Harrah’s
Entertainment was founded by Bill Harrah in October of 1937 and has always
focused on developing deep customer relationships. As it entered the new millennium, Harrah’s
had 21 casinos, over 40,000 employees and more than 19 million customers. Historically, each casino was an “independent
fiefdoms” and little information was shared around customers and their
preferences.
In 1994, things at Harrah’s began to change
with the introduction of WINet, Harrah’s Winners Information Network, which
included both a patron database (PDB) and a marketing workbench (MWB). By 2000, Harrah’s had over 300GB of data for
the PDB and 360GB in the MWB. Data was
captured from a variety of sources including their hotel systems, tournaments
and special events, slot machines and table games, and from feedback from their
loyalty program. “With WINet, the
foundation was in place for a new, more scientific approach” (Watson &
Volonino, page 9), closed loop marketing.
Closed
loop marketing requires that you define marketing objectives, test procedures,
and expected values for the selected customers.
Based on data already contained within the WINet system, the test is
“…designed to provide the right offer and message at the right time” (Watson
& Volonino, page 9). Incentives are customized to specific segments to establish,
strengthen, or invigorate the customer relationship. Responses are tracked and analyzed to determine
not just the response rate, but metrics such as revenue generated, increased
frequency of visits, per visit profitability or cross-play. Harrah’s uses these values to determine the
net value of the campaign which is used for continuous improvement to each
marketing approach. “Literally thousands
of experiments of this kind have been conducted” (Watson & Volonino, page
11).
Through the leverage of their WINet system
which utilizes a Unix Gateway to gather information from AS400 systems
(capturing slot data, hotel guest information, etc.) for use in their PDB and
finally the MWB (data warehouse), Harrah’s has been able to implement closed
loop BI.
References
Watson, H., Volonino, L. (n.d.). Harrah’s
High Payoff from Customer Information
