The goal of the month-long ‘1 Million Trips’ marketing campaign was multi-faceted. Outdoorsy had a few growth milestones to celebrate on the cusp of the Summer 2023 travel season. We were about to hit 1 million trips – or 7 million nights – booked on the platform, we had fresh and timely data points to share from our Summer Travel Trends research (e.g. In the face of inflation, Outdoorsy rental costs went up an average of only 11%, compared to hotel room rates spiking by an average of 54% a night.) The company also wanted to announce that it was foraying into the world of ‘Stays’ or cabin bookings.
Each of these milestones could have been their own press release, their own pitch note to a reporter, but instead we decided to package them all together and create a moment of celebration that would be hard to look away from – a party, if you will, that would be hard not to say something about. To expand our audience reach, we looped in like-minded brand partners like Backcountry, Merrel, Solo Stove, The Dyrt, Kuju Coffee, and Shar Snacks for reciprocal-exposure trade agreements, via PR, email and social.
Anyone who created an Outdoorsy account, booked a trip, or followed us @outdoorsy during the month of June was automatically entered to win $1,000 in travel credits and a bundle of prizes from our brand partners to help them hit the road and ‘Live Outdoorsy.’
Our ‘1 in a Million’ Family
Make it stand out
Rather than focusing our attention on ‘total gross sales,’ we chose to celebrate the milestone of surpassing ‘1 million booked trips.’ This offered a way for us to humanize the business to new audiences, while allowing us to re-introduce ourselves as well.
In the spirit of humanizing the business, we tracked down the family of four who would be taking the official ‘1 millionth trip’ and covered all their rental costs to Joshua Tree National Park, later highlighting photos from their family vacation in a blog and social post – just another way to inspire our audience to hit the road and give Outdoorsy a try.