Indiana Tourism
Branding & Lead Generation
Indiana Tourism came to us with the tagline, Restart Your
Engines, and an initial branding effort rooted in solid consumer
research. The rest was up to us. Our goal was to create brand
advertising in the form of a multi-media campaign that would get
consumers to take more action.
We knew that printed travel planning materials helped consumers
take action. We also knew that the Internet was playing a larger
role than ever in travel planning, which was to our advantage since
the budget for traditional media was being cut back anyway.
We launched a campaign of online banner ads in conjunction with
SEM efforts in order to drive traffic to VisitIndiana.com and
encourage travel guide orders. We behaviorally targeted and
constantly monitored these efforts to make sure Tourism was getting
the most bang for their buck - and to make sure that what we
thought was working was, in fact, working.
Additionally, we overhauled the existing
e-mail program in order to increase click-thru rates, reduce
send-costs and provide information subscribers really wanted. We
then used that knowledge to effectively redesign the home page and
other key sections of the website to be more user-centered and -
again - increase guide orders.
The results were beyond everyone's expectations. The geo-targeted
online advertising generated 120,000 visits to VisitIndiana.com and
7,500 travel guide orders, which translated to a 30% reduction in
cost per lead over their prior campaigns. Overall website traffic
went up from the previous year. And the new permission e-mail
program cost half as much to send as their prior program and
generated eight times the leads.
Update: January 2010
This Williams Randall-created e-mail program was recognized nationally by MarketingSherpa and received
the Gold Award for Consumer Email Campaign of the Year at
MarketingSherpa's annual Email Summit.