Stuart Goulden

Said the following about Northern Marketing:

“2018 saw the Northern brand battle a mix of unforgiving weather and timetable changes, ongoing strike action and over-running engineering works. Customer journeys were disrupted and Northern’s reputation was hit, dropping as low as -24.5 January 2019 on YouGov’s Brand Index.

We needed to restore the public’s faith in the brand and renew our relationship with our customers. A fresh start was needed.

Fast-forward a year and our very small marketing team has helped to navigate a remarkable turnaround in perception and results, laying the platform for even better growth in 2020.

Key activity:

• Repositioning – New research and customer profiling informed a new Let’s Go positioning. This short statement says a lot. It captures the trust our customers put in us to make 280,000 journeys every day. It drives our 6,210 colleagues to go above and beyond, at every opportunity. And it covers the endless possibilities on our network – 18,494 services every week to 541 destinations, and counting!

• Leisure promotions – As the price champion of leisure customers we embark on a number of targeted campaigns at the regions most hit by delays. We also zoned in on 18-34 year olds in our integrated (in-station, online, cinema, experiential and broadcast) advertising campaign as a customer group open to more Spring/Summer adventures by train and more likely to download and buy on our app.

• 10p tickets – with more customers traveling with Northern and sentiment improving we decided to embark on an unrivalled flash sale in mid-August. Outside of innovative paid activity and 10p ice creams the campaign took on a life of its own, being talked about on the Scott Mills show on BBC Radio 1, triggering an app alert as the hottest deal on hotukdeals and gracing 50+ media articles and ‘10p tickets’ trending on social media. The result was 80,000 tickets snapped up in a matter of days and a good number bought full price for the return leg. Customers continue to share their pictures of days out on social media, thanking Northern for the 10p tickets, spreading the news further.

• A fleet of changes - Northern is delivering against its largest modernisation programme in a generation – new trains, refurbished trains and improvements to our stations. Marketing has been at the heart of this transformation, taking customers and colleagues along for the ride.

• Smart ticketing – Northern launched its Smart card proposition in 2019 and is the number one issuer of Smart season tickets in the country. Over four million Smart journeys have now been loaded on to Northern Smart cards since their introduction and 7,000 Smart season tickets are now issued weekly, with the technology living up to its ‘easier’ and ‘quicker’ promises. We’ve also given thousands of customers the money back for their Smart season tickets in giveaways, incentivising them to make the switch from paper.

• Internal comms – this all starts with our people. Let’s Go is about the actions we can all take, big and small, to improve our customers’ journeys. By delivering a separate communications strategy for colleagues, the Marketing team ensured that staff were brought along on the journey to rebuild Northern’s reputation; that they were involved and not just informed it was happening. In doing this they guaranteed colleague buy in and ensured those colleagues embodied the brand refresh that Northern’s customers needed to see. Activity included: office and depot branding; briefings; competitions and giveaways; intranet takeovers and staff stories; destination guides using staff recommendations; and a mailer sent to every member of staff’s home, including first viewing of the new TV advert, a free day’s travel pass for friends and family and Let’s Go merchandise to proudly wear at work.

• Digital improvements include: Introduced Guest Checkout and PayPal to support customers with an easier checkout on our Desktop and Mobile Web platform; Used Visual Web Optimiser to test small UX design changes which lead to incremental improvements in conversion rates; Used Yieldify conversion software to reduce basket abandonment; Built automated landing pages from a National Rail API feed. Dedicated pages are now available for every possible point-to-point journey in GB and provide supporting journey information including times, prices and last train home.

Key achievements:

• Brand Index – INCREASED FROM -24.7 in January 2019 to -11.5 by September

• Purchase Propensity – INCREASED FROM 9.3 in January to 18.2 by the end of August

• With an estimated CAMPAIGN REACH OF 10.9m adults across the North for Let’s Go

• Growth in revenue throughout the campaign period delivered an average return on full investment of 2.7, peaking at 3.2.

• With the media return on investment at an average 6.7, peaking at 7.

• Other Let’s Go campaign stats: New website users UP 15% with the Advance Purchase pages showing a 455% INCREASE in page views and Duo Tickets page views UP 64%; 48% increase in website revenue YOY; App downloads are UP 21%

• 10p giveaway: Additional 34,088 app downloads; 80,000 new golden customers; 1.2m page views (the most visits to Northern’s website ever) of which 80% were new visitors

• 4m Smart passenger journeys sold to date and Northern now selling more season tickets onto Smart cards than paper.“