CitationAir Website & Collateral Relaunch: 2010 IMA winner
CATEOGORY: Internet-based Trial Recruitment
FIRST-PLACE CAMPAIGN: CitationAir Website & Collateral Relaunch
AGENCY: Ryan iDirect
CLIENT: CitationAir
Last October, CitationAir, a private jet company owned by Cessna Aircraft Co., launched a rebranding campaign to unveil its new business model and branding under the name CitationAir by Cessna.
Ryan iDirect was tasked with building a new Web site that would pull in the company’s high-net worth prospects, which number about 30,000 nationwide. The plan was to drive trial at the site with new collateral and direct mail to educate these consumers about the full suite of products and to demonstrate relevancy, value and “fit” versus competitors NetJets, FlexJet and others.
The mail pieces targeted prospects who would likely use the service privately, had more than $5 million in disposable income and were most often retired. The challenge was to get the piece past secretaries, wives and others to reach the prospects directly.
The most high-value prospects received a premium, square direct-mail package highlighting Citation’s benefits, which included a URL customized with their names that directed them to a personalized landing page. Within that page was a message from CitationAir CEO Steven O’Neill and prompts to go to citationair.com. The rest of the prospects received a personalized letter.
“From a trial perspective it was very important to reach this individual that doesn’t really want to be bothered with a marketing pitch,” said Elise Wilfinger, executive vice president and general manager of Ryan iDirect. “So the challenge was how do we make it sophisticated and straight forward and honest and elegant for this very difficult to reach prospect.”
Existing customers on the verge of making a decision about renewing with CitationAir received an elegant “Thank You” box that when opened revealed an iPod Touch that directed the recipient to press play. Ryan iDirect had preloaded the iPods with customized videos from O’Neill about why now is the time to choose CitationAir. When the video resolved, the CitationAir Web address appeared that they could then click on.
“It was a very beautiful box that contained the iTouch instead of the typical brochures and flyers that make their eyes glaze over,” Wilfinger said.
The hard work and creativity paid off.
The effort delivered 440 new high-net worth leads in over a three-month period, quadruple the number of sales leads Citation had ever seen over the same time period. The site recorded 69,000 visits, 414,000 page visits averaging six pages per visit. Visitors spent an average 3 minutes, eight seconds per visit and 71% were new visitors (29% were returning visitors).
“We were extremely thrilled with the work they did for us,” Renee Levine, the vice president of marketing for CitationAir said. “Everything was built from scratch and customized by the specifications of the project and were delivered within scope and budget and time frame. It was very critical that we hit the time frame so everything had to be in place and ready to go. It was a scramble to the finish but it all worked out perfectly.”
