Case Study: How Cleartrip doubled Instagram engagement in 30 days

Asking people to share travel memories, Cleartrip awarded gift coupons to winners — potentially benefitting business. Read the detailed Cleartrip Instagram Case Study below.

Brand Introduction

Launched in July 2006, Cleartrip is an online travel company with a strong consumer base in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. India serves as the technology and engineering hub for the company. With a premise of making travel simple for its customers, Cleartrip has a clean and clutter-free website that is simple to navigate.

Marketing objective from Social Media

To increase engagement on Instagram with meaningful entries around travel as the theme and to build a community for travel enthusiasts.

Summary

In a contest titled Relive Your Memories, Cleartrip asked Instagram users to share their travel-related memories and who they would love to relive those memories with.

Problem Statement/Objective

Consolidate Cleartrip’s standing as a brand that not only motivates people to travel more but also provides a world class travel booking experience. The process was scientifically designed such that the target audience would discover interesting travel stories of like-minded peers and be inspired to travel to newer destinations. Cleartrip made this engagement interesting by adding prizes for lucky winners.

Brief

Brief given to the social media team: To inspire people to share their travel stories using #TravelWithCleartrip and relive their best memories with their near and dear ones.  The campaign was also backed by exciting prizes that could be utilised by the winners to travel to their dream destinations.

Creative Idea

Since photos are the best way to preserve memories, the contest was built around travel photos and the posts for the contest had a polaroid as the main theme.

Challenges

The contest ran from April 2nd to May 2nd. The main challenge was to communicate to people that the entries should be dated within those days. A lot of participants added the required hashtags to old posts, some more than a year old.

Execution

Ad words: Contest is a frequently searched word on all social media platforms. The brand used the hashtag “contest alert” in teasers and announcement posts to draw attention. Post that, #CleartripContest was used in all posts to let people know that the contest is still running.

Ad Placement: The teasers were posted on Instagram and Facebook to create buzz  around a upcoming grand event. The announcement was posted on Facebook, Instagram, Cleartrip Offer Pages and our customer communication (Newsletters). A Push Notification was also sent out the day the contest started.

The contest ran for 30 days where participants were promised rewards — Cleartrip Gift Cards worth Rs 1 lakh as the grand prize, Rs 20,000 as a weekly prize and Rs 1000 as a daily prize. Thirty participants were rewarded with daily prizes, four were bestowed with weekly prizes and in the finale, the winner swept a gift card worth Rs 1 lakh.

Consumers flocked in, sharing quality UGC while engaging with the brand.

Results

Cleartrip recorded over 2,000+ entries and the observed Avg. engagement rate increased by 2X. Number of followers of Cleartrip increased 50%.

The entries were judged basis the quality of photos, creativity of photography, and style of storytelling. The brand also placed an emphasis on the contestants' inclination to travel as visible from the participants' past entries. Winners were identified basis of the ability to excel in all the above characteristics.

Ashish Dhruva, Vice President, Marketing, Cleartrip said, “Travel is the way of life in today’s world. People travel for a multitude of reasons- some for leisure, some to celebrate, some for photography, some solely for the love of adventure. This contest was designed by Cleartrip to provide a platform for people to share their travel memories on Instagram and create a happy and vibrant community where people can inspire and get inspired by fellow travellers. The response of this contest was very impressive with more than 2,000 entries and the excitement was contagious. We are delighted with the enthusiasm that our participants have shown and are planning to come up with similar contests soon.”