Metrolink Featured Station Campaign Encourages Travelers to Climb Aboard

Target Audience: The target audience for this entry was the general public, especially current commuter customers, families with children, couples, students and tourists.

Strategy Objective:The website was restructured to promote a new strategy centered around a particular "Featured Station," which gave visitors the chance to view interactive itineraries, browse a database of hot spots, watch destination videos, and receive valuable discounts from destination partners. The interactive and mobile-friendly website supported an educational program that informed visitors about a different featured station every six weeks, featuring current destinations and deals on an ongoing basis. A different sweepstakes was offered for each station to incentivize engagement with weekend getaway packages. By offering fresh content year-round, existing and potential riders had more reason for frequent engagement while learning where to go and what to do on Metrolink.

Situation Challenge: To increase weekend ridership, an interactive website was developed to promote the $10 Metrolink Weekend Day Pass, which offers unlimited rides all day Saturday and Sunday, specifically for seasonal trips, such as to summer beach activities or winter holiday festivities. A large database of destinations and discount partners was amassed, and a strategy was needed to leverage all of these in an ongoing educational program that promoted weekend travel year-round.

Results Impact: The interactive website and corresponding educational program helped to grow weekend ridership by 9 percent over the previous year. The website was visited 92,418 times with 66-percent new visitors. Nearly 42,000 unique sweepstake entrants were received, growing the email database by 38 percent.

Why Submit: This entry shows how existing web and campaign resources can be successfully leveraged and repackaged with a fresh strategy to achieve year-round engagement and, ultimately, ridership gains. By offering website visitors new travel destinations, itineraries, adventures and deals every six weeks, OCTA continually appealed to both new and existing riders. The entry serves as a model for agencies looking for ways to create engaging new campaigns or revitalize existing ones.