Supernova Award Category

The Problem

Just 5 years ago, Safeway dramatically changed their marketing strategy. They created a “Just for U” app and website to turn data into personalized offers. The rich purchase-history data Safeway had collected for 25 years was key to defining the right algorithms for a break-through digital marketing strategy.

Soon after Safeway’s acquisition by Albertsons, the team was tasked to prove that personalized marketing programs could translate beyond Safeway to Albertson’s business. Albertson’s had limited customer data, but a long history of offline flier marketing optimization. Within days, the Safeway team had to perform a high stakes A/B test. They would digitize and personalize a grocery store flyer already scheduled to drop. The Safeway team needed to:

• Find and learn the right customer data - new sources
• Build and test new algorithms
• Maximize the contribution of an offshore team (in the Philippines) for speed and collaboration

They had just four days to address these challenges.

The Solution

Safeway adopted Alation in 2015, as a proof of concept, chosen for its ease of use and automated ability to inventory and catalog data. Now Alation provided the team with efficient data discovery.

The team had just one lead - a verbal reference to a table name in Teradata. Quickly Alation’s search capability was able to use that clue to pinpoint the right table. Alation’s english-in, answers out search feature brought back both a statistical data profile and examples of when and how the data had been queried in the past. Adding to the metadata that Alation automatically generated, notes on data intricacies and business definitions were visible in Alation.

Additionally, a process document called an Alation Article was created to organize SQL-based data prep work - ensuring that team members could easily communicate and speed the metadata discovery process. This enabled Safeway’s global team to collaborate and keep the project moving, 16 hours a day.

The results

Safeway was able to quickly create a personalized email with the right offers based on the analysis that Alation supported. The small team collaborated very effectively, using technology that increased productivity to get a very meaningful answer, which was, "Let's invest more in continuing personalization of outreach to customers, rather than the standard, traditional marketing flyers that don't have as much return."

This approach has allowed Safeway to better serve its customers by intricately and individually anticipating its customers buying behaviors, all through the help of collaborative analytics. Consequently, the marketing focus has shifted from primarily mass traditional print flyers toward a more multi-channel approach with personalized, digital advertising using the “Just for U” app and website.

The “Just for U” program is being implemented today at Safeway’s original family of stores. It is also rapidly being roll out across Albertsons’ full line of banner stores across the nation, to include all 2,200 stores under its umbrella.

Metrics

In just four days, Albertsons Loyalty team proved the value of personalized digital marketing, delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional revenue, and saw a time savings-based ROI of $30 for every $1 spent on Alation.

Further results of this project included:

• Data discovery was conducted 70% faster
• Time to execution decreased 70%
• Personalized email resulted in 300% more redemptions than paper redemptions
• $300,000 in additional funded redemptions

The Technology

Albertsons leveraged Alation, the first data catalog built for collaboration to search, query and collaborate around their data and achieve faster, more accurate customer loyalty insights.  The Alation Data Catalog is generated and updated using machine learning and improved through human collaboration.  On top of the data catalog, Alation gives analysts easy-to-use interfaces that surface the knowledge stored in the catalog through recommendations that increase analyst productivity 20-50%.

Disruptive Factor

As a result of the project, the team is showcasing within Albertsons a culture of data curation across all areas of the business, so that metadata becomes easier to understand, extract, and query - benefiting all who touch it, and enabling the organization to better leverage analytics in shaping key business decisions.   In such a conservative low-margin business, retail grocery is still in its infancy in regards to digital and targeted methodologies.  This project brought the power of personalization to the forefront of a new senior management and changed the way they steer tomorrow’s marketing ideas.

Shining Moment

The camaraderie the team developed during this sprint-like project has solidified working relationships between all members of the team.  The trust they developed for each other’s abilities and for the data itself is very clear from their cooperation recorded in the Alation crowd-sourced metadata, called Conversations, attached to the project’s Article.