Devon and Cornwall Community Rail Partnership (CRP) has joined with us to come up with a comprehensive promotional project to encourage travel by rail to some of the UK’s most scenic attractions.
Using a grant awarded from our Community Engagement Fund, the CRP is running a targeted Facebook advertising campaign focused on residents of five major towns and cities served by CrossCountry; Birmingham, Bristol, Cheltenham Spa, Derby and Sheffield.
Backed by dedicated pages on the CRP's website www.greatscenicrailways.com from these locations, the campaign also includes a full colour leaflet featuring some incredible photography of the counties' scenic attractions. 'Devon and Cornwall; Visit by train with CrossCountry’ is now available at many staffed stations around our network.
The Facebook campaign has already reached more than 700,000 people, of whom more than 20,000 have visited the CrossCountry pages on the CRP website. And it’s not surprising as the Facebook adverts have included videos, recommendations for winter breaks by train, tips for walking holidays in Devon and an extremely popular post on ‘7 destinations in Devon and Cornwall to visit by train’. There are even specific journey times for residents from their own location, making it easy to plan those trips.
Thanks to the Facebook campaign, more than a thousand extra people are now following the CRP’s Great Scenic Railways Facebook page for the long-term – helping them to reach more people and raise awareness of rail and these scenic counties every time they post.
Launching the new leaflet with the flags of Devon and Cornwall are (left to right) Rakesh Bansal, Jody Ball and Faye Lambert (all CrossCountry) with Richard Burningham of Devon and Cornwall CRP
The Devon and Cornwall AR App
Devon and Cornwall CRP has also embraced a small grant from CrossCountry to create an augmented reality app to give passengers, communities and visitors access to a rich archive of material that promotes local routes and inspires rail travel.
The Devon and Cornwall app uses a specially-produced film to profile the counties’ scenic routes including along the famous seawall stretch of the main line passing through Dawlish and Teignmouth.
The CRP gained extra value from the filming experience by also using it as one of the key pieces of content for their Facebook marketing campaign and as the main video on their Great Scenic Railways website. Visit the page.
The app is now available on the App Stores and is proving its worth as a signpost to the south-west by rail; “The videos really make me look forward to visiting!” (email message from a Dutch tourist having visited the website and watched the footage).
