Over the past 20 years, the aviation industry has changed dramatically. Low-cost carriers have intensified the competition, in turn producing tremendous price pressure, meaning only the leanest and most profitable players can succeed.
SAS - Scandinavian Airlines, is the airline with the highest frequency of departures to, from and within Scandinavia. To remain competitive in this challenging setting, SAS needed to transform its business and improve ROI, allowing them to invest in future growth. They wanted to become more automated and effective, whilst optimising customer experience and ensuring relevance throughout the customer journey.
Over a three year period, SAS went from a traditional product and point of sale focused company to a digital-first organisation. They did this by transforming their organisation and their technology set-up. SAS partnered with Google to develop a joint strategy to revolutionise their approach. Google Marketing Platform provided them with a technology solution that allowed a unified ads and analytics approach across their 22 global markets.
As a result of partnering with Google, SAS estimate that they've reduced the time needed to create campaigns by 30%, and have seen a 34% increase in online bookings*.
(*success measured over a two year period)
Video Transcription
Annelie Nässen, EVP Global Sales & Marketing:
For more than 70 years, SAS has served travellers around the world with a premium service and a Scandinavian touch.
We were actually the first airline trafficking from Scandinavia to Asia. We had the first female commercial pilot so we have a proud history of innovation.
Customer behaviour has really been changing since ten years back. To survive we had to adapt, getting the right message to the right customer at the right time to stay ahead.
Ian Björkdal, Head of integrated Marketing:
We had to transform to not fall behind our competitors. Google Marketing Platform provided us one tech platform that was cutting edge, reliable and globally scalable.
By putting our data into Google Cloud, we could use Machine Learning to analyse, predict trends and see patterns in real time. This was an enormous change that impacted everyone at the marketing department.
Didrik Fjeldstad, VP Brand & Marketing:
SAS is a legacy company, so we had a big internal barrier on change. People are naturally resistant to change.
We have integrated every aspect of marketing in our transformation. Not only digital, not only media, it is a holistic transformation. It was very much about increasing customer satisfaction and creating more value for the SAS brand.
We’re now around 30% more efficient with campaigns that earlier took us days to set up now are ready to go in a couple of hours.
Digital Marketing Transformation sets the bar for what we need to achieve as a commercial organisation. We’re building on our heritage and we’re ready for the future.
