Brightline
From Tracks to Tactics: Fueling Ridership & Revenue Growth with Precision Media and Attribution
About
Brightline is the only privately owned, operated, and maintained intercity passenger rail system in the United States, connecting key Florida cities including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and now Orlando. Since 2023, Swish has partnered with Brightline to launch new stations, manage high-impact campaigns, and build an agile, insights-driven marketing engine to fuel ridership growth and brand loyalty across Florida.
Length of Relationship
June 2023 - Present (2+ Years)
CRM & Marketing Automation Platforms
- Adobe Journey Optimizer
- Adobe Customer Analytics
Marketing Objective
Drive new to system riders, increase Brightline awareness in Central Florida
Primary KPIs
- Ticket Purchases (Bookings)
- New-to-System Riders
- New-to-Site Traffic
- ROAS & Cost Per Ride
The Challenge
Our directive was clear: drive more bookings, attract first-time riders, and help Brightline claim a bigger slice of the travel market. The goal wasn’t just growth — it was category leadership.
We dug into buyer behavior, built nuanced traveler personas, and tailored media plans by market. We also stood up automated first-party data pipelines and attribution frameworks to power smarter decision-making. From geo-fencing to gamified offers, we tested a wide range of tactics across digital and traditional channels — all designed to attract new riders and drive measurable demand.
Our Approach
Swish delivered a comprehensive, fast-paced media and analytics strategy in the 90 days leading up to and following the Orlando station opening.
- Developed detailed customer personas to inform creative and targeting across the funnel
- Launched 110+ unique campaigns (and counting) across 20+ omni-channel media opportunities spanning Paid Social, Search, Display, OOH, DOOH, TV, Radio, Print, Partnerships, Travel Trade & Meeting Planners, Email & more.
- Rebuilt and migrated legacy data into Adobe Customer Journey Analytics (CJA), allowing for enhanced attribution and insight
- Geofenced major travel corridors to capture frequent drivers via mobile device IDs, fueling retargeting and lookalike models
- Automated audience sharing by syncing 75+ Adobe Journey Optimizer segments into ad platforms
- Reconfigured tag infrastructure from Google Tag Manager (GTM) to Adobe Tags (formerly DTM, Launch), ensuring accurate media measurement
- Tested promotional offers and ride incentives, laying the foundation for Brightline’s future revenue strategy
- Implemented hybrid attribution models using Adobe session data and platform click/view data to evaluate both causal and directional media impact
- Experimented with geographic holdout tests to measure incremental impact of bidding on branded search traffic
- Aggressive adoption of conversion lift & a/b experimentation in available ad platforms to measure incrementality
- Experimented with pay-per-performance media opportunities to help maximize spend & ROAS
The Results
01
47K+
Over 47,000+ directly-attributed rides to paid media, another 398,000+ rides influenced by paid media
02
ROAS
Average of 3:1 (directly-attributable) sustained during Brightline’s promo-heavy business cycles
03
60-80%
Consistently maintained 60-80% average new-to-site traffic goal (traffic volume) and 30-40% session-to-train-search ratio (traffic quality) for measurable media
04
~80%
Triangulated attribution model has allowed for reconciling of ~80% of paid-influenced bookings previously underreported
