acquisition of qualified prospects

Background
The internet has radically changed the travel market with consumers now empowered to conduct extensive comparison of their travel options and prices with speed and ease.

Given the low margin nature of travel bookings, the key challenge for lastminute is to communicate their offers in timely cost effective manner.

	Objective: To double the size of the Lastminute hotels e-mail newsletter list, at an acquisition cost per new member of $1.

Strategy
Develop a prize draw with highly aspirational, high value prizes. Use existing members to generate initial momentum, rewarding their referral of colleagues and friends with additional entries into the draw.

Campaign overview
The e-mail invitation to enter the prize draw was sent to the current Lastminute member database. This e-mail introduced the new "room service" newsletter and the bounty of prizes on offer in the prize draw.

For a chance to win the recipient was prompted to click through to the entry page and provide just 5 fields of data. This "minimum data" approach was designed to acquire only the "essential" data, as opposed to the "nice to have" data, an approach which has proven to uplift response by circa 26%.

The news letter subscription used an opt in tick box, as opposed to opting all entrants into the prize draw, this was designed to build a quality list, over quantity. On submission of their entry, entrants where invited to earn extra entries by forwarding the competition to their friends and colleagues.

The more friends e-mail addresses they entered in the referral mechanic, the more entries they received into the prize draw. Friends who were forwarded the competition could then enter, and forward the competition on to their friends, generating ongoing momentum.

	Results XYZdirect grew the Lastminute 'room service' newsletter database by 200%, at a cost per new member of less than $1.