The brief was as simple as challenging: become a bench mark in social e-commerce by promoting Deutsche Bahn’s (DB) premium connections to young travellers. Facebook was the channel of choice where we made an irresistible offer: the special-price Boss Ticket exclusively sold on Facebook for two weeks only. And DB set an ambitious goal: sell 75.000 tickets.

The starting point was really bad: DB’s reputation had suffered from recent issues, e.g public riots connected to a large building project in Stuttgart. So a high volume of negative posts was unavoidable. But when nobody expected German Railways to dare stepping into Facebook we provided strategy and skills that created a well balanced digital dialogue and a social channel that sold 145,000 tickets.

Deciding for a soft launch one week prior to sales start was the successful strategic answer. When ticket sales started the page had a service-related atmosphere and further promotional tactics including seeding a viral video, editorial co-operations and advertising provided a wider reach. At the end we achieved a positive or at least neutral sentiment of over 80%. Furthermore the page became the first platform in the whole German web where users admitted to being fans of DB.

Two days before launch several influencial bloggers became engaged personally. Those bloggers got story and video exclusively. As the page was launched, a team of 3 PR/social media experts continuously moderated the site – 7 days a week between 8am and 12pm. This team provided the customer’s request’s with extensive FAQ material and a preferred access to DB service hotlines.

The day sales started, the set of tactics was widely extended. Three editorial co-operation with high traffic websites provided direct links to the page. The video was seeded to all relevant video portals and distributed to hundreds of digital multiplicators. A set of advertisements including a homepage take over, Facebook ads, banners and cinema spots in the prelude of the Facebook movie "The network" extended the campaign’s reach. When ticket sales closed, a user survey was conducted to get consumer insights for evaluation and a smooth exit.

The reference for successful social ecommerce: 145,000 Chef-Tickets and 17,000 other products were sold which doubled the client's expectations. Within 3 weeks 53,000 fans registered and 300,000 visitors came to the page of which every third bought at least one ticket. They contributed thousands of comments which provided DB with useful insights relating to the needs of their young customers. Relating to sentiment one could really see that strategy paid off quite well: After week one the sentiment changed for good resulting in a total of 80% neutral or positive comments/posts that exceeded all sentiment goals. Within the German web this campaign page became the first platform where its fans defended DB against critics. The survey unveiled that 97% rated the campaign positively. Deutsche Bahn became the 9th biggest Facebook brand among the German DAX enterprises. The video was amongst the most seen corporate virals in Germany.