London Midland’s Marketing team has scooped a top national rail award for the second year running.
The team won the Rail Professional Marketing Campaign of the Year for their work promoting the Great Escape series of travel offers across the London Midland network.
The award was presented to London Midland head of marketing David Whitley on February 17 at the Rail Business Awards, held at the London Hilton in Park Lane.
London Midland has so far held five of the increasingly popular Great Escape campaigns, which offer passengers the opportunity to travel anywhere on its trains for just £10 a day. The promotions have been based around school half-term periods.
Eye-catching posters, a series of radio adverts, and innovative use of web and social media channels has helped to spread the message across the London Midland network, which stretches from London to Liverpool and across the heart of England.
So far, as a result of the Great Escape, 130,000 people have signed up to receive information about future offers from London Midland, while the londonmidland.com website has recorded a 60% increase in visitors. Passengers believing London Midland offers good value for money has also risen by 7% since 2009, according to the UK-wide National Passenger Survey.
Last year the team scooped the award for their work to promote the re-launch of direct trains between the Trent Valley and London Euston, delivering targeted communications to towns and villages, such as Stone in Staffordshire which saw trains reintroduced after five years.
London Midland commercial director Alex Hynes said: “The simplicity and price of the offer, together with the hard work of the team, has ensured the Great Escape promotion has gone from strength to strength.
“It has not only provided a great value day out for thousands of passengers, it has also been a catalyst for people who usually use their cars to take the train for a day out instead.”
London Midland was also one of the runners-up in the ‘PR campaign of the Year’ category for its use of Twitter to provide information during disruption and engage more effectively with customers.
