SAS® helps Rogers Wireless get personal with customers

The wireless communications business is fast-paced and highly competitive, as customers want the latest technology at the lowest price point. Rogers Wireless, Canada’s leading wireless carrier, is using SAS® Analytics to increase its relevancy for customers through highly targeted marketing campaigns. SAS enables Rogers Wireless to target smaller, more select customer lists to achieve better results. The company has more than doubled the number of campaigns it sends out each month and achieved better results, all without increasing its staff. 

Customer Success Video

Check out this video to learn more about Rogers Wireless and its successes with SAS.

View Video

• Windows Media Player
• Real Player

(Runtime: 3 mins., 53 secs.)

---

Customer Viewpoint
You have questions; our customers have answers. Check out this video Q&A.

Derek Pollitt
Director, Campaign Management & Customer Analysis

View Video

• Windows Media Player
• Real Player

---

(Requires Windows Media Player 6.4.7 or higher or RealPlayer 6 or higher)

Rogers Wireless is part of Rogers Communications, a leading provider of wireless, digital cable TV, high-speed Internet and telephone services to consumers and businesses in Canada. The wireless division has more than 8 million subscribers and is Canada’s national carrier for GSM/GPRS/HSPA technology.

Canada’s 22 million mobile phone customers are some of the heaviest wireless users in the world. And they also have many choices for wireless services in a hypercompetitive marketplace. To compete successfully, Rogers Wireless must be able to retain existing customers and attract new ones with the right rate plans and handsets. Another challenge is the emerging consumer interest in smartphone technology and data applications.

Analysts at Rogers Wireless use SAS to analyze their customer base so they can execute highly targeted campaigns faster and with more flexibility. “Nothing irritates customers more than receiving marketing messages for something that’s completely irrelevant to them,” said Derek Pollitt, Director of Campaign Management and Customer Analysis for Rogers Wireless, who works with a team of 25 on campaign execution and analysis of the company’s wireless customer base. “By doing the analysis ahead of time with SAS, we can make sure there’s a statistically high likelihood that a customer will be interested in an offer.”

Rogers Wireless has two major data warehouses, one for call detail records and another for subscriber data. Other Rogers Communications divisions have their own data warehouses. “We have a lot of data and different data sources. We needed a solution that would work across different platforms, but at the same time was relatively easy to learn,” said Pollitt. “That’s where the flexibility of SAS comes in. You can put SAS in the hands of a highly advanced statistician, or you can put SAS in the hands of a data-savvy user, and they both benefit – and both groups speak the same language.”

Before Rogers Wireless used SAS, launching campaigns was labour-intensive and involved high-level targeting to make sure specific offers would be attractive to customers. This approach was problematic because analysts had to run the data through several different tools to get to the end result, which wasted a lot of time. “Once we started using SAS, the biggest change we saw was the number of campaigns we were able to launch,” said Pollitt. “We used to have to work overtime just to get 40 customer lists out each month. Now we regularly send out more than 200 lists, which are smaller and more targeted.”

Rogers Wireless is finding the campaigns it executes using SAS get better response rates than campaigns in the past. The company’s campaigns achieve better results, with the same number of people on staff, and some team members have evolved from campaign list pullers to ad hoc analysts. “SAS helps us to be more targeted and more relevant to the customer so we can stay ahead of our competition,” said Pollitt.

Analysts are also able to turn to the SAS Professional Services team to leverage their knowledge for complex and challenging problems. As a result, SAS is becoming an indispensable tool for Rogers Wireless, and the company’s analyst team receives requests almost every week from other user groups within the organization that want to use SAS. “We’re more efficient and more effective and as a result, a lot happier,” said Pollitt. “And we can dig deeper into our mountains of data, rather than just skim across the top.”

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved.