Swinton Insurance picks SAS to grow customer base

SAS to provide Swinton with more effective marketing

LONDON – Swinton, the UK’s leading high-street insurance retailer, will use SAS to help acquire new customers and increase market share through improving marketing campaign effectiveness. SAS, the leader in business analytics , will enable Swinton to create and automate more timely and targeted campaigns to attract new and lapsed customers, supporting its aim to become the leading retailer in the personal insurance market.

By improving understanding of customer behaviours, SAS’ analytics will help Swinton predict their likelihood to respond to specific marketing campaigns. Swinton will increase response rates by better targeting potential customers with the right offers, at the right time.

Furthermore, the company will use SAS to evaluate the effectiveness of its entire direct marketing programme, across direct mail, e-mail, Web and SMS, to understand which channels are working best and where to make improvements. SAS enables Swinton to reallocate its marketing budget and resources to concentrate on channels that yield the best results.

Andrew Mills, Customer Information Manager at Swinton says: “In the past, we’ve found it difficult to manage customer responses from the various channels. Now, having all that data in one place and having SAS to analyse it at the same time gives us a much more granular level view of how our customers are behaving. This added insight means we can evaluate how campaigns are performing and continually improve them.”

Using SAS, Swinton can create and run multi-stage campaigns with minimal intervention. SAS’ software reduces the time to generate campaigns, automates campaign implementation and cuts the time needed to produce campaign performance reports. The increased efficiency allows Swinton’s marketing team to focus on leveraging the results of the campaign rather than implementing it.

SAS was chosen for its complete marketing solution, which can address all of Swinton’s requirements, from data access, campaign creation, response tracking and reporting to evaluation of the campaign afterwards. Additionally, SAS’ scalability, coupled with the team’s professionalism and knowledge, proved to Swinton that SAS will be able to manage its future marketing requirements.

Ian Manocha, Managing Director of SAS UK adds: “The insurance market is changing. Customers are increasingly using the Internet to search out insurance deals. This alongside the introduction of aggregators, means more market attrition and a much higher level of competition. Swinton acknowledged these challenges and recognised that SAS can help it to focus on an analytical approach to targeting potential customers to become even more competitive.”

SAS’ professional services division will lead the implementation of the software to go live in early 2009.
About Swinton

* With 470 branches nationwide Swinton is the UK’s largest high street insurance retailer
* Unlike many other companies in the financial services industry, Swinton is committed to keeping its branches open for business, and being part of the community
* Swinton provides a one-stop-shop for the insurance and related needs of its clients, offering home, car, caravan, business, holiday, motorbike and even classic car insurance
* With a dedicated team of advisors on hand at every branch to search a panel of insurers to offer quality cover at competitive rates

About SAS
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. With innovative business applications supported by an enterprise intelligence platform, SAS helps customers at 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®