New Program Solves Unique Needs of DMOs Looking to Tie Together Multiple In-Market Campaigns and Prove Total Economic Impact

Sojern, the leading provider of digital marketing solutions for the travel industry, announced a new Digital Co-Op Program designed to benefit destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and local hotel and attractions marketers across North America.

Historically, co-op programs, in which a DMO integrates its marketing budget, campaign strategy, and overall KPIs with local area hotels and attractions providers, have been a challenge to implement because of the varied marketing objectives of each stakeholder and the difficulty in measuring total local market impact. For example, a city like New Orleans could be looking to team with their in-market partners to build awareness of new flight routes, increase occupancy rates, sell tickets to concerts and tours, and drive spending at local restaurants and bars. The DMO may then need to hire a third-party consultant or agency in an attempt to source data from local travel suppliers and tie incremental changes back to specific marketing initiatives.

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With this custom-tailored Digital Co-Op Program, Sojern has removed the operational complexity of executing and measuring joint branding and performance campaigns for multiple hotels, attractions, and convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs). The program’s plug-and-play framework provides each “host,” meaning a DMO at the country, state or CVB level, with a number of key benefits to all participants, including:

• A custom reporting dashboard with an aggregate view of performance metrics across all campaigns, along with individual views for each hotel owner or attractions provider
• Analytics on overall tourism impact including lift in inbound flight searches and bookings, total direct bookings with local hotels, in-destination spending, and overall return on investment (ROI)
• Integrated campaign targeting and multichannel reach across branding initiatives, programmatic display, native, mobile, and video campaigns
• Flexible fund-matching or discounted media packages for all co-op participants

“Sojern is building multiple solutions and pricing models to service all types of travel clients, and we saw a clear opportunity with the challenges DMOs were facing. We listened closely to destination marketers and built a program that makes it easier than ever for these leaders to combine forces with their local stakeholders and achieve big results,” said Kurt Weinsheimer, Chief Solutions Officer at Sojern. “We have expanded their multi-channel digital options, simplified the operational legwork for the destination and provided sophisticated measurement tools required to prove total economic impact.”

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Early adopter Cathy Ritter, Director of the Colorado Tourism Office, said, “Sojern’s Digital Co-op program gives our local hotel and industry leaders a cost-effective way of connecting with our campaign’s target audiences and expanding our overall Colorado media footprint. They make it simple for everyone to collaborate, and with their match and ours offsetting the costs, several of our DMO partners are integrating this into their own plans.”

Sojern’s Digital Co-Op program is also flexible enough to work directly with agencies and their customers. Christine Johnson, Associate Media Director at Miles Partnership, said, “We began working with Sojern earlier this year and set up co-branded campaigns for Discover Puerto Rico and several partner hotels. Based on the innovation around the Sojern co-op model, we saw strong results, not only within our website but also in visitation to Puerto Rico.”

The company’s move into serving DMOs with custom package solutions comes on the heels of its announcement of a $120MM financing round by TCV, expansion of its multi-channel offerings including connected TV and a Facebook and Instagram platform, and making its real-time audiences available to major enterprise clients via a programmatic in-house offering.

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