CheapCaribbean.com is the leading online travel agency specializing in beach vacations to the Caribbean, Mexico, South and Central America with a true passion for travel. Through extensive customer research, CheapCaribbean discovered that teachers make up ~12% of our customer base. After that initial finding, we surveyed approximately 75 teachers from leads sourced through social media to uncover their purchasing patterns for beach vacations and reaffirmed the opportunity to market to this segment. CheapCaribbean also leveraged stats around how teachers are in need of appreciation, from 94 percent of teachers spending their own money on school supplies to nearly one in five U.S. teachers working a second job. We set out with the initiative to reach teachers by offering exclusive deals, offers and packages, in addition to garnering top-tier media placements. In an effort to connect with teachers, CheapCaribbean launched the Beach4Teach Club on World Teacher Day (October 5, 2018) with a welcome incentive and content targeted towards teachers.
In March of 2019, CheapCaribbean’s marketing team acquired a significant amount of airline credits on the verge of expiring and wanted to utilize them in a way that would garner captivating coverage for the brand, keeping in mind that teachers are a key market for the brand. CheapCaribbean launched the free flight campaign, offering the first 50 teachers and a guest free flights to Mexico for Teacher Appreciation Week (May 6-10, 2019). In order to qualify, teachers must have been a Beach4Teach Club member by May 9th at 11:59 p.m. CST. This campaign garnered an additional 10.8k sign-ups through media placements and social media advertising. The free-flight sign-up page was emailed to all club members on May 10th at 6 a.m. CST and was closed within one minute due to high demand. The team purposefully handpicked Mexico as the vacation destination. Given the recent news cycle, Mexico had been in need of bookings so CheapCaribbean used this opportunity to shine a light on the destination and encourage future bookings. The first 50 teachers were able to add their free flights onto a 6+ night stay at any AMResort in Mexico.
The marketing objectives of this campaign included increasing awareness of CheapCaribbean with a core segment through the Beach4Teach Club with consistent messaging across various marketing channels to reach teachers, securing feature stories for the campaign in female-targeted, lifestyle media outlets, increasing sign-ups for the Beach4Teach Club and driving bookings to Mexico through AMResorts.
The Beach4Teach Club target is female based with teachers in the United States who are interested in leisure travel. These leisure travelers enjoy group or solo travel and spend between $500-$1,000 per person on a beach vacation.
Additonally, CheapCaribbean supported this campaign with a budget of $0 by using credits from airline partners.
Within hours of the initial pitch, we received a feature article in PopSugar, and the coverage exploded from there, totaling 208 placements in top-tier outlets like ABC News, Good Morning America, Newsweek, Travel + Leisure, PopSugar, Thrillist, Business Insider, as well as broadcast coverage throughout the U.S. This was the equivalent to over $32 million in ad value. In total, CheapCaribbean's Beach4Teach Club secured 95 Features, 103 Mentions, 7 broadcast airings, and 10 social media shares from outlets with more than 1.6 billion media impressions.
With coverage secured in top-tier outlets like Travel + Leisure, POPSUGAR and Insider, CheapCaribbean shared the articles on their social media platforms and executed an aggressive ad strategy targeting teacher followers and encouraging sign-ups reaching an additional 1.4 million people and garnering 6.2k engagements.
CheapCaribbean’s Beach4Teach Club increased total membership 365% percent by securing 10.8k members from the free flight campaign.
