Elvis has been awarded a prestigious British Interactive Media Association prize in the Leisure & Tourism category for the Virgin Trains Route Planner email campaign we created earlier in 2010.

To increase travel on Virgin Trains, we needed to steal journeys from cars. Our strategy was therefore to shake car users out of their travel habits, by challenging the perception that the car is the quickest mode of transport for long journeys.

We parodied the route planner tool, creating a car journey from hell: punctuated with delays. Using purchase history, each email showed a route from an individual’s actual house to a Virgin Trains’ end destination, with copy tailored to roads relevant to them.

Sent to over 500k recipients, the email generated an ROI of 30:1, the highest open rate of 2009, and over 4k extra buyers.

We were also shortlisted in the Media & Entertainment category for our Virgin Media second-screen web application, Sofa Stadium.