Xanterra Travel Collection - Thankful for Travel

VERB Interactive was asked to come up with a social media campaign to promote Xanterra’s Thankful for Travel sale for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. The goals were to:

Generate increased awareness for the entire Xanterra portfolio of brands (16 total)

Generate bookings via online and call center channels for package bookings with each partner

Strengthen the cross-relationships between each Xanterra brand

Generate increased social exposure and dialogue around Xanterra offerings

Keeping these goals in mind, we used Xanterra’s successful ‘Christmas in July’ as the framework for the Thankful for Travel sale, using the recommendations and insights we learned, to best optimize the results.

We created Custom Audiences for each brand, using the brand’s past guest and prospecting audiences. We also created ads run from the Xanterra Facebook Page, which promoted a cross-selection of brands.

Knowing Xanterra’s primary audience is older (65+), we focused on Facebook as the primary platform. Working with our Design and Copy teams, we created 5 ad sets for each brand, using a selection of static, carousel, video and vertical assets. A “Teaser” ad shared November 22nd letting our audience know a sale was coming. A “Pre-Sale” ad, shared November 23rd - 28th, which allowed users to see the deals that were going to be on offer, allowing them time to plan their travels. The “Sale” ad ran during the sale dates of the campaign November 29th - December 3rd, and a surprise “Extension” ad ran on December 3rd. In total, 72 ads unique ads ran during the duration of the campaign.

These ads resulted in driving 14,500 users to the Thankful for Travel Campaign landing page, accounting for 16% of all site traffic during the campaign’s timeframe, and was the overall largest driver of traffic to the site for the campaign. From the landing page, 34% of users clicked through to the travel brands package and deals pages to book travel plans. The ads that drove the most traffic to the website were the Teaser Sale on November 22nd, and the first sale day, November 29th.