Enhancing Customer Engagement through IoT: A Case Study of IHG's Rewards Partner Programme

• Sales & Marketing

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) was keen to understand the business impact of its Rewards Partner Programme, which boasts approximately 74 million members. The challenge was to analyze the vast amount of data from multiple sources across IHG and its partners. The goal was to create a comprehensive customer segmentation that would enable IHG to develop more effective marketing strategies and communications. The segmentation needed to incorporate various data points, including 3rd party credit card spend, demographics and preference, lifestyle, and brand survey data.

The customer in this case study is InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), a multinational hospitality company. IHG operates several hotel brands and has a significant customer base with its Rewards Partner Programme, which has approximately 74 million members. The company wanted to leverage the data from its Rewards Partner Programme to understand its business impact better and to enhance its marketing strategies and communications. IHG aimed to make its interactions with customers more relevant, timely, and engaging, thereby improving customer loyalty and increasing revenue.

To address this challenge, a data environment was created by combining multiple 1st and 2nd party data sources from across IHG and its partners. This facilitated the analysis and creation of a segmentation covering millions of customer records. The segmentation was overlaid and enhanced with 3rd party credit card spend, demographics and preference, lifestyle, and brand survey data. The segments were then actioned to develop IHG’s marketing strategies and communications to be more relevant, timely, and engaging. Additionally, Iris worked globally on understanding what other areas of the customer journey IHG have “permission” to talk to the customers about, and where relevant to sell to them.

• The solution provided significant operational benefits to IHG. By creating a comprehensive customer segmentation, IHG was able to develop more effective and targeted marketing strategies and communications. This resulted in more relevant, timely, and engaging interactions with customers. The improved customer engagement not only enhanced customer loyalty but also provided IHG with insights into other areas of the customer journey where they could interact and potentially sell to the customers. This holistic approach to customer engagement and loyalty strategy has positioned IHG to better leverage its Rewards Partner Programme for business growth.

• Email open rates achieved were 28%
• Email click-through rate (CTR) was 7%
• Return on marketing investment was 300%