Wunderman Analytics 50 Submission

Business Challenge

Wunderman’s client is Canada’s largest full-service airline and the fifteenth largest commercial airline in the world, with operating revenues of more than $12 billion. The client needed a customer engagement platform and customer insights partner that could manage and derive insight from a complex array of customer data. In particular, they were focused on implementing a solution that could help them retain high value members, reduce offer cannibalization and stimulate traffic through analytical insights.

Analytics Solution

Wunderman delivered a CRM Data Warehouse with three years of history that included:

• An identity management solution providing a 360-degree view of the customer
• A customer lookup report for CSRs to quickly determine compensation when a customer complaint is received
• An analytical mart for building predictive models
• Enterprise-scale email solution and migration

Wunderman built attrition models using historical flight behavior data to identify the customers most likely to reduce the number of flights with the airline. Customers with high model scores were targeted with email campaigns for bonus miles offers to incentivize them to increase their purchasing frequency, which produced an incremental lift in bookings.

Impact

Recent email testing using an attrition model developed by Wunderman, in conjunction with the airline’s loyalty program, increased seat bookings at a rate of 5.8 to 6.6 percent. The program is building loyal customers and stimulating more frequent travel on the airline. Ultimately, what matters to consumers who book air travel is that the information they provided during the booking process is accurately and securely managed and used to ensure their trip is hassle-free. From the airline’s perspective, getting this right every time is not just an operational objective, but also a marketing requirement in the face of a highly competitive market.