A little over 2 years ago, I wrote a post about our vision for turning big data into a strategic asset. The outcome of this vision was the development of a Global Marketing System that provides marketers with complete views of customer behavior and advanced marketing analytics so we can respond with relevancy in our campaigns.
At this year's SAS Global Forum, over 50 people filled a room to hear Shawn Skillman and Lori Jordan, two Senior Database Marketing Analysts on my team, talk about how that vision is now a reality. Their paper and presentation specifically outlines how SAS uses SAS to analyze, segment, and target customers to invite to SAS Global Forum. Just one example of how all campaigns are now run in our marketing organization because of SAS Technology.
The post below was written by Lane Whatley, one of my counterparts in communications. She attended their session and did a great job summarizing their presentation.
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On the last day of SAS® Global Forum I had the pleasure of attending a paper presentation about how SAS Uses SAS® to invite and manage SAS Global Forum attendees. The fact that there were more than 4,200 conference goers this year is evidence enough that they have a winning strategy.
Having some familiarity with email marketing campaigns from a former job, I know a great deal of time and effort is spent scheduling campaigns and selecting criteria to make the perfect offer, but I had no idea the extent to which SAS uses SAS to help.
SAS uses SAS® Marketing Automation to define list criteria and create campaigns for SAS Global Forum. With more than three million users in their data mart, teams rely on the software to help narrow the invitee list and identify customers most likely to attend. For this year’s Global Forum, teams used criteria like:
- Past SAS Global Forum and user group attendees.
- Past Customer Connections, Analytics Conferences, and SAS Talks attendees.
- Subscribers to select SAS technical reports.
- SAS software users identified through calls to Technical Support.
- Contacts identified by SAS® Customer Experience Analytics as having searched select support.sas.com and http://www.sas.com/ websites.
After a campaign has been sent, teams also use SAS® Enterprise Business Intelligence to run analytics on the resulting data: who opened the campaign, who clicked the campaign, who registered, who opted out, etc. They also use SAS® Visual Analytics to run reports like the one below that shows Global Forum registrants by geography.
SAS also uses SAS® DataFlux® Data Management Platform to integrate, standardize and match data. This platform provides the foundational layer for data quality and analytics, because campaigns are only as successful as the data behind them.
Another SAS Global Forum has come and gone, but for the database marketing team, only part of their Forum work is complete. They’ll run data quality checks and reports on attendees, and then use this information to inform next year’s Global Forum campaigns.
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As marketing organizations evolve, so will technology. We will continue to have more tools at our fingertips to answer increasingly sophisticated questions about our customers and prospects, but at the end of the day, its talented people who make the difference when using the tools. Shawn and Lori are no exception - a winning combination for sure! Let us know what you think in a comment below and thank you for following.
