Best Western's Loyalty Focused Social Content Strategy

Client: Best Western® Hotels & Resorts

Project: Loyalty Social Strategy



Situational Analysis:

Since 2015, millennial business travelers have been a key target audience for Best Western Hotels & Resorts. With millennials expected to represent nearly half of the workforce by 2020 and the audience traveling more for work than any other age group, Best Western saw an opportunity to engage this audience and encourage enrollment in its loyalty program, Best Western Rewards (BWR). Studies show that millennial business travelers redeem 64 percent of loyalty points for free hotel nights, making BWR’s low threshold for a free night the basis for these targeted messages.

Best Western’s strategy focused on integrating customized loyalty messaging into social media, and unique, millennial-focused content on the brand’s travel blog, and its “Dream to Redeem” sweepstakes, to educate millennial travelers about BWR’s extensive offerings. These tactics were geared at communicating with this valuable audience through familiar digital channels, while leveraging their interest in free hotel nights.

Objectives:

Best Western’s marketing objectives included:

  • Engage with the millennial audience on social media and leverage channel trends, such as animated gifs
  • Educate Best Western’s audience about Best Western Rewards through unique tactics
  • Increase enrollments in the Best Western Rewards program
  • Drive entries into Best Western’s Dream to Redeem sweepstakes

Results:

Loyalty messaging for the millennial audience was strategically integrated into content to reach Best Western consumers on multiple channels. The loyalty-focused content helped support the 11.1 percent growth in Best Western Rewards since 2015.

The Dream to Redeem campaign brought in nearly 40,000 entries, outperforming previous brand sweepstakes. In addition, Best Western Rewards enrollments increased by 1,489 new members as a direct result of the campaign. The Dream to Redeem social media campaign, which launched April 18, 2016 and ran for five weeks, had the following social media results:

  • 854,040 reach
  • 171,534 video views
  • 2,402 shares

Supporting content on the brand’s blog, You Must Be Trippin’, exposed loyalty content to the platform’s 750,000 engaged users, while the unique animated gifs on social channels supported the strategy with exposure to the brand 1 million plus followers.