Domeniul Dracula Daneș is an exemplary successful Romanian business. For almost three decades, the tourist complex in the heart of Transylvania has brought together people that are passionate about good taste, quality, nature, unique experiences, and horse riding.
Craft Interactive has been with this successful business for 10 years, contributing to its local development, but, most of all, to its online development. Throughout this time, we’ve worked lovingly and professionally on the online identity of Domeniul Dracula Daneș.
We started 2018
By analysing the data from the former years. We work with figures and rely heavily on the obvious results and clear conclusions that we can only get based on their analysis.
What did we aim to do?
In the previous years, we’d renewed and updated the Dracul.ro website and implemented an efficient online booking system, but in 2018 we wanted to focus on creating and consolidating an online community and on integrating new online communication components and supporting organic brand awareness on search engines, through a good SEO optimization. All these would also be adapted to the algorithm changes undergone by Social Media platforms in the previous year.
For us
Challenges are how we work. Therefore, it was a matter of courage and determination to launch an Instagram page dedicated to Domeniul Dracula Daneș in the middle of the wave, when the platform content is increasingly rich and of better and better quality.
In addition to the good photographs and the usual strategies used when growing an Instagram profile, we also identified a unique component of this brand. We quickly saw Social Media profiles can also grow due to the community of people that a brand manages to build around its values. And, for the Domeniul Dracula Daneș, it was truly easy for us to get excellent results in a short time.
For the business
Its launch on a new platform meant a consolidation of the success that Domeniul Dracula Daneș had already enjoyed offline. In less than a year, the Instagram profile reached over 1,500 followers who constantly interact.
Likewise, the Facebook page grew considerably, reaching over 20,000 fans. In total, 955,654 people have seen and interacted with this page throughout the year.
Even though the algorithms are changing, often destabilizing Social Media marketing plans, in 2018 we managed to maintain a constant reach on the page of Domeniul Dracula Daneș and to increase engagement.
Simply put, we created a community of visitors of the Domain, people that are passionate about horse riding and the friends of the domain’s horses. This success is also due to the type of community management that we used – friendly, familiar and empathetic – that was appreciated by all the visitors.
One happy visitor after another
And since the figures prove more than we could try to express through words, you can conclude that not only the Social Media profiles benefited, but the website itself. Out of 98,400 unique visitors, 2,447 online bookings were made. The conversion rate was 2.4%. The average time spent by a visitor on the website was 2.39 minutes. We managed to reduce the acquisition costs per customer even further, down to an insignificant amount, compared to the success that a true Romanian love-brand is now enjoying.
In parallel thereto, we enriched the website’s content, since we were aware of content marketing’s essential contribution to growing pages. The website was shared through the Social Media and Email Marketing channels, generating constant traffic without any additional expenses from the marketing budget.
We, as marketers, are happy that this growth is mostly organic and is the result of strategies based on updated data and on creating, growing and consolidating the online community of fans and followers. These people don’t need artificial urging to like and interact with the Domain’s online pages, a fact which generates advantages on several levels.
A different kind of Email Marketing
In 2018, we raised the standard for online communication even with regard to Email Marketing. One year before, we had found that the horses were what people loved most about the Domain, so we developed a new newsletter strategy.
Last year, we took 46 steps forward, by building an impressive customer journey. Each new subscriber now receives customized newsletters, based on their preferences and on what they loved about Domeniul Dracula Daneș. All the essential information is contained in 46 ready-made e-mails that are sent automatically and the web keeps growing, along with the stories and news from the Domain.
This has increased the levels of appreciation and trust amongst the visitors, has brought new guests to the Domain and has established a new efficient communication channel.
Dracula Horse Festival
However, our most treasured memory of our activity in 2018 is the festival celebrating the Domain’s activity, that took place in October.
We combined the power of Email Marketing with that of Social Media and obtained a two-day event that over 1,400 people participated in. In addition, the online mobilisation efficiently came together with the on-site mobilisation and resulted, to the satisfaction of all the participants, in a true equestrian celebration.
We draw the line
And see that, as always, our successes exceed expectations. Domeniul Dracula Daneș is among the most loved and profitable businesses because it’s managed to find the right recipe to make accessible in the online environment everything that tourists love about this destination. In addition, we made sure that both the communication and the navigation on the website are quick and easy, to save time for pleasant experiences.
In 2019
We are analysing the figures and making plans that are even more ambitious.
We are planning to grow the business by growing the online community and the numbers of bookings made directly on the website. In addition, we are in for another edition of Domeniul Dracula Daneș, that we are intensely preparing. This year, we’re happy with what we’ve built tirelessly over the past 10 years of being with Domeniul Dracula Daneș.
