2 March 2004

Specialist IT consultancy, Detica, is to assist Virgin Holidays in increasing their holiday booking volumes by maximising the effectiveness of the travel company's targeted direct marketing campaigns. The project will ensure Virgin Holidays pushes the right marketing messages to the right customers via the right channel at the right time.

Detica will automate Virgin Holidays' marketing processes from start to finish, including the planning, development, execution, management and measurement of all its direct marketing campaigns. This new project comes after a successful six-month trial phase run by Detica who will now implement a multi-channel E.piphany campaign management solution, with the system scheduled to go live at the end of May 2004.

For the first time, Virgin Holidays will have an analytical single view of its customers - the 'holy grail' for most businesses - which will enable it to segment its customer base to deliver precisely targeted, tailored and personalised communications, as well as take advantage of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

"Using the system, Virgin Holidays can not only measure the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns, but also run control groups to help with the planning of future initiatives. It has major benefits in terms of cost savings by cutting out imprecise targeting," said Kathryn Beadle, Sales and Marketing Director at Virgin Holidays. "By utilising Detica's expertise and experience in the area of customer insight, we will be able to demonstrate best practice in CRM and get the right message to the right customers, through the right channels at the right time."

Paul Walker, Head of Customer Insight at Detica, added: "Virgin Holidays is totally committed to improving customer relations and, with our help, it will now be able to tailor holiday offers to targeted customer groups and increase repeat bookings. This project is a clear demonstration of our information management and intelligence specialism and we are delighted to be working with Virgin Holidays in this complex yet critical area."

Sally Clift or Rachel Ringstead Porter NovelliTel: +44 (0)207 853 2222email: or