Hotel Urbano is a rapidly growing Brazilian online travel agency that's tackling the expanding market for booking online travel across Brazil and Latin America. The company sells travel packages, hotel accommodations and cruises to Brazil's middle-class travelers. To promote fast growth, the company aggressively invests approximately $2.5 million in digital advertising every month. In September 2013, it added dynamic remarketing with Google Display Network to its digital mix. Dynamic remarketing shows a 38% higher return on ad spend for remarketing versus before it was implemented, driving 415% more revenue with only a 304% larger investment.
Goals
Increase the volume of sales
Start a lifetime value analysis
Approach
Applied dynamic remarketing to lower-funnel campaigns
Implemented mid- and upper-funnel strategies to reach previously identified destination searchers and visitors using dynamic remarketing
Used custom layouts to align the look and feel of dynamic ads to the Hotel Urbano website
Results
Dynamic remarketing shows a 38% higher return on ad spend
Total revenue increased 415% with only a 304% larger investment
In the past three years, Hotel Urbano has become the leading Brazilian online travel agency, with over 18 million users signed up and more than 5 million hotel nights sold in Brazil and abroad. The company is tapping into a confluence of trends favorable to growth. Brazil boasts a robust and growing middle class, increasing desktop and mobile broadband users and double-digit e-commerce growth. Together, this means more Brazilians have the money to travel and the tools to book online with Hotel Urbano. Tourism is on the rise in Brazil, too, thanks to the 2014 FIFA World Cup and, soon, the 2016 Olympics.
To capture this demand for travel, Hotel Urbano sells travel packages, hotel accommodations and cruises online to Brazil's middle-class travelers. The company offers over 4,000 packages to more than 400 national and international destinations. In addition, it offers more than 180,000 hotel options in more than 30,000 destinations in 183 countries around the world.
The company's plans for success rely in part on an aggressive digital marketing strategy. Every month, the company invests approximately $2.5 million USD in digital advertising. AdWords has been an important part of Hotel Urbano's online presence since it began advertising in its founding year, 2011. Today, the company uses a combination of Google solutions across search, display, Google+ and YouTube, and has recently added dynamic remarketing with Google Display Network to its mix.
Attracting customers for life
Hotel Urbano added dynamic remarketing to its mix to increase its volume of sales and start a lifetime value analysis. The company liked that dynamic remarketing would help it be assertive with its listings of travel packages, hotels and cruises. The performance opportunity also attracted the company to dynamic remarketing. Mariana Filippo, senior marketing analyst at Hotel Urbano, says, "We believed that showing the right ad to the right user would increase conversion rates."
Starting at the bottom of the funnel and working up
First, Hotel Urbano set out to bring consumers back to their cart to complete their purchase, using dynamic remarketing. Now, every time a site visitor puts something in the Hotel Urbano shopping cart and doesn't buy, the company reaches him or her with a dynamic ad on Google Display Network. The ad uses a custom, multiple-item layout to show the forgone shopping cart item along with a couple of other dynamically recommended items. In addition, the ad's design aligns with the company's website.
Second, Hotel Urbano moved up the funnel with its strategy, using dynamic remarketing for mid- and upper-funnel targeting. This involved reaching previous destination searches and vistors to the site's homepage and packaging pages with dynamic ads.
Every conversion is a vacation in the making
Hotel Urbano believes in connecting people to their dreams, to free leisure and to a high quality of life. As a travel company, when Hotel Urbano brings customers back to complete purchases, it is helping these customers take some quality time off. So, the conversions attributed to dynamic remarketing are equally good for Hotel Urbano and its prospective customers. Filippo says, "It's important for people to enjoy more time with family, friends and people they love. We thrive on making that happen."
Filippo was correct in her assessment that conversions would go up. Dynamic remarketing shows a 38% higher return on ad spend for remarketing versus before it was implemented, which stems from driving 415% more revenue with only a 304% larger investment. Dynamic remarketing also makes business more efficient. Hotel Urbano doesn't have to change ad creative all the time and has more time to optimize the campaign. Filippo says, "Since we have new packages on the website every day, dynamic remarketing is able to keep up with this frequency so we can be more assertive with our target."
