2014 Highly Commended: Go Ahead Group, Mobile Marketing - case study

The Go-ahead Group is one of the UK’s leading providers of public transport. Traditionally bus tickets were bought on bus, which slowed down boarding times and required the correct amount of change. As a group we wanted to quickly trial mobile app retailing as a new channel to counter those issues.

We needed to achieve three things; to develop a new channel that was easy for passengers to use; to make the trial quick and cost effective to prove the value of mobile; and finally, to further improve our environmental credentials by reducing both paper and plastic usage.

We decided on a simple flash screen concept whereby a passenger would save a credit card to the mobile application, and choose from limited products such as season tickets and simply activate the ticket when ready to board.

Traditional mix

With a £51k marketing budget across five bus companies a mix of traditional and digital paid for marketing activities were undertaken to drive awareness and downloads. These included online display advertising on local tourism and local authority websites, some ppc campaigns, extensive e-crm, door drops , local press, outdoor and experiential techniques such as employing local DJ’s to ride on buses and try and convert paper ticket purchasers. In addition numerous contra deals were developed with local companies to maximise exposure, in addition to using our own estates of at stop marketing, on bus and bus exteriors.

The results to date are sales in excess of £4m, from over 510,000 tickets sold, and over 48,000 active users, who all love it! Our average age for this channel has reduced by 5 years reflecting the younger audience we have attracted. And all the above has helped us reduce our paper usage improving our CSR credentials.

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