Next Stop: Record breaking ridership on the Amtrak Downeaster

Target Audience: Choosing a target is a critical step in developing a successful strategy and campaign. Market research, analysis of historic ridership data, customer behaviors and the seasonality of travel helped our team to identify the Amtrak Downeaster's target audience for the "Next Stop" campaign as tourist and leisure travelers. After further analysis of Year Over Year (YOY) ridership data we identified growth potential with our mid-day trains and added event-based travelers to our target audience. Finally, we looked at origin-destination city pairs that provided the highest revenues per passenger and identified those zip codes and surrounding Designated Market Areas (DMAs) to focus media placements that would be critical to meet revenue goals.

Strategy Objective:The primary objective of this campaign was to exceed FY2019 ridership and revenue figures and reintroduce the Amtrak Downeaster brand. Secondary objectives were to produce cost effective dynamic ads that could be customized and consistently updated in market to meet the evolving needs of our target audiences and develop content strategies from the market research that identified three core reasons why passenger select the Amtrak Downeaster: Value, Amenities and Destination Experiences.

Situation Challenge: Prior to 2020, the Amtrak Downeaster had a robust marketing presence that included year-round paid media and grassroots outreach from Maine to Boston. Ridership and revenue goals were regularly exceeded. Post pandemic, both our brand awareness and ridership/revenues were negatively impacted and slow to recover. Driven by the need to return ridership and revenues to pre-pandemic numbers, we tasked our new advertising agency Blaze Partners to identify untapped ridership potential and to develop a customer-focused, fully integrated campaign to maximize visibility through paid and owned channels such as the Downeaster website, paid social, search, pre-roll, programmatic, broadcast, and radio.

Results Impact: Through a combination of metrics, we have been able to attribute our "Next Stop:" campaign to a record-breaking ridership in July, August, September, and October in 2023. Perhaps most impressive, Blaze Partners became the Amtrak Downeaster Agency of Record on May 15, 2023, and worked diligently with staff to review data, develop targeting, strategy, and cost-effective creative that was in market July 1, 2023. These efforts led to impressive outcomes including a 12% increase in ridership over FY2019. Diving into the success of our media in Q3 we can see that our Next Stop: campaign drove 2.5 million impressions and 85K clicks to the Downeaster website. A total of 40K conversions were tracked in Q3 alone. Paid media generated 25% of website sessions with paid search being the #2 driver.

Why Submit: The team at the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority and the advertising agency of record, Blaze Partners, have strategically identified and executed a campaign that not only looks good, but has also provided a measurable return. It has performed and proven its ability to convert sales through a full funnel approach. There are many ways one can choose to travel. It's not the idea of changing someone's mind, but rather planting the consideration and then showing them why it works. Embracing their interests and providing value and convenience. We are proud of our service, and proud of this campaign.