East Coast Trains & AdSmart

East Coast trains wanted to drive ticket bookings, via their website, in certain regions. Check out the fantastic results they achieved below.

Background

East Coast Trains operates fast and frequent train services on the East Coast Main Line, between London King’s Cross, the East Midlands, Yorkshire, North East England and Scotland.

They operate on routes totalling 936 miles, from London to Peterborough, the East Midlands, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh and beyond to Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow. Traditionally they have just advertised on TV using ITV in two broad regions.

Objectives

Drive increased ticket bookings via their website from new and existing customers in two specific regions – Newcastle/Sunderland & Edinburgh.

Targeting

Of the 90 attributes available East Coast focused in on specific Metropolitan areas and affluence levels:

Newcastle/Sunderland Metropolitan Area & Mid to High Affluence
Edinburgh Metropolitan Area & Mid to High Affluence

The 10 second copies communicated East Coast Trains ‘Feel at Home’ campaign and their great offers for Newcastle to London and Edinburgh to London respectively.

East Coast were able to send different creative executions to the different cities ensuring the message resonated with the specific audience.

The campaign ran across November 2013 and reached 35,000 households delivering 269,223 impressions.

Top Line Results

The campaign resulted in a really positive outcome for East Coast Trains – driving increased online ticket bookings.

Sales from AdSmart households were 26% higher when compared to the control group who were not exposed to the ad.

Post campaign, East Coast Trains were able to analyse which types of households responded to the ad and would be able to use this information to adjust their targeting or creative for future campaigns.

Following the success of the campaign, East Coast have rebooked with AdSmart a number of times. Havas, the media agency for East Coast Trains have included AdSmart as a central pillar of their 2014 media activity.

Client Quote

“We’re a big fan of TV and any development which allows us to complement our linear activity at a regional level has to be a good thing”

East Coast Main Line Company Limited

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