Canadian Retailer Increases Marketing ROI with GIS

ESRI Canada today presented RONA with an Award of Excellence for its exemplary use of ESRI’s geographic information system (GIS) technology to optimize flyer distribution and maximize return on the company’s marketing investment. Previously, RONA used the same promotional flyer for all of its 700 stores. The company developed a GIS application that has enabled it to better profile customers, focus flyer delivery on profitable areas and reduce costs by eliminating flyers in underperforming areas. The award, which recognizes organizations and individuals for their outstanding achievements in the application of GIS, was presented at the 2010 ESRI Canada User Conference in Montréal.

“RONA has successfully demonstrated how GIS can help businesses enhance market intelligence,” said Alex Miller, president, ESRI Canada. “Through spatial analysis, they can now visualize and better understand the relationships between people, places and behaviours, and gain new insight about customers and their needs. This has allowed them to take a more strategic and targeted approach to marketing, leading to campaigns that deliver greater results.”

In 2009, RONA developed the internal application within only three months using ESRI’s ArcGIS technology. It integrates city maps and data from numerous internal customer databases, Statistics Canada and the AirMiles loyalty program. This provides the company with a nationwide snapshot of their customers, while allowing them to monitor customers through individual profiles linked to specific trade areas. ArcGIS includes easy-to-use wizards, which enables RONA to create analytical models that can be run at the touch of a button. It helps the company to analyze store market areas to determine overlap, find customers who subscribe to newsletters, pinpoint neighborhoods with high concentration of customers and generate reports to guide marketing activities.

“Within six months of implementing the GIS, we’ve significantly reduced flyer distribution costs and increased the effectiveness of our program,” said Marco Mercier, Manager, Flyer Distribution and Network Information, RONA. “We’ve not only gained better control of how much flyers we send out and who we send them to, but have also localized flyer content to better address the diverse needs of our customers across the country. The intelligence that we obtain from our GIS analyses is very compelling.”

RONA is expanding spatial analysis to support other marketing processes, including identifying suitable sites for new stores based on the market potential of neighborhoods.

[Source: ESRI Canada press release]