DSP08. Lifestyle

Velocity is the frequent flyer program of Virgin Australia.

 

One of the ways it makes money is when Australians transfer credit card reward points into Velocity Points. A tough sell and even a tougher story to communicate when members have to login to their bank account and select ‘Velocity’ to transfer.

 

Velocity run a 15% bonus promotion to create a spike in transfers. The last four campaigns (May-15, Nov-15, May-16, Nov-16) had seen modest growth despite significantly increased investment. This May, we reframed it as a giveaway and had more people transferring more points than ever before.

 

One intern, 7.5million emails and a typo that gave away a Billion Points instead of a Million. 

Velocity chose to bite the bullet and honour the error, creating Australia’s biggest ever Points giveaway. The consequences played out online for all to see in a sequentially targeted, content mini-series.

 

To re-invent the go-to-market strategy for the offer, we segmented the member base into data segments with personalised content streams that allowed us to tell a targeted story to every member across paid media, owned platforms and 1:1 channels.  

 

This activity took Velocity’s revenue to unprecedented heights. 

 

And by ‘unprecedented’ we mean +58.4% in revenue YOY, on a media budget cut by -35.3%. We exceeded all of our commercial targets:

• Every dollar spent generated $6.6 return on marketing investment.

• The total number of points transferred was 34% up from Nov 2016.

• 80% increase in new transferees (target was 25%).

• May 2017 become the largest member sign-up month ever.