Objectives.

Eurail gives travellers from all over the world the opportunity to experience flexible, borderless train travel across 33 countries in Europe with a Eurail or Interrail Pass (for non-European and European citizens respectively). They enlisted NMPi’s full stack of digital services, including PPC, paid social and display, as well as leveraging their analytics and creative services.

With a target market that covers such a broad range of countries, there is a need for copy and creatives that are relevant to multiple demographics and locations. This is crucial for NMPi, as our main campaign objective is to increase awareness and increase CTR in order to encourage customers in the consideration phase of the funnel to convert.

However, unlike other verticals like retail, there’s no specific item for consumption on offer. Travel purchases tend to be based on the experience available – which is much harder to showcase in creatives.

Strategy.

Eurail’s offering is freedom of travel, rather than a package holiday. The main USP for a Rail Pass is freedom of choice and travel. When it comes to creatives, then, the focus is on destinations in Europe and landscapes showing scenic train routes, that inspire the possibility of travel.

But what better way of demonstrating the freedom that a Eurail Pass can give you than by sharing the experience of travellers who have made use of the pass? Rather than a generic picture of a town square that could be taken by anyone at any time, NMPi could instead show the hidden gem side street, taken at the golden hour, encapsulating the way someone is feeling at the time of the photo.  To do this, travellers using the Eurail Pass were encouraged to upload photos of their travels to Eurail’s site. The images were left unedited to maintain authenticity and steered away from putting any branding on them. This meant that they blended in seamlessly to social feeds.

In the ad copy, NMPi were sure to credit the photographer, and make reference to Eurail’s own social media accounts to encourage social engagement alongside product awareness. Setting these ads live, the team tested two versions against each other – the Eurail creative and the UGC. These ads were pushed out for prospecting and retargeting activity, in carousel formats of 3-4 ads. During the campaign, NMPi optimized spend on better-performing social audiences to focus on improving social KPIs such as click-through rate (CTR), cost per landing-page view, and conversion rate.