Online marketing and new technologies bring First Rate results

Less than six months after the launch of its website and product offering, First Rate Travel Services (First Rate), the online travel services provider, is celebrating the success of a technologically advanced online marketing strategy that has successfully driven more than 170,000 visitors to its website (www.firstrate.co.uk) over a five month period. Of these 76% have come via search engines.

First Rate Travel Services was established in 2002 and is a joint venture between Post Office™Ltd and the Bank of Ireland Group, providing a comprehensive range of versatile and value for money travel services solutions including the provision of foreign currency and travel insurance services through its partners and directly to the consumer.

Liquid Communications, the specialist promotional and relationship marketing agency, has worked together with website strategy and development specialists Thinking Virtual to successfully create and implement an intensive search engine optimisation programme to ensure First Rate has a dominant internet presence. Within the space of a month, more than 20,000 visitors had accessed the First Rate site, of which over 70% were directly attributable to the SEO activity. This figure rose rapidly over the space of three months to 100,000 visitors, still with over 70% being attributable to SEO activity.

First Rate’s foreign currency and travel insurance products have also been effectively promoted via Contextual Banner advertising, where the content of the web page is scanned for keywords, which then influences information that appears in the banner. This strategy has achieved some 30% more clickthroughs than standard banner advertising and has featured on websites such as A2Btravel, Teletext and Easyjet.

Jayne Westwood, Marketing Director of First Rate Travel Services is delighted with the results, commenting “At a time when most people are nervous about establishing a new online business, particularly in the travel industry, this is a fantastic example of how innovative and state-of-the-art technology can support consumer demand for travel products. We’ve really reaped the benefit of online marketing and the way that customers have been driven to our site and will continue to exploit this policy in new areas as awareness of our www.firstrate.co.uk URL grows”.

Olly Raeburn, Managing Partner at Liquid Communications adds, “Through this activity we are demonstrating how effective search engine optimisation and other aspects of online marketing can be, particularly for a new online company such as First Rate. We aim to build on this early success over the coming months.”

Next

Return to News page