Case Studies & Testimonials
Acquisition campaign for the British Tourist Authority using Mosaic
Tourism Authority
BACKGROUND
This particular Tourism Authority has many offices around the world. Each office exists to stimulate interest in travel to its country and to support the industry distribution network to convert interest into actual travel.
The Australian office of the Tourism Authority employed the services of Middleton Dobbie (MD) to support their marketing strategies. MD in turn drew upon the services of Pacific Micromarketing. Peter Middleton and his team have been strong advocates of both the principles of segmentation and targeted marketing and the use of Mosaic and Pacific Micromarketing’s services.
Pacific Micromarketing were briefed with the following objectives:
'Mosaic is proving to be a very useful tool in profiling our existing customers and helping us to reach new potential customers. We think it has more potential and it has become a key part of our marketing planning.'
ACTION
The Tourism Authority has a database of around 100,000 people who have requested information about travelling to and around the country. Pacific Micromarketing appended Mosaic codes to these records and provided both the coded data and Mosaic profiles of the database. These profiles enabled the Tourism Authority to establish which Mosaic Types represent their target market.
An initial direct mail campaign was then conducted targeting households with Mosaic Types matching those of the target market. In particular, a ‘cold’ list of 14,000 names was selected from the Prospect Universe and a ‘hot’ list of 13,437 from the Tourism Authority’s existing database.
The response mechanism was a mail back coupon. The offer consisted of an information pack with an incentive of also receiving a coupon savings book that could be redeemed in the country. The coupon also requested additional information on age, intention to travel, and previous travel to the country.
RESULTS
Overall the response to the Prospect Universe was 5.3% compared to the response to the Tourism Authority list of 12.1%. This was considered a very good result for a cold list. The response varied according to Mosaic Type with a range from 2.4% to 5.7%. This suggests that there are opportunities for further refinement in the selection of future lists.
The additional information that was collected on the response coupon was very illuminating. With respect to previous travel to the country, a large proportion of the people on the Tourism Authority’s list had recently been to the country. With regards to intention to travel, broken down by month and by year, the Tourism Authority and Prospect Universe respondents were almost identical.
Significantly, the age breakdown of the two groups of respondents varied markedly. In particular, the Tourism’s list had a higher proportion of people aged 50 and over while the Prospect Universe had a higher proportion of people aged 20 to 40. This suggests that in future selections, age should be used as an additional filter in order to target the elder group. Alternatively, it may be wise to target the 20 to 40 age group in order to benefit from a higher life time value, but with a different offer.
In light of the success of this project, the Tourism Authority has completed further campaigns at least annually using appropriate selections from the Prospect Universe. With the knowledge gleaned from this exercise, response rates should improve assuming the offer and all other variables remain constant.