CASE STUDY: MELIA HOTELS INTERNATIONAL

CASE STUDY: MELIA HOTELS INTERNATIONAL
DIRECT RESPONSE BOOSTER LOCATES USERS
THROUGH DISPLAY AND FBX, MEETING THE SET GOAL
WITHIN THE FIRST FOUR DAYS OF THE CAMPAIGN.
ADVERTISER
Founded in 1956 in Palma de Mallorca,
Spain, Meliá Hotels International is one of
the largest hotel companies in the world
and the largest hotel chain in Spain in
both resort and city hotels. The
company currently operates more
than 350 hotels in 35 countries and four
continents under its brands: Meliá, Gran
Meliá, ME by Meliá, Paradisus, Innside by
Meliá, TRYP by Wyndham, Sol Hotels,
and Club Meliá.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this program was to drive hotel bookings, solely
focusing on potential customers from the United Kingdom. The main
challenge was to gain conversions in the crowded, competitive online
travel market.
ACTION
Rocket Fuel used Direct Response Booster to target customers who
were likely to book a hotel through display and FBX. The result:
Rocket Fuel met the set goal within the first four days of the eightweek campaign.
Meliá did not provide the value of sales driven by other partners, so
Rocket Fuel had no basis for performance comparison. Rocket Fuel
implemented a basket-value parameter and optimised toward
reaching “act-alike” customers that had a higher propensity to book
larger average order values. This enabled Melia to target its most
valuable prospects.
The main KPI of this campaign was the cost per order (CPO). Rocket
Fuel proactively tracked the revenue generated per conversion,
enabling Meliá to gain granular insights into the value of the bookings
it brought in.
LAUNCH
LEARN
SCALE
User visits client
website. Models
analyse factors
relevant to attributed
conversions.
Our models find correlations
between user features and
positive converter signals
and bid on customers that
the model calculates as
“high value”.
Re-message to
expanded audience,
amplifying converter
pool while maintaining
performance.
Rocket Fuel’s model leverages the characteristics associated with the
sales most likely to be attributed to Rocket Fuel so it can continuously
learn and ensure the best-quality traffic is purchased.
STRATEGY
Rocket Fuel made use of a vast repository of experience with
clients in the Travel vertical, as well as general insights gained by the
algorithm. By implementing a mechanism that provides the basket value
of each sale, Rocket Fuel was able to provide daily insights regarding the
client’s actual revenues.
DAY OF WEEK
TIME OF DAY
Tuesday
3 to 6pm
6 to 9am
9am to Noon
Noon to 3pm 6
to 9pm
9pm to
Midnight
Midnight to
3am 3to 6am
Thursday
Wednesday
Monday
Saturday
Sunday
Friday
20.0%
10.9%
4.1%
2.5%
-2.3%
-7.1%
-29.4%
30.1%
27.4%
27.2%
7.1%
-0.6%
-28.3%
-66.5%
-77.8%
The graphs above show the two main contextual factors and
which specific day/time drove the best lift when compared
against the baseline.
RESULTS
Based on general and campaign insights, Rocket Fuel found the
most valuable individuals to book a hotel room with Meliá through
FBX and display, providing innumerable measures that correlated
positively with the likelihood of a person booking a hotel room.
Rocket Fuel implemented pixels on the Meliá website and built actalike models based on the actions of customers who had
previously booked a hotel room with Meliá. By combining these firstparty insights from Meliá’s website with its general experience in the
Travel vertical, Rocket Fuel succeeded in generating a considerable
number of sales.
The impact of this was that Rocket Fuel achieved CPO 36.2% better
than goal, with average conversions per day coming in 37.5% better
than goal.
“BASED ON
ROCKET FUEL’S
EXTENSIVE
EXPERIENCE
WITH THE ONLINE
TRAVEL INDUSTRY,
WE WERE EXCITED
ABOUT USING
THEM TO HELP US
INCREASE OUR
ONLINE BOOKINGS.
WE WEREN’T A BIT
SURPRISED WHEN
THEY MET THE GOAL
FOR BOOKINGS
WITHIN THE FIRST
FOUR DAYS OF
THE EIGHT-WEEK
CAMPAIGN.”
Matthias Koch,
E-Marketing Manager
Europe, Meliá Hotels
International
ROCKET FUEL LTD.
34 Bow Street, London WC2E 7DL UK
+44(0) 203 651 1300 | [email protected]
ROCKET FUEL—BRINGING ROCKET SCIENCE TO DIGITAL ADVERTISING
Rocket Fuel delivers a leading programmatic media-buying platform at big data scale that harnesses the power of
artificial intelligence to improve marketing ROI. Awarded #4 on Forbes’ 2013 Most Promising Companies In
America list, Rocket Fuel was founded by online-advertising veterans and rocket scientists from NASA, Yahoo!,
Salesforce.com, and DoubleClick.

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