HOW THE7STARS AND THE TRADE DESK’S AUTUMN CAMPAIGN FOR GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY SAW CUSTOMERS FALL-ING BACK IN LOVE WITH TRAIN TRAVEL

THE7STARS/THE TRADE DESK

Great Western Rail (GWR) has made significant investment into its network over the past few years, leading to a huge improvement in the travelling experience for customers.


Driving consideration for rail travel to the leisure market can be challenging, combined with the fact that autumn is typically one of the trickiest times of the year for rail companies. GWR tasked us with reaching a wide audience of leisure travellers and increasing (and improving) brand awareness, as well as filling trains across the network to capacity.


We worked collaboratively with The Trade Desk to implement a variety of strategies to deliver success for GWR, including:


1.Prospecting – targeting our core audience on a whitelist based on the behaviour of visitors to GWR’s website.


2.Finding new audiences – using AI to run powerful lookalike modelling based on the characteristics of the core audience, to extend GWR’s pool of customers to target


3.Growing geographical footprint –identify the regions where awareness of cheap train travel was low and targeting users in these locations Thanks to our smart use of programmatic technology, we exceeded the client’s benchmarks across all metrics.