Client Name First Bus
The Organisation First Bus is a bus operator, managing routes across the UK.
The Challenge Regular customers are the bedrock for any business. For First Bus group they take the form of season ticket holders, and they wanted more of them. Historically they had run no national activity to recruit season ticket holders, but had relied on small-scale local telemarketing.
In the spring of 2009 we received the following brief:-
- Could we generate additional, regular, predictable income by recruiting new season ticket holders?
- Could we test this in a number of cities and routes to prove the concept and the ROI before rolling out?
The Insight
- We identified specific bus routes for the offers, their post codes, and IP addresses within those post codes
- We identified a specific audience: light or non bus users living within the specific postcodes and online
Our Solution
- We created a blind network serving banners only within the postcodes identified
- Our offer-led call to action drove response to a campaign micro-site
- Once on the micro-site prospects filled in a qualifying questionnaire detailing their travel habits, postcodes etc
The Results
- We generated new season ticket holders in all test regions at an ROI of over 3:1
- The campaign generated nearly twice the target volumes of response
- Our targeting was extremely accurate, ensuring that we only made the offers to individuals for whom they were valid, thus reducing wastage and avoiding alienating consumers
- So good was our targeting that our validation rates, despite using public media, were twice that achieved by lists
- The campaign has been embraced across all First Bus regions and has rolled out on a continuous basis throughout 2010
Client View “I have found MC&C to be a company who really do think about what they are doing and concentrate on the end result for their clients. The team works hard to choose media and consider the results so as to optimise the Return. And it’s a two-way street - as a client I realise that MC&C should not be regarded as the end of the media buying process but as a partner in looking at what's happening and choosing and adapting the right set of solutions.”
Peter Owen
Head of Marketing
First Bus
