Enjoyillinois.com

Not so long ago, travel purchase decisions followed a linear process. Travelers arrived in their destination after extensive planning, with accommodation and transport booked and activities scheduled.

These days, mobile has changed everything. Travelers use their phone to plan on the fly, sharing their adventures on social media as they go. We set out to build a website for the Illinois Office of Tourism to engage this new generation of digital travelers.

Inspiring First Impressions

Seasonal video and story content sets the scene

A Multi-Faceted Expression of Amazing Illinois

Enjoyillinois.com is a captivating digital magazine, packed with stories and inspiration to help you plan your trip to Illinois.

The site invites you to immerse yourself in the spectacular destination, explore hundreds of articles and videos, plan your Illinois adventures with trip itineraries, meet local makers and artists, and discover the real Illinois with local experts.

in mobile traffic year-on-year

76% increase

in social media traffic year-on-year

80% increase

in users year-on-year

80% increase

Garden of the Gods

One of our favorite spots in Illinois is the Garden of the Gods in southern Illinois

Success for Illinois

Our primary goal for enjoyillinois.com is to increase the number and length of overnight stays in Illinois. However, we believe a destination’s popularity and success is simply a side effect of offering travelers an amazing experience. So, while we continually work to meet the Illinois Office of Tourism’s business goals, our big goal is to use enjoyillinois.com to learn more about the experiences travelers to Illinois crave.

Content is our Cornerstone

At the heart of enjoyillinois.com is a personalized content strategy. We used visitor research and digital statistics to build personas for Illinois visitors. Then we used these personas to create content pillars for the site. Within each pillar we group stories crafted to appeal to these personas.

Personalization

We’ve integrated this personalized content strategy with a CRM that captures visitor interactions with the site. This helps us further personalize the Enjoy Illinois experience for our visitors. We want to serve travelers the right content at the right time, inspiring them to choose Illinois.

Focus on Content Pays

We use a tool called ADARA to link our online efforts to revenue generated by travel to Illinois, and these analytics show that our inspiring content directly increases travel to Illinois.

Actionable Inspiration

User-Generated Content (UGC), social media content created by visitors is a powerful inspirational tool for destinations. We found that for the most part destinations used UGC to create pretty feeds of Instagram images on their homepages.

So far so charming. But we thought, what if we got a bit smarter and used social content as actionable inspiration.

We worked with UGC specialist Crowdriff to source high quality Illinois images, creating streams of social imagery aligned to our core content pillars. Each image is matched to a call to action, directing the user to related content about attractions and activities in Illinois.

Social media further inspired us to create Pinterest style itineraries to help visitors plan their trip to Illinois. Visitors use My Favorites to heart content, create itineraries, save, and share.

in data capture year-on-year

447% increase

in magazine orders year-on-year

43% increase

in magazine downloads year-on-year

95% increase

Proud to Deliver Results

We’re proud that our traveler inspiration driven strategy is working, with enjoyillinois.com delivering increase in engagement, intent to travel and travel revenue for the state of Illinois. Take a video tour of enjoyillinois.com

Marketing Destinations, USA, Content Strategy, Content Creation, A TimeZoneOne Website, Places

Related Case Studies

All Case Studies

Marketing Destinations/ Brand Strategy/ A TimeZoneOne Website

Alpine Pacific Touring Route

The Alpine Pacific, is New Zealand’s newest touring route, 450kms of spectacular scenery winding past wineries, alpine thermal pools, wild surf, and whales.

Marketing Destinations/ Digital Marketing/ Social Marketing

Illinois Social Media

We’ve had the pleasure of marketing some of the world’s most spectacular visitor destinations here at TimeZoneOne. But the opportunity to drive travel in Illinois, the home of our headquarters and so many of our team? That’s a dream—and you’ve got to pursue your dreams.

Marketing Destinations/ Experiences & Events/ Visual Communication

Lights Festival 17

TimeZoneOne is proud to help The Magnificent Mile promote The BMO Harris Bank Magnificent Mile Lights Festival. Created by The Magnificent Mile community for the people of Chicago, the Festival is a holiday tradition attended by a million people, and a live TV spectacle, shown nationwide.