Alterian Case StudyEurostar

Campaign management tools significantly increasecustomer intelligence for Eurostar

Eurostar is the high-speed passenger train serviceoperating between the United Kingdom, France andBelgium, running from Waterloo and Ashford Internationalto Paris, Lille, Brussels, Calais, and Disneyland Resort Paris.Eurostar has always been at the leading edge of innovationin the rail industry, setting new standards for travel by train.It was one of the first rail operators to introduce businesslounges and a loyalty programme, and has won the title of‘World’s Leading Rail Service’ for the last nine years at theWorld Travel Awards.

In 2006, Eurostar carried a record 7.85 million travellers andachieved record sales of £518 million. Over 70 millionpeople have now travelled with Eurostar since servicesbegan in 1994, and the company is responsible fordoubling the number of visitors from London to Paris andBrussels.

On 14 November 2007, Eurostar will launch services fromits new terminal at St Pancras International. The completionof the high-speed line, High Speed 1, will create a link tothe Continent from the heart of the city and further reduceEurostar journey times, for example London to Paris willnow take only 2 hours and 15 minutes. Eurostar's customerbase will change dramatically - for both out-bound and in-bound French and Belgian services. Eurostar will also opena new station, Ebbsfleet International, which willcomplement its existing Kent station at AshfordInternational.

Before August 2005, Eurostar did not have an overall viewof its customers and prospects. There was no realunderstanding of the behaviour of individual travellers –either leisure or business. The company enjoyedcommunication with only a small proportion of actualcustomers.

The ChallengeEurostar’s overall objective was to increase customerintelligence to improve relationship building and helpstrategically drive operations – particularly in light of theimpending major UK station changes.

Before the customer database project began, Eurostar heldsome operational data about ticket sales plus data from itsFrequent Traveller programme. Marketing was based onlimited analysis – direct marketing was a general ‘one-size-fits-all’ operation, with the same communication being sentto the entire database. An email Direct Mail (eDM), forexample, about the new Ski Service to the French Alpswould be sent to a customer whether they had an interest inskiing or not.

Eurostar’s initial goal was to create a single customer viewand associated database marketing tools to maximise thepotential of its data in order to increase its understanding of,and hence significantly improve, its relationship withcustomers. The new approach had to underpin Eurostar’sDM campaigns for which it predominantly used email due tocost, speed, and measurement benefits.

The second marketing goal, ahead of changes to the servicein 2007 outlined above, was to profile its travellers tounderstand the affects the changes would have on existingand future catchment areas. The output would help drive thedecision-making process not only in Marketing but alsowithin Eurostar’s Business Planning, Market Research,eCommerce, Customer Service and Customer Operationsdivisions.

One of the key challenges these objectives presented was toovercome initial data quality issues and subsequentintegration of a variety of datasets held in different countries.For example, marketing data from the last two years held inthe UK, France and Belgium; inbound North American datavia partner Expedia; Management Information Systems data;web data from www.eurostar.com; Frequent Travellersprogramme and customer contact, complaints and remarksheld in London and also data from the ticket bookingsystem.

It was vital that the marketing database could workeffectively cross-border between the three countries. Thedatabase also needed to be accessible to Eurostar's externalpartners such as advertising and media agencies.

The SolutionEurostar decided to minimise the risk involved with theprocess of creating a new marketing database by securingthe consultancy and software services of Occam, an Alterianpartner.

The project commenced in January 2005 and an initialversion of the new system went live in September 2005.

The solution is a combination of Occam’s core cleansing andde-duplication components, an operational data store inSQL Server and Alterian applications Data Discovery andVisualisation (DDV) and Campaign Manager – eachleveraging Alterian’s core Engine technology, all part of theAlterian Integrated Marketing Platform.

Occam created a new customer marketing database capableof managing the large volumes of Eurostar's raw data, whichgrew from an initial 30,000 contacts to 18 million uniquecustomer IDs. This significant increase in the amount ofavailable data came from including all transactions withinEurostar's core markets over a four year period; plus theoriginal data sources.

Occam's solution, based on Alterian, technology, allowsrapid and easy analysis and selection from the newdatabase. Immediately, Eurostar was able to beginsegmenting the database, providing insight to drivetargeted, profitable email campaigns.

• Business travellers’ behaviour (and previous journeystaken) is analysed to ensure targeted, relevant offers aresent

Company:Eurostar

Website:www.eurostar.com

Headquarters:London, UK

Industry:Travel, Business & Leisure

Solution:Date Discovery Visualization,Campaign Manager, Engine, partof the Alterian IntegratedMarketing Platform

Results:Solution enabled seamlessintegration between email andweb activity. Open ratesincreased by 100%, unique clickthroughs by 50%

“With the implementation of thedatabase, Eurostar has been ableto create targetedcommunications based ontraveller behaviour and profiles.The results have been far beyondexpectations.”Andrew WythesCustomer Database Manager

Client

Partner

Alterian Case StudyEurostar

• Outbound emails relating to the Ski Service to the FrenchAlps have been reduced from 500,000 to 70,000 basedon new insight drawn from the newly available analysis

• Potential users of the daily service to Disneyland ResortParis were targeted by email, resulting in a 35% open-rate

• Targeted micro sites have been created on the mainEurostar website to increase data capture

Andrew Wythes, Eurostar Customer Database Manager,comments, “With the implementation of the database,Eurostar have been able to create targeted communicationsbased on traveller behaviour and profiles. The results havebeen far beyond expectations.”

As well as enabling Eurostar to apply analysis to its data togain customer insight, Occam also made it possible forEurostar to begin to address the challenge of understandingcustomer journeys and translating this information intotargeted marketing campaigns.

• Contacts that have registered via the website but notpurchased can be emailed to 'boost' uptake

• Customers returning for the first time are contacted togain 'new traveller' customer feedback

Eurostar is beginning to feed all this new customerintelligence to its media agencies to assist and informcampaign planning. The system is already a strong, strategicbusiness tool, used for significant analysis and profiling ofcustomers within the existing catchment areas of WaterlooInternational and Ashford International.

Occam hosts the marketing database solution on its networkof secure, state of the art servers, ensuring continual datasecurity and 24 hour data access. A continual process of dataquality management, performance tuning and enhancementof the analysis and campaign management capabilities is inconstant operation. Web access to all data, campaigncontact history and facilities is provided for Eurostar usersacross three countries; access permission levels can beapplied on an individual basis to assure security across thesystem and all data.

Occam provided training in the new system for all Eurostardatabase users, enabling them to execute extremelysuccessful campaign selections in-house, for a range ofscheduled, automated campaigns, as well as occasionalcampaigns run in support of a specific marketing objective.For more complex campaigns and at peak times, Eurostarrelies on Occam's analysis and campaign selection expertiseto execute more complex data extractions from thedatabase.

In addition to increasingly targeted email campaigns,Eurostar is now able to measure and report upon the efficacyof its entire marketing activity, across all channels. Thesolution enables seamless integration between email andweb activities, ensuring that Eurostar’s marketing activity willbe supported as new technologies and channels areembraced.

After just one campaign Eurostar were able to measure anddemonstrate the following increases in campaigneffectiveness and response:

• Open-rates increased by 100%• Unique click-throughs increased by 50%• Average revenue increased by 400%

This new ability to undertake strategic analysis has beeninvaluable in providing insight into customer behaviouracross Eurostar’s three core markets. Eurostar has been ableto accurately plan and assess the huge opportunities that willarise and predict future sales volumes thereof. The databasehas empowered Eurostar to model its current and futurecustomer catchment areas, insight which will underpin allrelationship marketing activity during 2007.

The FutureFrom such measurably successful foundations Eurostar plansto create even deeper segmentations of its business andleisure target audiences, embracing such areas as ‘high-frequency, high-value travellers’; ‘dormant customers’ and‘one-time travellers’. This deeper insight will drive futurecampaigns, facilitating up-sell and cross-sell initiatives andre-educating customers and prospects in the run-up to thenew station openings in 2007.

The new customer marketing database has helped propelEurostar’s understanding of its customers to a new level ofsophistication within a short space of time, fast tracking bothshort-term marketing objectives and longer-term strategicbusiness goals into realisation.

The marketing database implementation has alreadyresulted in many significant business wins for Eurostar. Thebenefits resulting from the effective application of marketingdata analysis include:

• Complex data integration to create a single customerview of 18 million traveller records;

• Dramatically increased customer intelligence• Creation of a highly targeted and effective dialogue withcustomers

• Successful cross-border and inter-departmentalcollaboration

Where previously, it had relied upon limited market researchprojects, Eurostar now has a clearer picture of its customers;its catchment areas and how service changes will effect both- not only in the UK, but for prospective passengerstravelling from Brussels, Paris and Lille.

Vital foundations have been laid to ensure that Eurostar maycontinue to increase the sophistication of its directmarketing, ahead of the challenges of the launch of servicesfrom St Pancras.

AlterianAlterian (LSE: ALN) empowersmarketers with an integrated marketingsoftware platform combining database,online and operational marketingapplications on a shared datainfrastructure. The Alterian IntegratedMarketing Platform makes it practicaland cost effective for marketersto use actionable insight to execute anintegrated marketing strategy acrossonline and offline channels.

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