Telecom powers up to understand 1.3 million individual customers
Telecom New Zealand has purchased a sophisticated Marketing Automation solution to enable them to know how, when and
more importantly, when not to communicate with a specific customer.
By replacing decade old technology with SASR Marketing Automation, the country's largest telephone company is set to
further refine and improve their targeted customer communications by coordinating all outbound communications through
SAS' campaign management system enabling them to capture responses and measure the effectiveness of each campaign.
"The key concept here is relevance - relevance in what we say to an individual customer and relevance in the medium we
take to say it," said Tim Simpson, Telecom's Marketing Information Manager.
"We undertake up to 400 below-the-line-campaigns each year to target each of our 1.3 million residential and 200,000
small to medium sized business customers - with the SAS solution we want to target individual customers with information
they are interested in receiving and then monitor how our relationship with them is developing."
Two years ago Telecom implemented SAS' data mining technology, Enterprise Miner which now sifts through vast amounts of
customer data to predict individual customer behaviour in relation to the products they are likely to purchase, their
loyalty to Telecom and the anticipated life of that customer.
"With the upgrade to SAS Marketing Automation, we will exploit this customer intelligence further to help manage
campaigns delivering relevant messages, - using a wider range of outbound channels.
Ultimately, Telecom wants to use the new technology to manage customer communication effectively (both for the Customer
and Telecom), and to enhance the customer relationship. For example, if a customer has a preference for us to
communicate with them via a particular outbound channel (or combination) we'll know that in advance," adds Simpson.
"Many organisations send out communications to customers but fail to measure their impact on changing customer
behaviour. A key capability that Telecom will acquire through SAS Marketing Automation is that following each campaign
Telecom will be able to measure the campaign's success - who responded, who didn't and then analyse the responders and
non-responders to improve the targeting and relevance of the next iteration of campaigns, continually improving their
effectiveness," said Doug Campbell, Head of Customer Intelligence for SAS Australia and New Zealand. "As a full service
provider, the sheer number of products and services that Telecom has to offer their diverse customer base, the need for
a more intelligent and automated approach to campaigning was required. With the enhanced campaign management
capabilities, Telecom will now be able to increase the number of distinct campaigns with the same marketing resources -
creating marketing campaigns faster, smarter and more profitably while decreasing the average size of the campaign
audience through improved targeting." SAS New Zealand was selected as the technology which will meet Telecoms needs both
now and well into the future.