The client:

The Marker Hotel is Dublin’s newest, luxury design hotel located on Grand Canal Square in the heart of the city’s most vibrant new business and cultural quarter, and is part of the Leading Hotels of the World. The Marker’s architecture draws on the elemental nature of the Irish landscape and combines it with a sleek urban aesthetic, creating an experience that is distinctly Irish and truly inimitable. As a company committed to developing high-trust relationships throughout every level of its organisation, The Marker Hotel was officially recognised as one of the Best Workplaces in Ireland in 2017.

The challenge:

Located in the sought-after Dublin Docklands, The Marker Hotel is everything a five-star hotel should be. And because of their excellent location, high-touch amenities and facilities and exceptional reputation, word gets around. “We run at a high occupancy rate,” says Ailis Cahalan, marketing and ecommerce manager. “So our focus is growing the rate rather than just filling the room.”

Performance marketing engine Sojern approached Cahalan in 2017 with its RevDirect solution in order to drive incremental direct bookings through targeted online programmatic display advertising. “I was a little hesitant at first. I thought Programmatic. I’ve done that before and I didn’t like it,” says Cahalan. “I get why it works for big brands but, at the property level, it’s tricky.”

However, Sojern’s RevDirect was more targeted than the programmatic campaigns Cahalan and her team had used in the past, which is why they decided to test it. “Because it was new to the market, I was keen to do it before other hotels. Secondly, it was a pay-for-performance, so I don’t have to pay unless I see a booking. It was nice and flexible to experiment with.” The Marker Hotel started with RevDirect in the July of 2017.

The solution:

Sojern taps into billions of real-time search and booking intent signals to find people who are in-market for travel to Dublin. With predictive analytics and proprietary algorithms, Sojern reaches these people who are actively looking for travel to Dublin, with relevant display ads for The Marker Hotel. “RevDirect is a really interesting piece of technology,” praises Cahalan. “The process to get setup was really simple and getting the campaign running.”

Sojern prospects as well as retargets for The Marker Hotel, to provide a full-funnel solution. Prospecting identifies those looking for travel to Dublin, but may not be aware of or haven’t searched The Marker Hotel offerings. Retargeting engages with those who have already searched options on the Marker Hotel but haven’t converted, reminding them to revisit the site to book directly.

The results:

Since starting with RevDirect in July 2017 to January 2018, Sojern has driven 163 bookings an an €69,663 in incremental direct booking revenue. What’s more, revenue going forwards also looks positive, with Sojern generating another 62 bookings and €39,469 in revenue from January 2018 onwards. “Our website revenue has definitely grown,” continues Cahalan. “Sojern RevDirect has driven revenue that we may not have gotten otherwise. We are really happy with the performance.”