Exim Tours a.s. wanted to convert their audience into soon-to-be travelers by adressing them with the right offer at the right time. The agency achieved just that by switching to a Smart Bidding campaign, which increased conversions by 23%.
For holiday-goers in Europe, there are endless options for travel. Whether they are looking for weekend escapes or month-long excursions, there are hundreds of holiday destinations, hotels, and price ranges that customers can choose from.
Exim Tours has spent the last 25 years expanding its market, both in the Czech Republic as well as abroad in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. They are currently the number-one seller in the region, providing standard holiday trips to long-favoured destinations like the Mediterranean countries, Egypt or Tunis, as well as less-common, more adventurous excursions to Kenya or Tanzania.
But while this selection of holiday travel benefits a wide range of customers, it also created a challenge: how can they deliver the most relevant offers to the most interested audience? And, ultimately, contribute to the business goal of maximising holidays purchased?
Preparing for take off
After the first round of successful A/B testing, Exim Tours turned to Smart Bidding for more improvements. By leveraging machine learning to optimise bids and maximise conversions, the solution has allowed the agency to automate previously manual and time-consuming processes for more effective and efficient campaigns.
To prepare for this change, Exim Tours bundled the campaigns together to streamline their campaign management, paring them down from 50 to 12. To ensure that the algorithm was supplied with enough historical data to function effectively, they used Google Analytics to measure soft-targets in activation campaigns, which they identified as most likely to convert.
Armed with an informed algorithm and a well-structured model, Exim Tours launched their campaign with three goals: maximise the click-through rate (CTR) for acquisition campaigns, maximise conversions for the performance model, and target the cost-per-action (CPA) for dynamic remarketing.
Reaching the destination
This change of approach paid off, with the travel agency’s conversions going up by 23%, resulting in a 19% year-on-year increase in revenue. Due to the added bonus of significant time savings, the marketing specialists can now focus more on strategic thinking and analysing results to improve future campaigns.
Exim Tours has also been able to leverage remarketing data from the campaigns to drive increased low-cost visits to their website. By creating remarketing lists based on site visitors who didn’t convert, the marketing team could inform a new TrueView for Action campaign in parallel to the bidding campaigns.
This success has left the organisation with increased confidence in new, automated solutions, paving the way for adoption of innovative tools and services down the road. Having reached their performance goals, Exim Tours can now devote their time and energy on new campaigns and creatives that will fuel future growth.
