Eurostar: On-line and On-time; A full end to end online campaign management solution

Eurostar is the high-speed passenger train service operating between the United Kingdom and Belgium, running from Waterloo and Ashford International to Paris, Lille, Brussels, Calais, and Disneyland Resort Paris. Eurostar is at the leading edge of innovation in the rail industry, setting new standards for travel by train. It was one of the first rail operators to introduce business lounges and a loyalty programme, and for the last eight years has won the title of ‘World’s Leading Rail Service’ at the World Travel Awards.

In 2005, Eurostar carried a record 7.45 million travellers and achieved record sales of £464 million. Almost 70 million people have now travelled with Eurostar since services began in 1994, and the company is responsible for doubling the number of visitors from London to Paris and Brussels. A combination of a robust fleet servicing and maintenance programme, good operational performance and strong performance by infrastructure providers, Network Rail and Eurotunnel, ensured Eurostar achieved such good results.

Richard Brown, Chief Executive of Eurostar, commented,

“We’re continuing to win travellers from our competitor airlines, as strong punctuality and superior service make Eurostar the carrier of choice.”

In 2007, the second section of the new UK high-speed rail line, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), will open on schedule, and Eurostar’s entire operations will move from Waterloo to its new terminal at St. Pancras International. The completion of the high-speed line will create a link to the Continent from the heart of the city and further reduce Eurostar journey times, for example London to Paris will now take only 2 hours 15 minutes.  Coupled with the new high-speed rail link connecting the Channel Tunnel to London, to be completed by 2007, Eurostar’s customer base will change dramatically – for both out-bound UK and in-bound French and Belgian services.

Before August 2005, Eurostar did not have an overall view of its customers and prospects. There was no real understanding of the behaviour of individual travellers – either leisure or business. The company enjoyed communication with only a small proportion of actual customers. Eurostar wanted to build the necessary foundations to both increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its marketing and also to provide analysis of its entire customer base to predict the effect of new stations and services.

The Challenge

Eurostar’s overall objective was to increase customer intelligence to improve relationship building and help strategically drive operations – particularly in light of the impending major UK station changes.

Before the customer database project began, Eurostar held operational data about ticket sales plus data from its Frequent Traveller programme. Marketing analysis was limited by the extent of the available data and little differentiation between customers based on their previous behaviour and preferences was possible. A communication programme had to meet the needs of the entire database.

Eurostar’s initial goal was to create a single customer view, with associated database marketing tools in order to increase understanding of, and hence significantly improve, its relationship with customers, thereby maximising the potential of its data. The new approach had to underpin Eurostar’s preferred channel for DM campaigns, email, due to its associated cost, speed and measurability benefits.

The second marketing goal, ahead of the important service changes due in 2007, was to profile Eurostar travellers to understand the affects the changes would have on existing and future customer catchment areas. The output would help drive the decision-making process, not only in Marketing but also within Eurostar’s Business Planning, Market Research, eCommerce, Customer Service and Customer Operations divisions.
One of the key challenges these objectives presented was to overcome the data quality and subsequent integration issues of a huge variety of datasets held in different countries. A small sample includes: marketing data from the last two years held in the UK, France and Belgium; inbound North American data via partner Expedia; Management Information Systems data; website data; Frequent Travellers programme and customer contact, complaints and remarks held in London and also data from the ticket booking system.

It was vital that the marketing database could work effectively cross-border between the three countries. The database also needed to be accessible to Eurostar’s external partners such as advertising and media agencies.

The Solution

Eurostar decided to minimise the risks involved in creating a new marketing database by securing the consultancy and software services of Occam. The project commenced in January 2005 and an initial version of the new system went live in September 2005.

The solution is a combination of Occam’s accelerated delivery marketing technology platform and components: core cleansing and de-duplication components, an operational data store in SQL Server and the Alterian applications ‘Data Discovery’ ‘Visualisation’ (DDV) and ‘Campaign Manager’ – each leverages Alterian’s core engine technology.

Occam created a new customer marketing database capable of managing the large volumes of Eurostar’s raw data, which grew from an initial 30,000 contacts to 18 million unique customer IDs.

This significant increase in the amount of available data came from including all transactions within Eurostar’s core markets over a four year period; plus the original data sources.

Delivered via Occam’s ‘rapid fire’ implementation methodology, the solution allows rapid and easy analysis and selection from the new database. Immediately, Eurostar were able to begin segmenting the database, providing insight to drive targeted, profitable email campaigns:

Business travellers’ behaviour (and previous journeys taken) is analysed to ensure targeted, relevant offers are sent to this profitable key traveller group

Outbound emails relating to the Ski Service to the French Alps have been reduced from 500,000 to 70,000 based on new insight drawn from the newly available analysis

Potential users of the daily service to the French theme park Euro Disney were targeted by email, resulting in an  open rate of 35%

Targeted micro sites have been created on the main Eurostar 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 communications based on traveller behaviour and profiles. The results have been far beyond expectations.”

As well as enabling Eurostar to apply analysis to its data to gain customer insight, Occam also made it possible for Eurostar to begin to address the challenge of understanding customer journeys and translating this information into targeted marketing campaigns:

Contacts that have registered via the website but not purchased can be emailed to ‘boost’ uptake
Customers returning for the first time are contacted to gain ‘new traveller’ customer feedback

Eurostar is beginning to feed all this new customer intelligence to its media agencies to assist and inform campaign planning. The system is already a strong, strategic business tool, used for significant analysis and profiling of customers within the existing catchment areas of Waterloo International and Ashford.

Occam hosts the marketing database solution on its network of secure, state of the art servers, ensuring continual data security and 24 hour data access. A continual process of data quality management, performance tuning, and enhancement of the analysis and campaign management capabilities is in constant operation.  Web access to all data, campaign contact history and facilities is provided for Eurostar users across three countries; access permission levels can be applied on an individual basis to assure security across the system and all data.
Occam provided training in the new system for all Eurostar database users, enabling them to execute extremely successful campaign selections in-house, for a range of scheduled, automated campaigns, as well as occasional campaigns run in support of a specific marketing objective. For more complex campaigns and at peak times, Eurostar relies on Occam’s analysis and campaign selection expertise to execute more complex data extractions from the database.

In addition to increasingly targeted email campaigns, Eurostar is now able to measure and report upon the efficacy of its entire marketing activity, across all channels. The solution enables seamless integration between email and web activities, ensuring that Eurostar’s marketing activity will be supported as new technologies and channels are embraced.

After just one campaign Eurostar were able to measure and demonstrate the following increases in campaign effectiveness 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 been invaluable in providing insight into customer behaviour across Eurostar’s three core markets. Eurostar has been able to accurately plan and assess the huge opportunities that will arise and predict future sales volumes thereof. The database has empowered Eurostar to model its current and future customer catchment areas, insight which will underpin all relationship marketing activity during 2007.

The Future

From such measurably successful foundations Eurostar plans to create even deeper segmentations of its  business and leisure target audiences, embracing such areas as ‘high-frequency, high-value travellers’; ‘dormant customers’ and ‘one-time travellers’. This deeper insight will drive future campaigns, facilitating up-sell and cross-sell initiatives and re-educating customers and prospects in the run-up to the new station openings in 2007.

The new customer marketing database has helped propel Eurostar’s understanding of its customers to a new level of sophistication within a short space of time, fast tracking both short-term marketing objectives and longer-term strategic business goals into realisation.

The marketing database implementation has already resulted in many significant business wins for Eurostar. The benefits resulting from the effective application of marketing data analysis include:

• Complex data integration to create a single customer view of 18million traveller records;
• Dramatically increased customer intelligence
• Creation of a highly targeted and effective dialogue with customers
• Successful cross-border and inter-departmental collaboration

Where previously, it had relied upon limited market research projects, 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 passengers travelling from Brussels, Paris and Lille.
Vital foundations have been laid to ensure that Eurostar may continue to increase the sophistication of its direct marketing, ensuring it maintains and continues to build upon its market leading position.