Napa Valley Wine Train - Santa Train Campaign

The Santa Train is a unique offering of the Napa Valley Wine Train and runs during the holiday season. Given its appeal for families - a departure from the brand’s typical customer - a strategic approach was required to ensure that we reached this group and encouraged them to book tickets. To generate awareness and encourage ticket sales, we launched a phased promotional campaign across our social media channels, kicking off the campaign with a “Christmas in July” flash sale on July 25, 2019.

Maintaining the momentum started in Phase 1, our second phase, executed in August and September, boosted content to targeted audiences and provided more information to potential customers considering adding the Santa Train to their holiday plans. In the six weeks leading up to the Santa Train’s inaugural trip of the season, we adjusted our content to grab our audience’s interest as they came closer to their purchase decision. Finally, in November and December, our content prioritized last-minute bookers, using a sense of urgency to encourage them to book their Santa Train tickets before the event wrapped up.

The goals of this campaign were:

Generate awareness of and excitement for the Santa Train among locals and prospective visitors by extending our social media reach among these audiences.

Increase sales of Santa Train tickets, specifically during the Christmas in July flash sale as well as throughout the campaign/promotional period.

Increase referrals to winetrain.com from social media ads and organic social channels.

The campaign creative followed Santa as he readied himself for the Santa Train, mirroring the consumer path-to-purchase. We shared a mix of engagement-focused content, including packing lists, countdowns, and repurposed user-generated and sales-focused content, which was boosted with targeted paid support.

Social posts and promotions were seen over 50K times and brought 3.7K sessions to the website. The number of tickets purchased via organic Facebook increased YoY by 1.4%, and tickets purchased via direct search increased YoY by 15.9%.