Mark Sniderman

Manager, Marketing Communications – North America & Caribbean

Air Canada

Case Study: Air Canada’s webSaver –Turning Innovation into New Revenues

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Air Canada webSaver® - building on innovation

Meeting the challenge

Leveraging email to increase revenue

Results

Key lessons

Welcome!

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Air Canada is Canada’s largest airline

Network spans over 170 destinations on 5 continents

31 million customers annually

Founding member of Star Alliance™ network

15th largest airline in the world

Introducing Air Canada

Comfort

o makes your flight more pleasant

Technology

o makes your life easier

People and equipment

o gives you peace of mind with the highest standards

Network and alliances

o making the whole world easily accessible

Refinement

o pamper and gratify the most demanding travelers44

Air Canada invests in…

…extending the brand experience

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10+ years – steady growth,

Dynamic newsletter

Weekly distribution and ad hoc

Personalized offers

Since 2006 from 450,000 to approx. 4,000,000 subscribers

Canada (English and French) and US

Supported by a highly comprehensive online subscription centre

Air Canada webSaver® email Program

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Grow 2010 online revenue

Increase engagement (grow clickthrough rate)

Maximize retention (keep unsubscribe rate below 1%)

Create cross channel synergy to promote online sales

Decrease resources and time needed to create emails

Leverage customer profiles to drive targeted content

Enhance the “flying experience” and reinforce the brand

Goals

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• ObjectivesUse our experience and innovation

Increase effectiveness of the email program

Grow online revenues in 2010

Reduce unsubscribe rate – a measure of customer retention

Increase clickthrough rate – a measure of engagement

Continue to personalize:Target product offerings for each subscriber

Provide each subscriber with the control to define key elements of their user experience.

Reduce time to create emails

Air Canada webSaver® email Program

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Collecting complete and consistent subscriber data

Allocating resources efficiently for production and deployment

Producing a completely dynamic newsletter specifically targeting each subscriber individually

Creating a modular email template for easy addition / removal of content

Provide information in a quick and easy to find manner

Challenges

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Expand/refine our ongoing 1-to-1 dialogue with subscribers

Provide each subscriber with the means to define their own user experience

Learn and adapt to subscriber’s evolving preferences

Target product offers based on subscriber profile

Build scalable solutions to evolve with subscriber’s needs

Our approach

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Our approach

PLAN EXECUTE ANALYZE & OPTIMIZE

• Use data to dynamically target

each segment

• Test during the process of

developing content/design

• Establish a schedule of on-going

email testing and refinement:

o Subject line

o Design

o Placement of

graphics/copy

o Content

o Copy

• Gather results to streamline processes and marketing outcomes

• Measure results against goals

o ROI

o Conversion

o Response rate

• Redefine strategy

• Use online/offline historic data to identify meaningful

segments

• Common Data includes:

o Purchases behaviour

o Click behaviour

o Loyalty (e.g. length of customer, referring friends,

switching from competitors)

o Profile Data (e.g. demographics To help identify

‘big purchasers’

• Establish meaningful business metrics (e.g.)

o First-time purchasers

o Dollars spent, number of purchases

o Growth of membership

• Link business metrics to email metrics

o Open rates, click rates, number of clicks per email,

unique opens, time on website

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Collect and integrate subscribers’ historic clickthrough and conversion patterns

Designed email template to accommodate millions of highly customized content requirements

Integrated profile and response data with highly intuitive email template

Automated the assembly of content

Email template focused on empowering subscriber to define their experience

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Our approach

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Developed highly intuitive “customer choice tools” embedded in the newsletter

Provided the means for subscribers to continuously refine the type of information they receive - quick links to “Edit my preferences” linked directly to online subscription centre

Anchors allow quick and easy navigation to various sections in the email

Fares/offers are based on user’s home airport

Scalable template allows for future increased program complexity

Database that continually collects, analyzes and re-configures emails based on subscribers’ preferences

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Our Approach

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We reached our goal by using an Online Creation Toolset to help speed up creation process, which allowed us to make us of:

A fully-dynamic template for modular personalized contentFewer resources Increased volume of emailIncreased variation of email messagesEasy-to-Use Back-End Administration ToolsNo HTML coding required…marketers can assemble and deployDesigned in modules for easy administrationOptimized coding so that the time between deployment and delivery is dramatically decreased

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Result: a dynamic email

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Introduction paragraph summarizes top offers and deals for the week

“My Preferred Destinations” section can contain up to five user choices

Only offers matching users’ preferences will be displayed in this section

Similar Destination offers are selected and displayed to subscribers as a value add

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Result: a dynamic email

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Additional features and revenue opportunities:

Aeroplan offers

Air Canada Vacation Packages

My Hotels

My Car Rentals

Travel tips and new product launches (Wi-Fi, In-Flight Entertainment)

Subscription centre

Customer feedback section

Building on innovation to increase revenues

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Geo-targeted banner advertising

Increase personalization of offers

Cross-selling opportunities

Introduction of mobile version

Launch of webSaver Fare Alert

Social media, third-party ads and aircanada.com

Building on innovation to increase revenues

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Extending the reach

webSaver email is now also supported by a designated Air Canada webSaverTwitter page

Twitter followers receive first hand insight into all our specials and deals

Air Canada has used Twitter to engage with our customers and prospects at an individual level

We have also used Twitter to listen to our customer base

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Extending the reach

Launched webSaver fare alert, April 2010

Subscribers can set up to 5 destinations and price thresholds – Air Canada alerts them when prices are under set price

Monthly view of prices from lowest to highest

Quick links allow subscribers to:o Book a flight for a preselected date

o Update their destinations

o View prices for up to 2 months in advance

Extending the reach

Extending the reach

Extending the reach

Extending the reach

webSaver fare alert results:

o Qualified, engaged audience

o Unique opens increased 21%

o Clickthroughs increased 23%

o Added revenues

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Overall Results

Objective: Grow online revenues

Results:

Dramatically increase the number of visitors to aircanada.com

Increased Revenues by 20% over 2 years

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Objective: Increase customer retention

Target: Reduce unsubscribe rate to 0.5% o Result: Reduced unsubscribe rate to 0.4% in 2010

o Result: Increased clickthrough rate overall

Overall Results

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Objective: Increase new process/technology efficiencies

Target: Reduce time to create emails

Result #1: Reduced time to create emails by 50%

Result #2: Streamlined responsibilities for creating email without additional hires

Overall Results

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Key Lessons

Database/email marketing is the present and future of building an ongoing relationship with your target audience

Consumers are becoming more and more sophisticated; as a result it is important to have a firm understanding of their preferences and communicate only what is relevant

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Key Lessons

Increase activity and engagement by giving control to subscribers/users

Every interaction – or piece of interaction – can yield insights into a target audience

Value is defined by relevance:

o Every communication must be relevant

o Relevance is different for each subscriber/user

Database Management

Complete Customer Profile Information

Easy-to-Use Admin Tools for Execution

Listening to your customers

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Achieving success…

• Lisa Kupovetsky

o Transcontinental Interactive (formerly Thindata 1:1)

• Maggie Simonetti

o Air Canada

• Bobby DupontKarim HammamMario Rendon

o Air Canada Web Team

Special thank you…