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How Four Seasons drove 400% increase in ROAS

It’s no secret that the global pandemic had an immediate and devastating impact on the travel industry. Like many hotel brands, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts found itself focusing on new revenue streams in the wake of reduced travel and quarantine. 

Contributed by Rebecca Kaplan, EVP, Client Services, Acronym, a search and performance marketing company, New York City

Recognizing that brand fans love the luxury of a Four Seasons stay, the brand decided to pivot away from a digital strategy that emphasized booking and, instead, launched a digital marketing strategy for their new ecommerce site, which offers high-end branded goods from Four Seasons. Luxury products such as sheets, towels, mattresses and robes were marketed – just in time for quarantine. 

Working with a search and performance marketing agency, the brand began by driving awareness and scaling site traffic using active audience segments from video and site traffic before turning toward intent-based audiences and making purchase the main KPIs. Additional goals included fueling the remarketing funnel, driving interest in new products, and building out a comprehensive cross-channel campaign and audience segmentation plan.

Because consumers were yearning for getaways during the height of the pandemic, it was especially important for Four Seasons to focus on online retail, targeting consumers with messaging about bringing a bit of luxury home. 

More surfing, more opportunities

After Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts dramatically reduced budget elsewhere, holiday campaigns for key dates like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day became a priority. In deciding how to integrate the media spend to best drive awareness and conversion, the agency discovered social media was superior to search. As a result, more budget was moved into awareness through social media, which coordinated the drive to conversion at the end of the funnel. 

Conversion ads and dynamic product ads were used to drive the funnel, and broad audiences were employed to scale awareness. The agency also tapped into smart display and YouTube video campaigns on the Google Display Network to build awareness of the brand and products. 

In-market audiences and specific detailed demographics targeting helped Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts to focus on the exact target market. Lookalike targeting based on converters, detailed Interests and site traffic, as well as broad dynamic product ad targeting was also employed. 

Driving conversions

The agency used remarketing audiences based on leads, registrations and site visitors, as well as dynamic product remarketing for cross-sell, add/view product with a catalog integration from Shopify, and qualified segments/for prospecting and conversion remarketing. 

Upper-funnel actions like View Content were employed to optimize in Canada and different micro-conversions were used to properly target users in all of the steps in their path to purchase, including view item, add to cart and enter payment.

Keywords drive lower funnel conversions

A bit lower on the conversion funnel, keyword search campaigns were used to target non-brand keywords related to the different product types sold. Lowest on the funnel, the agency used keyword search on brand terms relating to the product and Smart Shopping campaigns that incorporate Google’s AI learnings to bid more efficiently based on time of day, day of week, demographics and user search behavior. 

Outperforming revenue, ROAS goals

Year over year, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts increased the monthly averages of both revenue per month and ROAS (return on ad spend) per month by 400%. 

Despite a competitive marketplace, the agency and Four Seasons drove 4x ROAS on social and a 3.4x ROAS on paid search, outperforming the ROAS goals in 2020 by 75%. 

In social, conversion ads and dynamic product ads helped drive the funnel, while broad audiences continue to scale awareness. And, in paid search, Google Display Network awareness efforts helped drive site visits where Smart Shopping and Brand Key word search generate most of the revenue with supplemental revenue provided by non-brand keyword search.

As a result of this success, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is now expanding the site to additional countries while expanding its product assortment.

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