Founded in 2012, RVshare is the world’s first and largest peer-to-peer RV rental marketplace. Today, RVshare has more than 100,000 RV rentals across the US and has booked over 3 million nights on its platform. In 2020 RVshare raised over $100 million to continue to grow the business and maintain its market dominance.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the company’s bookings naturally took a hit. But, when restrictions were lifted, RVshare was able to boost its paid acquisition strategy with robust first-party data collection insights facilitated through the use of TraceDock. Here’s how they did it.
Like many ambitious online marketplaces, one of RVshare’s key sales and marketing goals is driving high-quality traffic to the website. SEO and PPC are two of the most successful drivers for the company, helping them accelerate growth when they need it most. Martijn Scheijbeler, VP of Marketing at RVshare explains, “RVshare is primarily demand focused. Our brand can only make money when there is a demand for people to rent RVs. Therefore we spend 80-90% of our time and budget on driving demand and the rest on supply.”
With such a strong focus on paid acquisition it was vital RVshare had accurate, real time insights into which acquisition channels are profitable and which are not. “The situation is precarious.” says Martijn. “In fact, just 5% more data insight from our traffic sources can mean the difference between making and losing millions of dollars! We needed to find a solution - and fast.”
Significant increase in inbound traffic from desktop users, and nearly doubled the visible returning visitors on Safari.
Due to the success of their inbound marketing and commitment to customer service, RVshare gets an enviable amount of quality website traffic. At their peak in June 2020, they had nearly 1m visitors per day! But without the ability to capture first-party data, they couldn’t get the audience behaviour insights they needed to capitalize on their success.
“We were losing data due to browser changes, including Safari, and simultaneously our spend was increasing. We desperately needed more accurate insights and a solution that would help us understand how and where to assign the budget.”
RVshare began using TraceDock’s first-party data solution in 2019 and were early adopters of the solution. RVshare enjoyed swift and considerable growth in their early years and TraceDock were able to support the company as they tackled some common challenges experienced by e-commerce businesses, and prepared them for future growth.
With greater accuracy comes greater confidence. RVshare’s paid acquisition budget doubled in one year during the first year of the pandemic. The company now has the insights they need to double their budget again in the next two years.
Alongside these valuable data insights, using TraceDock delivered another important benefit - one that will be familiar to many e-commerce brands. Martijn tells us, “We could implement measurement protocols ourselves, but working with a partner saved us significant amounts of time in engineering hours. We can rely on Tracedock’s expertise rather than distracting our team with additional projects when they could be focusing on improving our website.”
Martijn and his team continue to be delighted with TraceDock and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the solution to other ambitious e-commerce retailers. He tells us, “If you are serious about your customer data and spend a lot of time and money on digital marketing channels, you always need accurate data to support and inform your strategy and budget. With browser restrictions and other limitations with data capture, you are missing out on valuable insights. TraceDock helps you get that information so you can make more accurate budget decisions that will help you grow your business and prepare for future challenges.”
When you choose TraceDock as your first party data solution, you make an important decision to start owning your customer data. You can grow your business in confidence and assign budget where it’s needed most. All while being 100% compliant. Talk to our team to find out more today.
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