Tag: AIMIA

  • Aimia forms JV with Fractal Analytics

    Aimia, a global leader in loyalty management, has formed a strategic long-term partnership with Fractal Analytics, a leading provider of advanced analytics. The exclusive commercial agreement will deepen Aimia’s analytics capabilities, extending its unparalleled customer insights to deliver a more comprehensive understanding of consumer behavior and improve marketing return-on-investment. It will also extend Aimia’s loyalty expertise to Fractal’s existing clients. As part of the partnership, Aimia is making a minority equity investment in Fractal.

     

    The partnership expands Aimia’s analytics operations, giving it access to best-in-class analytics to enhance its current core capabilities and the opportunity to rapidly embed some of Fractal’s existing predictive analytics solutions such as Customer Genomics® into Aimia’s loyalty solutions.  It will also allow more rapid development of new offerings leveraging rich customer data across its programs, products and regions.

     

    “This strategic partnership gives Aimia dedicated access to specialized and scarce top talent as our global analytics business continues to grow,” said Eric Monteiro, Chief Strategy and Analytics Officer, Aimia, who will join Fractal’s board of directors as part of the equity investment.  “Fractal brings a mature and experienced team of sophisticated analytics professionals to meet the complex needs of our clients.”

     

    “CMOs across industries increasingly recognize the importance of deeply understanding their customers and hyper-personalizing their experience to inspire their loyalty,” said Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fractal Analytics. “Our partnership with Aimia gives companies access to the world’s best loyalty analytics expertise.”

     

  • Tata group firms to launch common loyalty plan

    By Sagar Malviya

     

    Tata Group’s consumer-centric firms including Taj Hotels, Croma and Westside will soon initiate cross-marketing activities such as promotions and campaigns by sharing customer database and insights.

     

    “What we plan to do is leverage different databases and provide more value to the customers,” says Akash Sahai, managing director, AIMIA India, a joint venture between Tata Capital and Canadian firm AIMIA (formerly Groupe Aeroplan) that will launch a common loyalty card for clients within and outside Tata Group.

     

    “For instance, we are using the database of Taj Hotels to give its customers additional promotions at Tata’s department store Westside,” he says. “Similarly, consumers could use Tata Capital card at Westside and Croma for added benefits and finance schemes.” Most Tata Group companies have been working together in legal, real estate sourcing and IT services among other administrative work, but the conglomerate so far did not have a common customer relationship management (CRM) programme for its half a dozen consumer-centric companies spanning retail, consumer goods, hospitality, financial services and telecom segments.

     

    AIMIA has started managing Taj Group’s customer relationships and will soon include other consumer firms of the group to create a unified CRM programme.

     

    Customer service is clearly emerging as a differentiator for consumer-centric companies as competition increases and consumers become more empowered.

     

    Several global multi-partner loyalty operators have set their sights on the Indian market, valued roughly around $1 billion.

     

    While Tatas roped in AIMIA last year, another Canadian firm, LoyaltyOne, has acquired a stake in local firm Directions. Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, the country’s largest retailer, is partnering German loyalty management firm Payback.

     

    Penetration of loyalty cards in India is just 42% of organized retail consumers with an average of 2.8 cards for each person compared to 74% penetration at an average of 3.8 cards for each consumer in the US.

     

    LoyaltyOne Chief Marketing Officer Rathin Lahiri says loyalty programmes will help marketers leverage consumer insights for developing customised programs. “That will not just impact the way that consumers respond to their brands, but also in the long term will shape their buying patterns,” he says.

     

    AIMIA will launch its multi-party loyalty card later this year. Apart from Tata Group firms, it is in talks with several non-competing brands in the aviation, petrol retailing and financial services space to launch a loyalty card to be used across companies.

     

     

    Source:The Economic Times

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