SAS predictive analytics assists Meredith Corp reach women

Meredith Corporation, the largest media and marketing company serving American women, is using SAS Analytics to drive growth. Meredith's iconic national brands include Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal, Fitness, More and American Baby, along with television stations in fast-growing markets. Providing a clearer picture of consumer behaviour and preferences, SAS Analytics helps Meredith improve campaign response and customer retention.

"Today's customers control much of the content they receive and can generate their own media," said Casey Showalter, Director of Database Marketing.

"As a data-driven organisation, we needed more clarity about our audience's desires and behaviours to determine how best to use our media assets. SAS Analytics gives us that insight and is helping us successfully grow audiences and pursue new business opportunities."

"The audience insights from SAS span media assets, so that Meredith can personalise their audience's experience and improve campaign return on investment," said Becca Goren, Worldwide Marketing Manager for Communications and Media at SAS. "Those business advantages are why eight of the top 10 media companies use SAS Analytics to optimise content and monetisation strategies across media channels."

Results came quickly for Meredith. SAS boosted new customer acquisition, customer reactivation and cross-promotion for Meredith's magazines, books, television stations and Web sites. During 2010, readers of Meredith's measured magazines grew to 113 million; Meredith's television stations increased ratings while unique visitors and page views across Meredith's 60 Web sites rose approximately 20% each.

"Regardless of skill levels, SAS addresses any problem we face," said Lynne Bickelhaupt, Manager of Analytic Systems at Meredith. "Marketing executives appreciate that SAS profiles, graphs and mapping reports present a quick view of critical issues. Database marketing managers like how SAS handles data quality and data manipulation so they can focus on analysis. Going from raw data to accurate, business-driven, predictive models has become seamless."

Analytics can help marketers execute more and better-targeted campaigns with less effort and lower cost. Understanding their audience across multiple channels helps Meredith answer tough questions about which audience segment is most likely to respond to a campaign as well as the optimal mix of customer, offering and channel.

To match offers and approaches with customer needs and wants, SAS identifies customer segment groups based on transaction detail, demographics, psychographics, interests (cooking, gardening, decorating), trigger events (a new home, a baby, or intention to remodel) and promotion history. SAS aggregates and transforms that data for analysis in Meredith's Teradata warehouse.

"For years, the Teradata enterprise data warehouse has served Meredith as a powerful analytic platform for optimising and integrating customer information, managing complex queries and enormous data volumes at blazing speed," said Rob Berman, Teradata Vice-President. "For Meredith, the combination of SAS and Teradata is a strategic asset that provides almost limitless business visibility and foresight that enables the highest possible customer engagement and service."

SAS gives Meredith near-real-time capability, combining online and offline data to see which marketing activities work best for individual customers. Using SAS, Meredith analyses return on investment for online versus traditional channels to see what works best for customer acquisition. This both cuts costs and improves marketing performance.

Always innovating, Meredith uses SAS to find new ways to serve customers and tailor invitations to shop online. For example, offers in Better Homes and Gardens magazine and newsletters drive traffic to Meredith's online gardening store. Presenting relevant offers is sure to grow this new business.

SAS Analytics helps thousands of organisations worldwide improve processes, drive development and revenues, and retain customers. SAS Analytics is part of the SAS Business Analytics Framework, backed by the industry's most comprehensive range of consulting, training and support services - ensuring customers maximum return from their IT investments.