First contact
Founders Pallavi and Pankaj connected with us in September, 2020. They wanted the agency’s help with email marketing and SMS services to generate increased travel enquiries and direct traffic to the goSTOPS website.
Having previously carried out email and SMS marketing under another agency, the brand had an elaborate database comprising email details of customers, interested and existing franchise owners, investors and newsletter subscribers.
Aiming to direct traffic to the website, the brand wanted to increase visibility on social media platforms, and we recommended they run Facebook and Instagram ads or performance marketing campaigns.
How it started
In October 2020, when we began, we started our collaboration brainstorming campaign ideas for goSTOPS.
Due to the pandemic, we pushed ideas such as working away from home for its long-stay package campaigns combined with the brand’s membership programme. The campaign had an open rate of 10.9% among email subscribers. Our role in email and SMS marketing was quite technical as well.
For email marketing, the content and creative were supplied by the brand’s in-house team.
After the website development team carried out HTML optimisation on the creatives, the campaign was scheduled on MailChimp.
As for SMS services, we would send out all the messaging at one go using Gupshup. Post a campaign run, we would share a 24-hour report of analytics – comprising click-through and conversion rates – with the clients.
We had also started running location-specific ads for its best-selling hostels on Instagram. The initial goal was to create awareness and get potential customers to follow goSTOPS’ IG page.
Add-on to upsell
A few months into the collaboration, at the end of April of 2021, the clients wanted to scale the services further to social media strategy and performance marketing, relying on the brand’s website and travel partners.
Organic social media
Strategy
The brand wanted help strategising goSTOPS’ social media, which would position its hostels as synonymous with the locations they are set in. While goSTOPS set up its in-house team to manage its social media, we would help with its organic social media growth.
The objective was to promote goSTOPS’ real estate properties and highlight local experiences. However, given the Covid-19 situation, we realised that encouraging people to travel and book hostels would be irresponsible of the brand. And that the focus should be on creating a feeling of wanderlust for those at home.
Simultaneously, along with generic campaign-based ads, we decided to run property-focused and location-based ads on the brand’s social media.
Growth
- Our social media work with goSTOPS began in May, 2021. As part of planning social media, we ideated content for the brand’s Instagram page. This was during the second Covid-19 surge in India. With lockdowns in place across the country, the content pivoted to sustaining an interest in travel – by encouraging followers to make plans post lockdown and ensuring a safe travel experience to those travelling.
- We worked on goSTOPS’ organic social media from May to July, 2021. We grew from close to 16,000 followers to 35K during this period. The account now has 38,400 followers as of January, 2022.
- Most of the content on the feed comprised carousel posts as they performed better than single-card formats. Organically, we pushed the brand’s long-stay packages highlighting properties, things to do at the location and package details.
