Brittany Ferries Turns to Unica and Sogec To Power its Multi-Channel Marketing Initiatives

Brittany Ferries Turns to Unica and Sogec  To Power its Multi-Channel Marketing Initiatives

Paris, February 24, 2011 – Unica, an IBM Company and a recognized leader in marketing software solutions, and the Sogec Marketing group, a specialist in customer relationship management, have been selected by maritime carrier Brittany Ferries to optimize its multi-channel marketing campaigns and enhance its overall customer marketing strategy.

Brittany Ferries' multi-channel marketing program in need of upgrades

With more than 400 million Euros in annual sales, Brittany Ferries is a leader in the maritime transport market that provides customers with multiple ferry offers: freight transport, holidays, and cruise offerings. Every year, 331,000 passengers travel on the nine lines the company operates to England, France, Ireland, and Spain.

Since 2000, Brittany Ferries has maintained an internal database of approximately 435,000 French prospective and existing customers with whom the company communicates through offline and online marketing campaigns. But the company realized that, although large, its database was limited, as it could not provide an accurate picture of customer acquisition, preventing Brittany Ferries from effectively delivering effective multi-channel communications. As such, the company turned to Sogec and Unica to centralize its existing and prospective customer data, bringing its marketing campaigns into the 21st century.

Databases and multi-channel marketing campaign management combined into one powerful offering

For Brittany Ferries, the first step in bolstering its direct marketing strategy was to centralize its data to begin executing truly multi-channel campaigns. To help this market leader meet these objectives, Sogec and Unica developed a cloud-based solution based on a two-step action plan.

- Sogec, a data management expert, first built a unique decisional database (data warehouse) that could integrate data from all customers, no matter their origin (call center, Website, travel agency, newsletter subscription, etc.). Several data cleansing operations (mailing address standardization, deletion of duplicate entries, email address validation, etc.) were then required to ensure the data was accurate and could be used in marketing campaigns and for reporting purposes. In addition, Sogec created feeds to keep the data warehouse updated regularly, taking into account the data quality constraints specific to Brittany Ferries (prospective/existing customer information, reservations, qualifications, brochure orders, etc.).

- Additionally, Sogec integrated and hosted the platform solution, which was based on Unica’s campaign management solution. Unica Campaign provides complete control of the company's multi-channel marketing campaigns, allowing for personalized communication with every prospective and existing customer. Used in conjunction with the maritime carrier's marketing operations, the functionality offered by Unica enhances the customer experience, strengthening customers' confidence in the brand.

Brittany Ferries also integrated Unica’s email marketing solution, Unica eMessage, into its platform, allowing the company to distribute personalized emails, text messages, and other types of mobile communications.

Brittany Ferries’ objective was to implement a solution covering all marketing communications channels in order to segment, plan, and distribute relevant and personalized marketing messages. To manage the Brittany Ferries relational project, Sogec integrated its decisional platform, which offers robust features like campaign analysis and progress reporting.

A turnkey solution adapted to the specific needs of Brittany Ferries

The Sogec-Unica partnership managed key tasks like setting up the data warehouse, maintaining the database, ensuring quality data, and providing secure online access to project tools, leaving Brittany Ferries' marketing teams free to focus on their core business.

"Beyond our goal of creating an efficient database for our marketing campaigns, more than anything else, our decision was based on the fact that Sogec and Unica are high-quality vendors with easy-to-use solutions that are in line with our requirements in terms of supporting our teams. We have launched our relational project and are very satisfied with how quickly it has been implemented," stated Florence Gourdon, Marketing Director for Brittany Ferries Passengers France.

About Unica
Unica, an IBM Company, is a recognized leader in marketing software solutions. Unica’s advanced set of enterprise marketing management and cloud-based marketing solutions empowers organizations and individuals to turn their passion for marketing into valuable customer relationships and more profitable, timely, and measurable business outcomes. These solutions integrate and streamline all aspects of online and offline marketing. Unica’s unique interactive marketing approach incorporates customer analytics and web analytics, centralized decisioning, cross-channel execution, and integrated marketing operations. More than 1,500 organizations worldwide depend on Unica for their marketing management solutions.

Unica is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts with offices around the globe.
For more information, visit www.unica.com.

Note to Editors: Copyright 2011 Unica Corporation. Unica, the Unica logo, and NetInsight are registered trademarks of Unica Corporation. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

Press Contacts
Unica France – IBM
Véronique Blondelle – vblondelle@fr.ibm.com
Catherine Lafôret - Catherine_laforet@fr.ibm.com