Success Formula of Shoestring: 84% Growth in Upper-Funnel Bookings

“Thanks to Billy Grace, we now have much better insight into the impact of our upper funnel channels. This has allowed us to be more strategic and optimize campaigns in a more targeted way.”

Patrick van Zijl

Marketing Manager Shoestring

Results

Shoestring gained a clearer view of their marketing impact with Billy Grace, uncovering hidden inefficiencies and reallocating budget for stronger performance across the entire funnel.

50% over-attribution of in-channel bookings

Improved attribution revealed that previous data overestimated bottom-funnel conversions.

-60% impact of branded campaigns

More accurate attribution revealed an overreliance on branded campaigns, allowing for a smarter budget shift towards higher-impact channels.

+39% impact of non-branded campaigns

Data-driven insights highlighted the true value of non-branded campaigns, enabling more effective budget allocation.

+84% top-funnel bookings

By optimizing upper-funnel channels like Meta and YouTube, Shoestring successfully engaged more travelers at earlier stages, resulting in a significant increase in attributed bookings.

+394 bookings attributed to top-funnel channels

Improved attribution revealed the true impact of upper-funnel activities.

Challenges

Before partnering with Billy Grace, Shoestring encountered several key challenges:

• Long Customer Journeys: Shoestring’s lengthy customer journeys involved multiple touchpoints before conversion, making it difficult to accurately attribute bookings and understand the true impact of each channel. Bottom-funnel campaigns often dominated conversion data, overshadowing the value of upper-funnel activities that engaged potential travelers earlier in their journey.
• Privacy Regulations: Changes such as iOS 14.5 and the impending phase-out of third-party cookies further complicated tracking and limited visibility into user behavior and cross-channel and cross-device tracking.
• Lack of Full-Funnel Insight: With limited data on upper-funnel channels like Meta and YouTube, Shoestring faced challenges in allocating budgets optimally across the funnel. This created opportunities to refine their strategy, adopting a more data-driven approach to drive bookings in a balanced and targeted way.

Approach

With Billy Grace, Shoestring implemented the Unified Marketing Measurement (UMM) model to gain actionable insights across their entire marketing funnel. This approach shifted their focus from bottom-funnel to top- and mid-funnel activities, enabling earlier customer engagement and more strategic budget allocation. By reallocating resources to high-performing channels, Shoestring reduced reliance on bottom-funnel campaigns. Moving forward, Shoestring plans to continue making decisions based on Billy Grace’s insights and will begin configuring Billy’s Autopilot feature for further optimization and efficiency.

Key takeaways

• Accurate cross-channel attribution revealed the true impact of upper-funnel channels.
• Gaining full-funnel insight allowed for smarter, more strategic budget allocation.
• Shifting to data-driven strategies led to improved engagement and increased bookings.