Gifting Campaigns for Paid Passes

Emilie Harris  |  July 30th, 2020

Clients who sign on to work with Bandwango now have an expected launch time of 60 days. Believe it or not, that puts us right at the beginning of October. By launching a paid passport now, destinations and associations can leverage their paid passport as a revenue driver and future travel incentive in the fall and winter shoulder seasons. The secret? Gifting campaigns for paid passes!

2019 Holiday Spending Statistics

60+%

American consumers who prefer to buy their holiday gifts online (Deloitte)

23%

American Christmas shoppers who rely on social media to help them make the right gift choice (Deloitte)

28.8%

American shoppers starting their Christmas shopping in November (Census Wide)

62%

Americans who buy their gifts in the week before Christmas (NRF)

You can find these statistics and more here.

Most importantly, according to a study quoted in this article by the New York Times in 2019, in 2018, only 17% of people surveyed said that experience gifts were better than tangible ones. However, in 2019, this percentage rose to an impressive 50% of people who said they preferred experiences over tangible gifts.

Mini Case Study

Visit Houston launches a robust gifting campaign every year in order to entice locals and visitors to gift experiences and plan their future visits. Last year, their campaign included local influencer engagement, digital banner ads, native placements and a paid Facebook campaign.

The campaign resulted in 263 gifted experiences from November 11, 2019 – January 6, 2020.

Gifting Campaign Tactics

Back-end functionality makes launching Bandwango gifting campaigns for paid passes easy and trackable. Here are a few different ways our clients have used our tools to make campaigns successful.

    • Affiliate links – Bandwango’s affiliate links are like UTM codes on steroids. Using Bandwango’s back-end, destinations have tracked sales and been able to attribute them directly to local influencers via unique URLs. It’s all part of your reporting dashboard!

    • Promo codes – Everyone loves a deal! Based on our financial models, we’ll help you determine what kind of promotion you can offer potential customers. Then, we’ll track those promo codes so you can see sales directly associated with them in your reporting dashboard.

    • Facebook pixel – Use your Facebook pixel to retarget potential customers who have abandoned passports in their cart, then entice them with a promo code or catch them before the holiday with a last minute shopper campaign.

Bandwango’s DXM is a resource available to all clients! Our experienced marketers are happy to strategize with your team or agency based on best practices and past client experience. To learn more about DXM contact Emilie Harris at [email protected].