissed resorts in California. And we kept the momentum going throughout the campaign with a combination of display ads and engaging social media content.
Results:
Which of your original goals did you achieve and how?
How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign? Entrants should provide quantifiable results of their tactics or campaigns.
Our Members’ Rate campaign was a huge success, generating impressive results that greatly surpassed all of our expectations! This became the most successful campaign our brand has ever seen in terms of return on ad spend. Here are the key results since the launch of the campaign:
• 225K+ New Member Enrollments
• 7% Year-over-Year Increase in Member Enrollments
• +34% Year-over-Year Increase in Loyalty Program Revenue
• 71.18 Return on Ad Spend in 2018 – The highest ROAS our brand has ever seen!
And our campaign tactics drove these numbers with some unbelievable results of their own:
o Awareness Video Views: 587K+
o Facebook Bookings: 3,000+
o Display Ad Impressions: 28 million+
Overall, the campaign was an undeniable success, adding value to our loyalty program, attracting new members and driving revenue—all at a minimal cost to execute. It is sure to become a core component to our membership program moving forward.
Situational Analysis
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a luxury hotel brand with a portfolio of over 75 properties around the globe. Our loyalty program, Fairmont President’s Club, prides itself on providing a world of exclusive experiences, rewards and benefits to its valued members.
*It is important to note that following this campaign, Fairmont President’s Club was merged into Le Club AccorHotels, however, it will continue under the new program.
In early 2017, we decided that we wanted to breathe new life into the program. Our goal was to do something that would add value to the membership experience, attract new members and reward our existing members. And we wanted to offer something that would appeal to everyone, regardless of their profile, demographics or geo-location.
This is how we came up with the idea for our exclusive Members’ Rate, which would go on to become one of the most successful campaigns the brand has ever seen.