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Introduction
The Eugene, Cascades & Coast region spans from the Pacific coastline to the Cascade Mountains. Home to Oregon's coastal playground, its beautiful waterfalls, hot springs, and outdoor sports make for a place of endless adventure. As the official destination marketing organization for the region, Travel Lane County's mission is to “grow overnight visitors for a vibrant, year-round countywide economy” and they did exactly that with the year-round campaign they ran with Sojern from early July 2022 to the end of June 2023. By using an always-on marketing approach and leveraging Sojern to target high-value regions, the media plan exceeded expectations with results that positively influenced the destination’s economic impact.
Objectives
The Travel Lane County team’s main objective was to boost hotel and flight bookings and see visible results in the destination's economic impact. They partnered closely with Sojern to create a multichannel strategy that focused on gaining awareness of the destination, then drove visitors to take the next step to book. Additionally, the Travel Lane County team aimed to target the San Francisco market as their data showed the region has a higher average spend compared to other markets. The goal was to draw high-value travelers to their destination.
“Since we started working with Sojern in 2021, campaigns have been easy to scale and measure in a quick and flexible manner. The Sojern team has been so responsive and is there to support us with questions and concerns, or to nimbly adjust our strategy to optimize campaign performance. It is a huge value to have a collaborative and strategic partner like Sojern.“
Solution
The team activated a year-long campaign using display banner ads, Connected TV, and video to target top markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland metro areas. By maximizing their always-on strategy and building upon it with an additional media plan, Travel Lane County captured a solid base of impressions year-round and tested different creatives to optimize performance. As a result, the destination saw 759 flights and 993 room nights among users who booked within a 30-day window of seeing a Sojern-served ad, which contributed to 1,480 travelers to Eugene and an estimated booking revenue of over $1.3 million. The video completion rate of 98% also exceeded the team’s KPI goal by over 20%.
The separate four-month campaign targeting the San Francisco Bay Area also proved successful as the team saw a booking increase of 15% for flights and 8% for hotels. They saw a rise in web conversions from visitors in San Francisco, jumping from the top seventh market in 2022 to the top fourth in 2023 when comparing the same window of March 2022 to September 2023. By leveraging data and reporting, Sojern and Travel Lane County continue to learn, adjust, and strengthen campaigns with an always-on approach year after year.
According to Stephen Hoshaw, senior director of tourism at Travel Lane County, “What’s most important to us with all our vendor relationships and our favorite thing about Sojern is data transparency. It helps inform questions like what are we basing these decisions on? Who are we reaching? How are we reaching folks? And what are those data points? Sojern has provided us with an excellent perspective and our strategy adjustments are always rooted in the right data.”
About the Partnership
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“Since we started working with Sojern in 2021, campaigns have been easy to scale and measure in a quick and flexible manner. The Sojern team has been so responsive and is there to support us with questions and concerns, or to nimbly adjust our strategy to optimize campaign performance. It is a huge value to have a collaborative and strategic partner like Sojern.“
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