National Geographic boosts marketing analytics

Better view of customer information drives sales increase

National Geographic gathered transactional data to obtain patterns of consumer behaviour

The National Geographic Society is using analytics software to better target its marketing campaigns and boost sales.

The decision to implement the software was driven by the need to improve campaign efficiency by having comprehensive customer information available in one central marketing database.

After rolling out the system, the organisation claims to have reaped a return on investment of 200 to 300 per cent, with best-performing customer areas achieving a 50 per cent overall campaign performance improvement.

“We handle marketing analysis for our direct-response divisions – magazines, books, videos, catalogue, email and travel,” said David Harkness, National Geographic’s marketing analysis manager.

“By gathering transactional data, we get a single view of what, where and how often a customer interacts with us. Predictive analytics help us better understand our customers and determine which products and offers are the most relevant,” he said.

“Not only are we forecasting with greater accuracy which customers are highly interested in our products and services, we can simultaneously better identify underperforming customer segments.”

The analytics system was provided by SAS.